How do I get the form field to show up in email?

[Manjari_Ferguss]

Having trouble with a form. I have created a form on my website, and in the auto email that gets sent to marketing when someone fills out the form, I can't figure out how to get all the fields to show up.

I have added a token for each of the questions, but one of them is just a text box where the person can fill in their own answer. there is no token for a text box. how do I do this? the form has another text box that is called comment capture, and there is a token for comment capture, but when I use it twice it just duplicates the first comment capture so I'm not sure how to get the second one to show up.

help please?

[SanfordWhiteman]

When you browse for a token, Marketo shows you the available {{lead.token}} and {{company.token}} names (and {{my.}}/{{system.}}/{{program.}} tokens as well).

... there is no token for a text box.

Tokens don't explicitly have datatypes, so not sure what you mean here.

Also, a Text field on a form isn't even a datatype, it's merely a form field type that allows multi-line input by the end user. You can have a Text field on a form that saves to a String field in the database, for example (if the value is short enough). You wouldn't see the type "text box" in Marketo other than in Form Editor. Textarea or String, yes. But again, that's not related to finding the token.

[Manjari_Ferguss]

Sorry yes it is a text field in the form editor, not text box. How do I get a token for this text field in the email? 

[TBlane_McMichen]

First of all, you are missing Sanford's warning about cluttering your database with fields.  Keep in mind that when you add a field, it will require database space for every lead in your database and every one created in the future.  Do this too much and you will likely have performance issues in the future.  I have learned at Summit that it is better to create a few "generic" fields (Text, Boolean, etc.) that you can reuse for different campaigns.

[Stepping off the soapbox now.]

Can't you just open your form editor and see which field is being used, then search for it in the token selector, as Sanford Whiteman suggests. 

[Nik_Friedman_Te]

Blane McMichen - when you're using generic fields, how to you manage things so that individual form submissions are tracked and saved? I haven't found a way within the Marketo database to audit the actual contents of a given form submission, it just overwrites previous values. Is there any easy way to access that or, better yet, include every form field in some sort of history field? (There's the comment history field, but that's all fairly manual to keep up to date - I'd rather have a campaign/method to just glom together every field submitted.)

[TBlane_McMichen]

Nik Friedman TeBockhorst- I created a few fields to use for my various campaigns.  You do need to keep track of how you are using them, which may be manually.  I created fields like... Generic_Integer_1, Generic_Boolean_1, Generic_String_1, etc.

I would use them in the campaign for temporary uses, and if I was concerned about a previous value, I would add a Smart Campaign action to Change Data Value.  Then I would use it for the campaign.  For example, I might use it for a dinner event to capture if they want Beef, Chicken, Fish, Vegetarian.  I wouldn't create a permanent field, because they may not always want "Chicken".  Suffice it to say that these fields are only used as a "scratch pad" for the campaign and are not considered part of the leads enduring profile.

I'm not sure I fully understand the "history" values that you want to track. You can concatenate values into a string and then use the "contains" choice in your trigger or filter.  This will work for logic, but not very useful if you want to display it to the lead.  In those cases, you may need to build in some methods to parse and display the list of field values.

I hope that helps.  If not, reply with more details on your use case.

[Nik_Friedman_Te]

What I'm trying to figure is how to make the point-in-time responses part of the enduring profile. Taking your example:

I have a "request a demo" form that uses "genericTextField" with a pick list of different products they'd want to have demoed.

I also have a "dinner RSVP" form which uses the "genericTextField" field with a pick list of "beef, chicken, fish, vegetarian".

Now I have a person who visits the demo form and then shortly afterwards RSVPs for the dinner. The next day, as I review the response for these two programs, I see someone submitted a demo request form and wanted to have a demo of... chicken.

Since Marketo doesn't make a history of form submit values easily available (or so it appears - I'm still new to Marketo), this makes any sort of reporting on results pretty tricky. Is there something I'm missing, or would I just need to rely on an internal email alert on the form submits and content myself to having no retroactive reference?

[SanfordWhiteman]

You should read my responses at https://nation.marketo.com/thread/52283-checkboxes-in-alert-emails 

[SanfordWhiteman]

The text-related types in Form Editor are "Text" or "Text Area".

But again the field type that's published on this particular form for user input has absolutely nothing to with the token or how to find it!

How do I get a token for this text field in the email? 

Browse for it using the Insert Token button as shown above.

[Amit_Jain]

Do you have a specific Marketo field mapped with the text box in the question? May be the text box label is different than the actual Marketo field. To check the exact Marketo field name, edit the web-form, select the text box in question and check the "Field" under properties:

The field is the actual database field name of Marketo and you should search that while trying to add token on the email.

[Manjari_Ferguss]

Thank you. The field is actually some random one that I don't recall selecting. How do I create a new field?

[SanfordWhiteman]

The field is actually some random one that I don't recall selecting. How do I create a new field?

It can't be random, and certainly there's no reason to create a new field -- that's just something you'll never be able to delete in the future.

If the field is shown in Form Editor, then it must exist in your database (Marketo doesn't allow you to hide a field that's known to be in use on a form) and as Amit notes, you'd see the field name in Form Editor. When you click Insert Token to browse for tokens, it will show up there as well.

[Manjari_Ferguss]

Thanks, I figured it out. I created a new form field in the database section, and was able to insert that as a token. problem solved. thanks for your help! 

Admin>Field Management>New

[SanfordWhiteman]

OK... but I don't like this outcome. You now have a wasted field cluttering the db. You should've been able to find the existing field, given that it was on the form. All fields on the form are accessible as tokens.