Identifying Visitors

By default, Triggerbee doesn’t know what physical person a visitor represents, so each visitor is assigned a unique ID. This ID becomes enriched when the visitor converts - that magic moment when an anonymous visitor interacts with your website through filling out a form, requesting a proposal, buying a product, or logging in. When this occurs, they usually provide information about themselves such as their name, email address, and or telephone number. This information is added to the visitor's unique ID and the session data in Triggerbee, converting them to a Profile (a known person).

We identify each unique visitor by using cookies. This means when the converted visitor returns to your site a few days later, they are remembered and the actions of the future sessions are added to their profile. If the visitor clears their cookies or uses a different device or browser, Triggerbee will not be able to identify them and they will be seen as an anonymous visitor next visit will be considered a new unique visitor - unless we have an email address associated with that cookie which will lead to Triggerbee converting the visitor to a profile. If a profile buys a new computer, uses a phone, a tablet, and several different browsers, Triggerbee will connect the profile from various devices to provide you with a unified view of its history. For every device/browser, the visitor must convert again so that we know their identity.

Different ways of identifying visitors

Triggerbee can identify a visitor in several different ways. Our customers usually work with a combination of them. 

Form Submission Identification

The number one way of identifying visitors is through the Triggerbee onsite forms, where you can collect newsletter signups, memberships, etc. Identification is then done automatically for that visitor. 

Newsletter identification

Another efficient way of converting anonymous visitors to Profiles is through email communication. Using Triggerbee's unique tracking technology, we can convert the visitors coming from email traffic to known Profiles so that you can track all future onsite subscribers' activity. This works automatically for all email tools we have integrations too. Please read the setup guides for each tool in order to know that specific setup! If you are using any Email software that we currently don't have an integration for, you can still track them on your website using dynamic tags (also called "merge vars" or "merge-tags"). Read more here.

Javascript identification

If you have built-in forms on your website or collect identification in other events (such as logins, reviews, or purchases), these should be logged to Triggerbee with javascript. Please read this guide on how to do so. 

Form Listener

By using the feature "Listen to the forms on your website", Triggerbee automatically intercepts your form values. It will not, however, tell you what form has been listened to. Only that the specific visitor has submitted "a" form.

Values that will be intercepted:

• Email
• First name
• Last name
• Name
• Organization
• Telephone

The form needs a  standard submit event for this to work. If you are posting your forms using Ajax, you need to send form data to Triggerbee according to the above instructions. 

Important! Before you activate the form listener, make sure you have covered this type of interception in your privacy policy.

How to activate the Form Listener

Navigate to My Triggerbee --> Account Settings and toggle the On/Off button for the  Activate form listener.

How to work with Unique Identifier

What other data can I collect?

Except for email (or your unique identifier), you can also log other personal- or behavioral data about your visitors whenever they visit your website. For instance, you can log their name, phone number, and gender - but also data such as where they came from, what products they have been visiting, what country they are in, and so on. Triggerbee offers some of these attributes by default (called MergeVars), and some you need to log manually through our Javascript API. You can read all about all visitor properties and mergevars here.

Removal of personal data 

Want to know more about how Triggerbee as your supplier handles your customers' personal data? Read more about that here

Dynamic Tags

If you are using any Email software that we currently don't have an integration for, you can still track them on your website using dynamic tags (also called "merge vars" or "merge-tags"). Almost every Email marketing provider uses dynamic tags that you can be placed in your e-mail content to display i.e. a subscriber's first name, e-mail address, age or any other information that you have collected from them. As the name gives away, the tag is dynamic, meaning it will change to match the current subscriber. Any information you put in your dynamic tag, Triggerbee will pick up and add to the visitor in the specified field.

Email Content Example 

Imagine you want to send a Happy Birthday email to your subscribers "Anna Scott" who is turning 30, and "Simon Peterson" who will be 42 years old. You could write them each a separate email, but with dynamic tags, you don't have to! Instead, try writing:

Hi {{firstname}}!  Congratulations  on turning {{age}}, we hope that you will have an awesome day!

Here, the dynamic tags {{firstname}} and {{age}} will be replaces with each subscribers specific data, i.e.

For Anna: Hi Anna!  Congratulations  on turning 30, we  hope that you will have an awesome day!For Simon: Hi Simon! Congratulations on turning 42, we  hope that you will have an awesome day!

Of course, age is a variable that changes from year to year (unfortunately), but you get the point.

Email Tracking Example 

In the same way, dynamic tags can be used for tracking. Whenever someone clicks from your newsletter, onto your website, you want to have the URL populated with a dynamic tag, so that you can follow what each subscriber does on the website. To do so, we will add our dynamic tag to a utm_custom property. If you haven't already, please read this guide about UTM-tracking before moving on. Thus, your new URL will look something like this, where the red part is changed based on your software:

https://www.yourwebsite.com/?utm_custom[email]={{email}}

List of Tags

Below is a variety of email marketing tools, together with their corresponding tag for tracking email addresses. 

Note: For this article, we'll just list Email Tags, but you can track as many other tags as you like, just add an ampersand (&) and your custom property to your URL.For instance, if you want to send both email and first name, use:

https://www.yourwebsite.com/?utm_custom[email]={{email}}&utm_custom[firstname]={{firstname}}