Will Klaviyo only start to understand browsing site visitors from the point at which Klaviyo and Magento2 are integrated?  If it does in fact have the ability to somehow know legacy known users, how does that work as they would only be known via a Magento cookie.  It seems that knowing a site visitor is dependent upon the existence of a Klaviyo cookie.

Hey @AndrewTX,

This would all depend on your definition of “browsing site visitors”. Similar to any other ecommerce integration that Klaviyo offers a native connect with (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce), historical data is synced to Klaviyo. This would include customers who have previously purchased or triggered other events such as started checkout, which in turn would be considered historic site visitors. 

However, assuming what you mean by “browsing site visitors” as users who have triggered an active onsite metric or viewed product event, then you’re spot on. Since these are custom events native to Klaviyo, they would not be recorded without the Klaviyo cookies present. 

David  

The problem is that legacy known users (those cookied via Magento), once Klaviyo becomes the source of subscribers, are now unknown.  While they are known to the lists for segmenting and outbounding within Klaviyo, they are NOT known as browsing or abandon cart users until which time they trigger an event (signup AGAIN for newsletter or purchase a product).  So with respect to tracking and attributing on-site behavior to a known human, that is all lost until it becomes rebuilt over time which  can take years.  Is this thinking correct?  And is there a way to leverage the existence of a Magento placed cookie and from within Magento, transfer that site visitor persona to Klaviyo at which time a previously known site visitor returns so we can continue to attribute on-site behavior to known site visitors?

Hey @AndrewTX,

For the most part, I would say your notions are correct. However, it seems like you’re actually talking about two separate aspects. Both of which work hand-in-and with one another: historic data and identification method.

For starters, both Klaviyo and Magento are two separate platforms. After integrating with Klaviyo, only select data - primarily conversion data and customer data, are synced to Klaviyo as part of the historic sync. This means historic Magento events such as site behaviors taken before the integration are not shared with Klaviyo. You can see in our Magento 2 data reference Help Center article that only the following metrics are shared:

• Cancelled Order
• Fulfilled Order
• Fulfilled Shipment
• Ordered Product
• Placed Order
• Refunded Order
• Started Checkout
• Added to Cart

I believe this is the disconnect you’re mentioning where you aren’t able to see historical site behaviors in Klaviyo. A common way to alleviate this though, would be to manually sync that data into Klaviyo. This can be done either through .CSV or API. 

Despite this, this wouldn’t account for the identification tracking. Unfortunately, this goes back to Klaviyo and Magento being two separate platforms which has their own user identification methods. However, this can be resolved by updating and using an alternative identification method outside of the standard email address that Klaviyo uses. 

To learn more about this, I would recommend taking a look at our Track API reference Developer guide. Keep in mind that if you choose to use your own unique identifier with the $id key, you take on the full responsibility of identity management within your Klaviyo account as I’ve mentioned prior in the below Community post:

David

Thanks for your response David.  I understand all that you note above and Im clear on what data moves between the two systems and how.  My point is that Klaviyo touts its ability to trigger flows based on abandon browse and abandon cart, however, what is not made clear is that it can only do so for those site visitors for which Klaviyo itself has de-anonymized the site visitor via its own cookie event.  IOW, it has no ability to inherit Magento’s understanding of a site visitor. 

If I have been running my Magento webstore for 5 years and have that much historical understanding of site visitors based on native Magento functionality which is integrated with MailChimp for triggered outbounding that Im now replacing with Klaviyo, Im starting from Zero in understanding site visitors, absent using the API methods to move information beyond what the native Klaviyo to Magento extension and integration perform.  And bridging that gap with customizations is messy.  My reason for posting was to see if there was a better technical solution that I havent discovered to solve this beyond the standard or Track APIs.

Hey @AndrewTX,

Have you added in an identify/profiles call at the point that your native Magento site identifies a visitor? 

You’re correct that Klaviyo can’t out-of-the-box inherit Magento’s understanding of a site visitor, but using this method would help bridge this gap you’re talking about. I.E. whenever an existing customer returns to your site and is recognized by Magento, this subsequent call will then be shared with Klaviyo. 

David

Tell me more!  This sounds like exactly what I was in search of.  Is there some place you can point me to dig in deeper?

Thanks!

Hey @AndrewTX,

I would recommend checking out our JavaScript API for identification and tracking and Identify API reference Developer Guides.

They’ll instruct and provide an example script you can use on either the front end or your backend depending on how things are setup on your end.

David