Query string Tracking for Forms on Drupal Landing Page

[Julz_James]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to set up some query string tracking for form fills on Drupal Landing pages.  I'm using Marketo forms and I want to track different sources using a query string.

I've tried lots of different options but nothing seems to be pulling the form fill into the Smart Campaigns I've set up for tracking.  The options I've tried are:

• Putting hidden fields into the form and then having the form look for the URL parameter
• Using 'Fills in form' trigger with the query string as a constraint
• Using 'Fills in form' trigger with a filter of 'visited webpage in last 5 mins with query string' filter

But if I do a smart list of 'Fills in form' or just a basic smart campaign for 'fills in form' trigger all the names appear there but none have gone through the other tracking smart campaigns.

Normally for Marketo Forms and Marketo landing pages I would just do the second option and it works every time.  But it's not working with the Drupal LPs.

Can anyone help figure out what the problem is?

Thanks

Juli

[Joe_Reitz]

Hey Juli – I miss your face

Sorry, can't help with Drupal, but step 2 as you outlined it works for us on Wordpress. What are you putting in as the constraint?

Do you mean smart campaign or smart list? We've been able to do tracking via Smart Lists exactly like you outline in option 2 (fills out form with query string constraint). If you're using a smart campaign, I'm also curious to know what you've set your flow to be

[Keith_Nyberg2]

Hey Juli,

The questions Joe asked would give us some more clarity around an appropriate answer. I use option 1 as you outlined in your question. Here is my take and how my campaigns function, I would try using the "Fills Out Form" trigger with a Webpage Constraint instead of an additional "Visits Webpage in last 5 minutes" filter. Then you can build your flow step to request multiple referrer campaigns based on a URL parameter that you've identified.

Example:

Trigger: Fills Out Form (constraint Webpage = example webpage)

Flow: Request campaign:

1. IF UTM Medium = search, display, remarketing -> REQUEST: Online Advertising referral campaign
2. IF UTM Medium = social -> REQUEST: Social referral campaign
3. IF UTM Medium = sales -> REQUEST: Sales referral

Let me know if what I wrote helped you at all or if I'm wayyy off.

Cheers!

Keith Nyberg

[SanfordWhiteman]

I would try using the "Fills Out Form" trigger with a Webpage Constraint

With embedded Forms 2.0 forms, you use the ​Referrer ​constraint, not ​Web Page, ​to identify the page hosting the form.

This is frequently misunderstood and people think there's no way to constrain by web page with embeds.​

[Keith_Nyberg2]

Dohh!!!! Thanks for the correction Sanford. Forgot these weren't MKTO pages.

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

One other thing to note when using Webpage or Referrer contraints is that you need to exclude the protocol (http:// or https://).

This is another common mistake people make!

[Elliott_Lowe1]

I've not encountered an issue using Web Page as a constraint in the Filled Out Form filter with an embedded form.  The smart list selects the same number of leads as when using the Referrer constraint.  If you include http:// or https:// at the start of the URL, the Web Page constraint will not work.  You must include those protocols at the start of the URL with the Referrer constraint.  With the Referrer constraint you should use 'starts with' as your operator because the Referrer can contain query parameters.  With the Web Page constraint you can use the 'is' operator because the Web Page never has query parameters. 

A couple of caveats.

• With the Web Page constraint and the 'is' operator is the URL must exactly match the URL shown in the Visit Web Page activity for the page on which the form is submitted.  The addition or omission of a forward slash at the end will cause no leads to be selected. Unfortunately the Fill Out Form activity doesn't display the Web Page URL, just the Web Page ID, which does make it a little more difficult to set up the argument properly than with the Referrer constraint using the 'starts with' operator.
• If you have a section in your page (e.g. www.domain.com/products/mobile-sdk/trial/#partners), you may have to include both the URL with the section and the URL without the section in the Web Page constraint; otherwise, some Fill Out Form activities may not be selected.  With the Referrer constraint and the 'starts with' operator, you would only include the portion of the URL without the section; otherwise some Fill Out Form activities may not be selected.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The idea that the Web Page constraint on Filled Out Form activities is unreliable for embedded forms is the basis for the mistake in this blog post​ and also discussed/debated in this thread.

You're right, though, that Web Page is more functional than not.  But because it requires an exact match on the URL structure for non-Marketo pages, including the hostname (rather than allowing a partial match on the /path/to/page, like you can get with Referrer, or allowing just the friendly page name like you can with Marketo LPs) it's never my first choice.  And any site that uses #! (hash-bang) navigation, like you alluded to when talking about HTML fragments (sections), will be almost impossible to use with exact Web Page constraints.

I also recall, though I can't find my old work on this right now, that there are some situations where Web Page just doesn't function -- at all. These may be related to programmatic Forms 2.0 API stuff.

[Justin_Norris1]

Juli James​

I would grab the value into a hidden field -- your option #1. I find it to be the most flexible method.

Are you using an embedded form or is it iframed? If it is an iframe you would need to use some extra code to transfer the parameters to the iframe from the parent page. An embedded 2.0 should work out of the box though.

Ignoring the smart campaign for a second, I'd be curious to confirm if your data is being captured. When you fill out the form configured to populate the hidden field with the URL param, does the field update on the lead record in Marketo?

If yes, then it's just an error in the smart list to troubleshoot. If no then we can troubleshoot the data capture piece. But the answer to that question will narrow it down.

[Julz_James]

Wow!  Thanks for all the responses...I'll try to answer everything here.

Joe Reitz (miss your face too ) - I use Option 2 on all our Marketo LPs, but it doesn't work on Drupal LPs.  I'm trying to use a Smart Campaign with the 'Fills out form' trigger and the constraint of 'Querystring contains'.  The leads are pulling into a smart list weirdly but not through the smart campaign.

Keith Nyberg  - I'll try that set up now - I didn't know you had to use 'referrer' instead of 'webpage' for external pages.  But will the query string option still work as a constraint?

Geoffrey Krajeski - I never out http or https at the beginning of my web URLs.

Sanford Whiteman and Elliott Lowe - thanks of the additional information.

Justin Norris - I've tried using option 1 but it doesn't work either. The form is an embedded form with additional Drupal code around it.  I've just checked again with the hidden field and thats not being pulled through from the URL.  In fact when I set up the Smart Campaign of 'Fills out form' with the constraint of 'Querystring NOT contains' it pulls in the lead WITH the query string!

Thanks

Juli