Capturing Lead Source Codes in your Forms

Understanding where leads come from is critical in evaluating marketing efforts. Often this is as simple as evaluating a Query String that represents a source code for the web visitor as they submit a form on a landing page.


Typically, this has been done by marketers with javascript, and although that remains possible, it can also be done quickly and simply through the Eloqua application.


Form fields in Eloqua forms are usually used to grab data from the fields that a web visitor fills out on the landing page form, but they can equally be used to grab data from the web visitor's profile when the form is submitted.


To do this, create a new form field, but use the "New Profile Field" option. You will then be pulling information in directly from the web visitor's profile.

In advance of this, of course, you will have set up the web visitor's profile to track the query strings that reference the lead source code. In our case, we have a social media tracking code that is used in various social media efforts, that is in the URLs as "sc=****".


In the visitor profile, we'll add a field that is "Most Recent Choice" of the social media tracking code.


When we create our form field based on this, the most recent social media referral will be submitted in the web form just as if it was data that the user had typed in themselves. The data is then available to form processing steps, reporting, or conditional rules.


To set it up, select the profile field we just discussed as the source in the new field on the form. Nothing else is needed, and no configuration needs to be done with the web form. As the form is submitted to Eloqua, the value in the visitor's profile will be automatically brought in.


This technique is useful in bringing various web activity information into your form submits. Most recent search queries, most recent area of the website visited (based on content tags), most recent refering site, or even raw information such as total number of visits or total pages can all be brought into the form and used for some interesting marketing options.