Tracker Domains

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE), formerly Pardot, utilises tracker domains to track engagement with your marketing assets. MCAE comes with the go.pardot.com tracker domain by default, but it is highly recommended that you add your own custom tracker domain due to the phasing out of third-party cookies and new limitations on the go.pardot.com domain.

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What is a tracker domain?

Tracker domains are the cornerstone to how prospect activity is tracked in MCAE. Page views, link clicks and form activity are all associated to a tracker domain.
Resonant 360 Salesforce Marketing tracker domain Example-Engagement-History-3

A custom tracker domain in MCAE is a subdomain of your website domain. Here are some examples of an MCAE tracker domain for www.resonantcloudsolutions.com:

  • go.resonantcloudsolutions.com
  • info.resonantcloudsolutions.com
  • www2.resonantcloudsolutions.com
  • hello.resonantcloudsolutions.com

The tracker domain acts as an alias of your website domain, in order to maintain a consistant brand across your MCAE assets and website. Assets are actually still hosted by MCAE, but their URL makes it appear that they are hosted by your website.

Add the tracker domain to your DNS settings

Copy the validation key generated by MCAE, and navigate to your DNS settings. There are two main steps to configuring your DNS settings:
  1. Create a TXT record with an empty host and paste the validation key as the value.
    Type Name Value
    TXT @ [pardot validation key]
     
  2. Create a CNAME record which points the subdomain to go.pardot.com.
    Type Name Value
    CNAME [subdomain, ie. go or info or hello] go.pardot.com

Validate the tracker domain in MCAE

Back within Domain Management in MCAE, click the ‘validate’ button next to your custom tracker domain. The validation status should update to be validated. You may also see the SSL Status is processing. Given some time, you should see this update to be enabled and the HTTPS Status will be HTTPS. Make your custom tracker domain the primary tracker domain for your MCAE account by selecting the cog wheel, and select ‘Set as primary’. This will ensure you don’t accidentally use the go.pardot.com domain.

Looking for more information? See the Salesforce Help Article for adding a Tracker Domain here.

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