Can you add a general comments field to a Marketo form?

[Anonymous]

I would like to embed a Marketo form on our website Contact Us page. But we need a comments field so visitors can say why they are contacting us so we can route the request to the right department. Can you add a comment field or can you only add fields that are listed in Marketo?

[Dan_Stevens_ · Accepted solution]

Sure, just create a custom field in Marketo and add it to your form.  ADMIN > FIELD MANAGEMENT (we use type: text, instead of string to allow more flexibility of the length of the request/comments).  If you want this to also sync to CRM, create the field there instead.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Kristi Runser​,

In a Marketo form, you can only use fields that exist in the database schema. You can create it as Dan writes above. You should prefer the creation in the CRM if the department handling the lead needs to access the info.

-Greg

[Josh_Hill13]

It would be better, in this case, to consider creating (or using) a Department field or Product Request field that is a picklist that can be managed from the SFDC side more easily (as Greg suggests). This way you do not have to hope the Lead fills in the right comment text.

You can add a comment box using Person Notes fields = Description in SFDC.

The only caveat with ANY comments box is that you must never, ever let it prefill in the Form. Salespeople have a terrible tendency to write various comments about the lead there and they WILL appear to the Lead if you prefill.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Josh has a very good point here about NOT leaving the comment field prefill in forms

The other reason why you do not want to use it, even in a non prefill mode, is because it will be overwritten and all (potentially useful) comments will be discarded.

We in fact use 2 fields :

• The standard comment field, that shows on SFDC page layouts
• a Webform request field, that is created in Marketo but does not appear on SFDC page layouts

We set a SFDC workflow that, when the webform if filled out, concatenate the webform request with the comment field, (putting the webform request first with a timestamp) and writes the result in the comment field. So typically, the comment will read :

2015-11-23-web form request : Here is the request from the latest form fillout

---------------------

Previous comments from the sales

Blah blah blah

-Greg

[Josh_Hill13]

Yes, good point here. I have also setup systems that push the token to a Task instead, if appropriate.