Using Form Reposts for Advanced Form Integration

Guest post from Victor Ho, Product Consultant. Victor and the product consulting team get involved when there are interesting business challenges to tackle, and creative configuration is needed.

In this post, Victor looks at an advanced option for integrating with web forms and still maintaining full tracking when you must process, and alter, the form data on your own servers prior to Eloqua tracking.

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We can’t emphasis enough the importance of integrating web forms with Eloqua.

The obvious reason is to collect explicit data from the visitor to create/update a contact record in Eloqua for future marketing purposes. In the mean time, triggering automated processes such as a confirmation email or adding to a nurturing program.

But more importantly, the form submission converts an “unknown” visitor on your website to a “known” visitor. This action allows Eloqua to tie all the online activities that we’ve been collecting to a contact record.

This in turns increases your visibility into the online activities data as a whole.

The goal here is to setup web forms where ever appropriate on your website to increase the population of known visitors.




Why Repost?

There are four types of front end forms:

1) Created and hosted by Eloqua
2) Created externally, hosted by Eloqua
3) Hosted externally, pointed to Eloqua
4) Hosted externally, reposted to Eloqua

In scenario 1 – 3, the conversion from an unknown to known visitor (In Eloqua language, this is called “profile association”) is done automatically because the Eloqua communicates directly with the visitor’s browser when he/she hits the “submit” button.

In scenario 4, this is typically done if data needs to be manipulated by a third party before entering the Eloqua database. Here are some examples:

A) you have a demo of your software and will need to generate a demo key that you then want to add into the form submit to Eloqua.

B) You are collecting sensitive data such as credit card information; your web server will repost only the necessary contact data to Eloqua for marketing purposes, omitting any sensitive data in the mix.

Writing a repost script to relay form data to a destination may sound like a very simple task for your IT team; but the most important piece of information in this form integration is the GUID value that resides in the Eloqua cookie within the visitor’s browser.

We can summarize the conversion process with this equation:

Email Address + Eloqua GUID = Known visitor




How?

You will need an IT or Web resource to assist you with executing this process.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to deploy a form repost process.

Eloqua Backend Configuration

1) Create a backend form in Eloqua to receive data.

By clicking on the “Integration Details” button, you will find all the necessary technical information you need for this process.

You will need to create all the necessary backend form fields as the receptor for each data point in the repost.

To facilitate testing in step (6), create the following 2 hidden fields:
elqCustomerGUID
elqCookieWrite

Frontend Web form Configuration

2) Ensure the 2 lines of Eloqua tracking Script are present on the web page
(elqCfg.js and elqImg.js).

The purpose is to drop the Eloqua cookie onto visitor’s browser.



3) Insert the 2 required hidden fields within the form tag of the form that you want to integrate with:

Place holder hidden field to store the GUID value retrieved from the Eloqua Cookie



Copy the “elqFormName” field from the “Form Integration Fields” section. The value of this field is based on the HTML Name of the Eloqua backend form.



4) Insert JavaScripts to retrieve GUID value that is stored in the Eloqua cookie.

This section of code must go after the 2 lines of Eloqua Tracking Scripts.

Purpose: This JavaScript function will execute on page load and store the GUID value retrieved into the “elqCustomerGUID” hidden form field.




You will find the above JavaScript in the “Forms Detail” area shown in (2).

The version illustrated above has been modified to utilize field “IDs” as target reference instead of using field name attribute.

Here is demo web page on how to successfully retrieve the GUID value stored in the Eloqua cookie via JavaScript.

http://launch.eloqua.com/content/GUID_Demo






On form submission your web server should receive the “elqCustomerGUID” value + “elqFormName” value, along with the rest of the form fields.

Important Note: Test thoroughly to ensure your web server is indeed receiving the elqCustomerGUID value.

5) Write Server Repost Script to post data to Eloqua

Destination: http://now.eloqua.com/e/f2.aspx

You may also use https://secure.eloqua.com/e/f2.aspx if you require a secured connection

Mandatory fields

Field Name: elqSiteID
value = "You will find the elqSiteID value in the Forms integration details area"

Field Name: elqCookieWrite
value = "0"

Field name= elqCustomerGUID
value = "GUID Value from cookie"


Note:
i) elqSiteID represents your Eloqua Instance. Value is static (e.g. 1234).

ii) elqCookieWrite = 0 indicates to Eloqua that this is a repost scenario. Eloqua will perform profile association with the GUID value submitted.

iii) Include the elqCustomerGUID field value that is submitted from the frontend along with the rest of the fields that you want to post to Eloqua


6) Final Step - Testing

Once your IT team has confirmed that the repost script has been deployed, proceed with a few test form submissions.

Inspect the form data in Eloqua to ensure that all necessary field values are present. The “elqCustomerGUID” value should be consistent. The elqCookieWrite value should always be 0.