Best approach for a 'comments/question' form field?

Charles_Sander1
Level 4

Best approach for a 'comments/question' form field?

We  have a Marketo contact form embedded on our website. As we go through site redesign, we want to add a multi-line text field for the user to include comments/questions/ etc.... just like any normal contact form would have, not just a Call-to-action form.

I was about to set this up, but a small issue occurred to me: that information goes into a field for the potential lead. If the user fills out the form again--or another form containing the same field--they'd overwrite the field's previous contents and we'd lose what they said/asked. 

Is there a way around this? A way to store the old entries? I don't want to just append them, because it could become a long unwieldy mess. I can't just dump it into Salesforce, because we might have to remove the info as soon as it's added. Maybe the user isn't a lead, or maybe they've made a GDPR selection that means we have to un-track them and delete all info.

I may be overthinking this, but wanted to get some thoughts and/or best practices for this, when using a Marketo form with a general text field.

Or are we forced to maybe use a regular form and not Marketo? I'd like to keep all forms as Marketo at this time.

2 REPLIES 2
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Best approach for a 'comments/question' form field?

Seems like you're overthinking it! Or at least I can't see how this is different from the same concern applied to any relatively fast-changing field in Marketo.

The traditional ways to keep such things around:

  • append - you already said you don't want this, though
  • create custom objects - this requires a webhook and additional code, but would still leave with stale info you'd want to clean out
  • simply leave the stuff in the Activity Log, where it will live for 90 days if you go back and look at Filled Out Form (although the real field is overwritten of course)

Not sure what prob you're trying to solve, though. I mean, why would you be thinking about taking this outside of Marketo? What's the big deal really?

Charles_Sander1
Level 4

Re: Best approach for a 'comments/question' form field?

Ah... I wasn't thinking of the activity log. Maybe that covers me. 

I'm just imagining a scenario where someone fills out a form for the second time and we lose whatever they typed in the field the first time around.

yeah... I'm overthinking it. Not like we have mobs filling out forms a hundred times. Probably an edge case.