How to capture information from forms without creating new Lead fields

[Beth_Zimmerman]

Hi there,

We'd like to create a landing page with form to send to several hundred leads to capture information that we do not intend to sync with their lead/contact record in Salesforce. This is for a one-time only campaign to find out who is interested in a particular offer, and have them share why they believe this offer would benefit them.

We have no need to have their replies captured in Salesforce - just in Marketo - and would need a report to track replies and follow up with only those interested to move forward. A few questions:

• Form fields seem to only relate to existing fields in our Salesforce instance, but we don't want to create special fields in Salesforce just to sync with this form; how do we get around this?
• Is there a way to get notifications of replies? Report of people who fill out the form with their responses, so that we can follow up?

Any help most appreciated!

Thank you,

beth

[Anonymous]

I believe to address your first need, you can create a new field in Marketo and in the Field Setting (in the admin console), you'll be able to delineate whether or not you want that field to sync with SFDC. I would recommend you create the field in the Lead Info tab to make sure it's separate from SFDC as well.

As to the notifications, you can build a Smart Campaign that triggers off "Fills out Form". You can create a notification email asset in your program as well and your flow step would be "Send Alert" and you'd select your notification email and include who you wanted that notification to be sent to. Hope that helps!

[Alex_Stanton1]

Hi Beth,

To clarify the question about creating new fields:

• If you want a field in SFDC and in Marketo you need to create it in SFDC ad it will sync to Marketo by itself, as long as it is visible. SFDC Sync: Field Sync - Marketo Docs - Product Docs . If the field is on both lead and contact, it needs to be mapped in SFDC as well. If it does not sync to Marketo, it needs to be made visible: Add an Existing Salesforce Field to the Marketo Sync - Marketo Docs - Product Docs
• If you do not want the field in SFDC, you create it in Marketo only. Create a Custom Field in Marketo - Marketo Docs - Product Docs 
• If you created a field in Marketo and you later decide that you want it in SFDC as well, you need to contact Support to see if they can merge the fields. I have occasionally been able to do it but it is a rather complicated business and it involves loss of data, so avoid as much as possible.

[Anonymous]

To piggy back on Alex, you may want to name the Marketo only fields something generic. If the fields are only intended for a one-time use, you will not be able to delete them once the initiative is over, you can only hide them. If the information captured in the field is not needed past the scope of the initiative, you can name the fields something generic like "Marketo Only Field 1" so that you can NULL the values out after and use the field for another project.

[Alex_Stanton1]

Briliant idea!

[SanfordWhiteman]

In fact, if you want to get really fancy, the form fields do not have to exist at all: you can query the activity log and see the values in either case.

However, it seems like in this situation saving the values from the last form fillout to the lead record is harmless.  If you're using generic fields like Jeff suggests (a great idea if you're going to be reusing these) I recommend prefixing the value for easier identification later.

  form.setValues({ GenericValue: 'Free Degreasing Offer:' + form.getValues().GenericValue });

[Justin_Norris1]

Beth Zimmerman​

Thinking a bit outside the box...if these leads are already in your database and you are only aiming to track their offer interest + a free-text response, I think you could do this without creating any new fields at all specific to this purpose.

First of all, you could track product interest simply from an email click. Set up your email to include a CTA that says "click here if you are interested in offer x". If there are multiple offers you could include separate CTAs for each offer.

Now you have a "clicked link in email" activity that you can use to filter in smart lists and to trigger alerts.

Secondly, you can take them to a Marketo landing page and pre-fill the email address and then have a single field for their open-text feedback (why they believe the offer would benefit them).

For this field, you would ideally want the information to end up in the default "Person Notes" field which maps to the "Description" field on the Lead in SFDC.

However, to make this field contain the complete history of any comments they have submitted via forms you would not want to include that field itself in the form. Instead, create a separate Marketo-only field called something like "Latest Comments". Then you should have a global smart campaign to look for changes to the "Latest Comments" field and add them to the default "Person Notes" field (that maps to the Lead and Contact record in SFDC) using token concatenation:

Change Data Value - Person Notes =  {{lead.Latest Comments}} | {{lead.Person Notes}}

This field and that campaign would serve you for any forms across your instance that includes a "comments" field.

Now you may not want the information in SFDC at all even inside an existing field (in which case, create a separate Marketo-only field just for that purpose). But just thought I'd suggest this as a way to not add any fields to your schema at all.

[Beth_Zimmerman]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for the thorough and 'out of the box' suggestions; much appreciated.

In this case, we want people (who are all existing leads in our SFDC) to

affirm their interest for a particular offer and tell us why they should be

chosen for the offer. From there, these will be the folks who we will

continue to communicate with throughout the campaign via some sort of smart

list that filters for their reply.

In view of all that you shared, it still seems that we would need a

dedicated field in SFDC that is exclusive to this purpose, since we don't

want to risk overwriting any information in the SFDC description fields

that may already be there.

Is this correct?

best,

beth

Beth Zimmerman | founder + executive director

Pets for Patriots, Inc. <http://www.petsforpatriots.org>

218 E Park Ave Suite 543 | Long Beach NY 11561

877-4-PETCADET (877-473-8223)

516-670-8446 (direct)

866-265-4603 (fax)

Web <http://www.petsforpatriots.org> | Twitter

<http://www.twitter.com/petsforpatriots> | Facebook

<http://www.facebook.com/petsforpatriots> | YouTube

<http://www.youtube.com/petsforpatriots> | G+

<http://google.com/+PetsforpatriotsOrg> | Instagram

<http://www.instagram.com/petsforpatriots> | Pinterest

<http://www.pinterest.com/petsforpatriots> | How we got started

<http://blog.petsforpatriots.org/for-the-love-of-veterans-and-shelter-pets/>

This email is from Pets for Patriots, Inc. and may contain information that

is confidential or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, do

not read, copy or distribute the email or any attachments. Instead,

please notify the sender and delete the email and any attachments. Thank

you.

On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 8:05 PM, Justin Norris <marketingnation@marketo.com>