Parsing URL components to populate lead fields

[Anonymous]

We are looking to get more details about our SEM leads onto the lead record within SFDC, and we want to parse portions of the referring URL (such as Adwords Campaign or Keyword) to populate the corresponding fields on the lead record.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to do this?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Jessica_Kao3]

You should definitely have a utm strategy in the links that you are creating for your SEM campaigns but more importantly, these should be pulled into your marketo through hidden utm fields on your forms. 

Create the standard utm fields in Marketo:

utm_source

utm_campaign

etc.

Place these as hidden fields onto the forms where the SEM traffic will be directed to.

Choose Autofill:  Get Value from URL Parameter.  Set Parameter name to utm_source or the corresponding field name.

Create programs and trigger campaigns to automatically add members into the correct program and how you want to group people.

(i.e. linked in, Google, Bing, etc)

Here's an article that also goes into more detail about UTM tracking. 

UTM Tracking & Marketo – Part Deux​

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Jessica. If we are not using Marketo landing pages for these ads, is there a way for us to do it?

[SanfordWhiteman]

If we are not using Marketo landing pages for these ads, is there a way for us to do it?

Yes, embedded Marketo forms also support hidden field AutoFill from URL params.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Sanford. The form is actually directly from our product, so we aren't able to add hidden fields easily. Is there any other way for us to get that information to parse in Marketo?

[SanfordWhiteman]

If you control the form code, you can def'ly add hidden fields, I should think. How is the form data synced to Marketo now?

Anyway, you can [a] use the Munchkin associateLead method or [b] use a background form post as described here. Both of these will update custom lead fields in Marketo. Though it would be strange if these are easier than enhancing your own form.

[Anonymous]

Haha in theory yes we should be able to, but unfortunately the code is owned by our Engineering team and they take a while to prioritize marketing-related requests we send over.

I'll look into the options you mentioned - thank you!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Hmm, yes.  Well, some code is going to have to be added to the page, since otherwise there's no way to transport the data to Marketo.

[Andy_Varshneya1]

I would recommend doing it based on cookie value, not URL parameters, and having some javascript written to create cookies based on the URL parameters and populate the hidden fields. This way it will work even if someone goes from Ad -> LP -> Another LP -> Form Fill.

If you don't go down this route, it will give that lead the default values in this situation instead of crediting the ad.