If you use Salesforce Marketing Cloud/ExactTarget, you probably manage your lead and customer data with data extensions. To capture lead information, you have several options:
- Use Marketing Cloud Smart Capture forms
- Build your own HTML forms
- Use third-party form builders to quickly create custom forms
This quick tutorial will show you how to pass form submissions to a Marketing Cloud data extension.
Integrating Forms with Marketing Cloud Data Extensions
The video below demonstrates how you can submit to data extensions from the forms that you create with Digioh’s drag-and-drop form builder. Have a look at the video, or keep scrolling to read the instructions yourself.
Step 1: Create a new integration.
Step 2: Select “API form post.”
The post URL is based on your instance ID. You can tell by looking at your login URL.
For example, if your instance ID is s7, then the post URL is http://cl.s7.exct.net/DEManager.aspx (If it was s4 it would be http://cl.s4.exct.net/DEManager.aspx and if it was s1 it would be http://cl.exct.net/DEManager.aspx).
Step 3: Map your form fields to your SFMC data extension fields.
The following fields are always required for a post request to a data extension:
_deExternalKey (this will be the External Key from SFMC) _action (this will always be mapped to "add") _returnXML (this will always be mapped to "0") _successURL (this can be any URL, an example would be http://digioh.com/success) _errorURL (this can be any URL, an example would be http://digioh.com/error) _clientID (this will be the Client ID in your SFMC account) submit (this will always be "Submit") Subscriberkey (this is typically mapped to "[EMAIL]"
Step 4: Create and map your custom form fields to SFMC fields.
To collect custom data with your forms, you can create fields in SFMC, and then map those fields to your form in Digioh.
For example, you can create a FirstName field in SFMC, and then map that to [FIRST NAME] in Digioh. Digioh dynamically passes that data to your FirstName field. Digioh also automatically collects 20 analytics fields that you can capture in your SFMC data extensions, including fields for:
- City
- Region
- Country
- Postal Code
- Web Source
- Device
- Operating System
- Past Visits
- Referring URL
- Landing URL
For example, you can collect first-party data about user location using a custom field in SFMC that maps to Digioh’s dynamic [COUNTRY] field.
Note: if you add multiple custom fields, try to make sure that only the email field is required. Otherwise, if there are any issues obtaining a value for any of the dynamic fields (e.g. country), your form won’t submit and you will not collect any data.
Step 5: Add the SFMC integration to your web form.
In Digioh’s form editor, go to the Integrations tab, then select your new integration from the drop-down menu. Add the corresponding fields to your form, then drag and drop to customize the look and feel of your form. Digioh provides plenty of form & pop-up templates to get you started, or you can build your form from scratch.
If you’re concerned about GDPR compliance, Digioh can pass your data directly to SFMC in real-time, without storing data on our platform.
Build any pop-up for Salesforce Marketing Cloud with Digioh.
Digioh forms can also:
- integrate with your SFMC/ExactTarget lists.
- grow your text message marketing list with mobile-friendly SMS opt-in forms.
- capture more demos with embedded Calendly schedulers.
- pass browsed items and data from product recommendation quizzes to SFMC for personalized email content.
- trigger Journeys and shopping cart abandonment campaigns.
- upsert your data (to prevent duplication of data).
- pass data to Salesforce at every step of a multi-step form, even if visitors don’t submit the final step.
To learn how you can collect more first-party data with Digioh forms, read more about Digioh’s marketing cloud form builder here, and feel free to reach out with any questions (even if you don’t use Digioh)!