Building and Analyzing a Multi-Step Form?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I’m curious if anyone else out there has built a functioning multi-step form and how they are analyzing form data as it comes in step-by-step. Below is how I am planning on doing it but if anyone has any pointers, I’d really appreciate it.

In this project, I’ve built three forms that will be tied together in a multi-step form process (within a Program). The goal is for the user to provide some info on pages 1-2, and then on page-3 they’ll actually provide contact info (email address, etc). During my testing, this seems to work well when a user is on the same browser session and clicking through from page-to-page.

I’ve built this form process as three separate forms on three pages (one form per page) because I want to collect the submitted data at each step of the process even if a user does not complete step-3. This means we will possibly collect anonymous user data before the user bounces if they don’t want to provide an email address. Question: What is the best way to analyze this incoming anonymous data? When I built this project, I really envisioned some kind of dashboard where I could see the fields being collected and stats on the field options being selected. I’m not seeing any form performance report that can help quantify and visualize the data that comes in on a specific form – or is there one that I’m not seeing in Marketo? Obviously, we’re talking about anonymous leads but I’m hoping that I can set up a dashboard to check in on how steps 1 and 2 are performing for those who don’t complete.

The best solution I can come up with at the moment is a Smart List that drills down into one of the forms and only Anonymous leads, also only viewing the appropriate columns. The hole I’m worried about is Anonymous data being cleared after 90 days, so I’d have to probably export this data pretty regularly. Also, I’m not sure how accurate Anonymous leads are assigned and not accidentally duplicated for whatever reason. Any issues with that? I assume Marketo is looking at a combination of factors like cookies, IP address, etc.

Form step completions will be easy to see as I’ve set up specific Program Statuses but the important part of steps 1-2 is the data coming in. Capturing what that data is when leads bounce before completing the process is one of the goals here.

Thanks!

Noah

[John_Clark1]

Hi Noah,

Your use of smart lists is pretty much what I was going to suggest when I was reading through your description.

The system does depend on cookies in the lead's browser to make sure that any activity that was tracked while the lead was anonymous get merged with the "known" record once they identify themselves.  As long as your leads are using the same browser to fill out all three forms, then everything should merge without any problems.

The only other pitfall I can see is that anonymous leads cannot be added to Programs, so it wouldn't be possible to use Statuses to track the anonymous leads filling out the first two forms.

John

[Anonymous]

Hi John,

Thank you for the heads-up on Program Statuses - didn't realize that it only applies to Known leads. Not a deal-breaker but it'll change how I configure the Flow. And thanks for the confirmation on the Smart Lists analysis. I appreciate it!

Noah

[John_Clark1]

You're Welcome!

Please be sure to mark any answers you get on the community as Correct/Helpful, as this will help others in the future.

Have a great week!

John

[SanfordWhiteman]

No worries about the accuracy/isolation of Anonymous Leads.

However, you can consider the leads in your case Pending Leads -- as distinguished from Anonymous and Named Leads.  A Pending Lead uses the Munchkin cookie as a placeholder email address, and as such is a real lead that can be added to programs, reported on, etc. (and also counts against your subscription count, to be clear).  Anytime you are getting unnamed leads to fill out forms as you get them closer to identifying themselves, funneling them via page personalization, etc, consider upgrading them to Pending.  For this discrete set of in-between leads I think you'll like the flexibility you get in return.

[John_Clark1]

Hi Sanford,

I hadn't considered leads becoming Known when they filled out the first form, even though they won't have email addresses yet.  Thanks for the reminder.