Cordial

Overview

Cordial is a cross-channel marketing automation platform that orchestrates personalized campaigns across email, SMS, mobile push, and web channels. On websites, Cordial deploys a JavaScript tracking tag that captures visitor behavior in real time — page views, product interactions, cart events, and content engagement — to build audience segments for targeted messaging. Cordial competes with platforms like Braze, Iterable, and Klaviyo in the marketing automation space, with a focus on real-time data activation and one-to-one personalization at scale.

What This Script Does

Cordial's tracking script (track.cordial.io or a custom subdomain) loads on every page and initializes the behavioral tracking engine.

Behavioral tracking:

• Records page views with full URL and page metadata
• Tracks product views, add-to-cart events, and purchase completions on e-commerce sites
• Monitors content engagement (article reads, video plays, scroll depth)
• Captures search queries and browse patterns for interest profiling
• Listens for custom events configured by the site operator

Visitor identification:

• Sets persistent cookies to identify visitors across sessions and devices
• Links anonymous visitor profiles to known contacts when they log in or submit a form
• Supports email click-through identification (linking email recipients to their web sessions)

Cookies set:

• crdl_id — persistent cookie (up to 2 years) storing the Cordial contact identifier
• crdl_session — session cookie for the current visit
• Attribution cookies storing the campaign, channel, and content that drove the visit
• Email identification cookies set when visitors arrive via tracked links in Cordial emails

Data collected:

• Full browsing history on the instrumented site
• Product interaction data (views, carts, purchases with item details and values)
• User-provided data from form submissions (email, name, preferences)
• Campaign attribution data (which email, SMS, or push notification drove the visit)
• Device, browser, and geographic information

All collected data feeds into Cordial's real-time segmentation engine, where it triggers automated campaigns based on behavioral rules and predictive models.

Consent & Compliance

Cordial falls under the marketing consent category. Under GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, the persistent visitor identification cookies and comprehensive behavioral tracking require explicit opt-in consent before the script loads. Cordial processes personal data (browsing history, purchase data, contact information) for direct marketing purposes, which requires consent under Article 6(1)(a).

The email click-through identification mechanism — linking email recipients to their anonymous web browsing history — constitutes profiling under Article 22 and should be disclosed in the privacy policy.

Under CCPA/CPRA, Cordial's data collection and cross-channel tracking may constitute a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information if data flows between Cordial's platform and other marketing systems. Businesses must honor Do Not Sell/Share opt-outs and disclose Cordial as a data recipient.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

Yes. Cordial's tracking script performs comprehensive behavioral monitoring, sets persistent identification cookies, and collects data for marketing automation campaigns. This is marketing technology in its purest form — the script must not load until the visitor has provided explicit consent for marketing cookies and data processing.