How to connect leads to form fills with different emails

[Anonymous]

This seems like an easy task but I couldn't find any documentation to guide me.

We've sent a group of cold leads an email with the goal of them clicking through and filling out a form for a demo request. This is not a public page so all visitors are already leads in our system. Some of the leads filled out the form with a different email address than we have so they show up as a new lead in Marketo. If all the leads are coming from my email shouldn't I be able to see which leads filled out the form and tie the two together?

The only possible solution I've come across is hoping the domains are the same for an ABM approach.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, because you didn't plan ahead for this , it's going to be very difficult to tie things back together.

The way to set up for this situation is to use a proxy field on the form instead of the Email Address. This will allow people to change their email addresses instead of upserting a new lead (you manage the change of address in a Flow step).

Now, you'll have mkt_tok-enized Visit Web Page activities and Filled Out Form activities on the same URL, so in theory you could merge the disparate leads. But you'd need to pull in a developer to make the connections via the API.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. This is a small test with only a few form fills so no damage done.

Can you link any product docs that speak to adding a proxy?

I found some on progressive profiling but it's not what you're describing. Configure Form Progressive Profiling - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's simple enough to not require a doc.

Create a custom field of Email type like 'User-supplied Email'. Add that to the form, not the system Email Address field. Then use a Data Value Changes trigger + Change Data Value step to push that value into the system field.

Using proxy fields is a good idea in general to stop leads from overwriting your more current data.