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Identifying email traffic by discoveryKey

The discoveryKey is an integral part of the Engage soft login (previously called auto-login) and needs to be activated by your Engage specialist.

The soft login happens via an encrypted query string parameter named "eclub" which holds information about the contact who has clicked on a link, such as a URL in an email campaign.

The target site back-end can listen to this query parameter and decrypt it. The decryption of the soft login should never be done on the client side for security reasons and GDPR concerns. The encryption key property in the module settings should also never be shared or made accessible in client implementations.

A soft (auto) login URL might look like this:

https://ourdemostore.com/?vtid=9cle0_ctRE25K6kMABznMg&eclub=FwoE65oCjhuc70IBFnszvhZJ0R37pdOYIy0x3KYzsbj3kWtwP2ByD2KP4kuRvWtx7JlyrJpaYnIvI4yAnDbFcVfMJDsXW24MgIrDyqoSw09_7KIMxGri8dYkIhW7FdFFm98n4Vq87I77mA9EsBWI6ExC_MQQkHHqa0h-7pmicZtpQMl7-WJOZCsVV0aEU6E6EX7REldFBFGfHpoWw5fukAaK7nJcg68j_f1OlBgHnwM

The result of the server-side decryption will be an object with the following properties, containing the discoveryKey which is the identification key (customerKey) used in interactions with Elevate.

{
    "id": "60333",
    "email": "withnail@voyado.com",
    "contactId": "d35ec9f5-2df7-4d44-b92b-a90c001ce732",
    "dateTime": "2022-05-11T13:15:40Z",
    "discoveryKey": "0b05119e-eeb8-418a-bbfb-defa0dde417e"
}

Engage soft identification on Elevate powered websites

A customer website using both Engage and Elevate needs to decrypt the soft login and further apply the discoveryKey value as the customerKey when calls to Elevate are made (such as through an email campaign URL). The customer identification in both software suites is now linked, and the flow of information is kept intact.

The customer website can also detect if the contact has never been active in any Elevate session. An empty or nonexistent discoveryKey would be an indicator of this.

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