Lead source codes - capturing with Javascript

In a recent post, we talked about using form profile fields to capture the most recent lead source code, as seen in the URL's query string, into a form. If, however, you want to manipulate the lead source prior to placing it in the form, or in any way work with the data, you may wish to use javascript directly.

This is a slightly more technical route, but once you are comfortable working with the javascript behind the form, many options become possible in your marketing efforts.

The javascript file here has the code that you see to the left. Essentially, the script looks for query strings in the URL of your page. In this case, we are looking for a query string called "c", so it will appear as "&c=****" where **** is the lead source code we are looking to track.

The script then puts that value in the "Campaign_ID" field (likely a hidden field) within your web form. The web form in this example is called "WhitepaperForm_data". To configure this for your web form, just add the javascript into the page with your web form, and configure the form name, form field, and query string, and you will have the query string value automatically populate your form field.

This technique is a very useful one to know, as it can be extended to do all sorts of interesting things with your web forms, and the content on your pages, based on the values passed in in a query string.

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.

Most Recent Campaigns as Source of Insight

I wrote recently about setting up Online Media referrer campaigns to track where your visitors are coming from. It's a simple but powerful technique in Eloqua to give you better insight into what sites are driving traffic your way.


This is equally valuable though, when looked at from the other direction. For each visitor on your website, you can see what the most recent referral campaign was that drove them to your site. With the tracking already set up, all we have to do is add that as a field to their visitor profile view.


Under the web profiling area, edit the profile view you want to show the most recent referrer campaign. Under profile fields, you should see an option for "most recent marketing campaign". Add that field to the appropriate spot in your profile view. You will also see similar fields for most recent search query, most recent channel, etc. All of these can be used in a similar manner, and can provide some very interesting insight into online media sources, blogs, and even Twitter.


With that in place, now when you use that Profile View for your reports, you will have columns that show the most recent online referral campaigns that drove each visitor to your site. Presenting this information in your visitor reports, especially those going out to your sales team can provide very important information as part of the prospect's digital body language.

Tweet This - A Creatively Social Addition to your Marketing

It's very easy to make it quick and simple for your marketing audience to share things that they find interesting on Twitter, which exposes those marketing assets to a new audience. Although services like Twitter make sharing things discovered online quite simple to start with, we found that by making it even easier, we saw a lot more Tweets from people who found the content interesting enough to share with their friends and colleagues.

In a recent marketing campaign we were sharing a whitepaper called "The Springboard Effect" that talks about 5 strategies to help you emerge stronger after the recession (http://success.eloqua.com/ if you're interested), Eloqua's own marketing team used this approach with great success.

On the Hypersite landing page for the whitepaper, there was a simple one line question - "Have a Twitter account? Tweet about this whitepaper!". That was linked to the following URL (note that replacing spaces with the + sign can make things work much smoother):

"http://twitter.com/home?status=I+just+got+a+whitepaper+from+Eloqua+with+marketing+strategies+that+help+you+emerge+stronger+after+a+recession.+Get+it+-+http://bit.ly/P66Zy"

This link puts the person into Twitter, and pre-populates their Tweet with a quick comment on the whitepaper, and a URL that has already been shortened to make it fit into 140 characters. You can change the "status=" field to talk about your marketing asset in a way that would be appropriate for someone who found it interesting to share it on Twitter.

This is a simple technique to add to any marketing asset that might be something that your audience is interested in sharing. By simplifying the process to one click, and by reminding the audience to think about Tweeting, you can quickly see interesting content making its way to a larger audience than you first engaged with.

One thing to think about when doing this, is that you also have an opportunity to add a lead source code to the link that is shortened. For example if http://bit.ly/P66Zy leads users to http://success.eloqua.com/?elqPURLPage=2220&sc=TweetThisLink235 rather than just http://success.eloqua.com/?elqPURLPage=2220 you can easily track the effectiveness of this effort.

Of course this post would not be complete without a link to Tweet about this post.

Marketing Source Codes and Display Maps

One of the challenges with setting up source codes for tracking interest that comes from a variety of sources is that you end up reporting on the "code", which is often not intuitive to the reader.

To make this a lot easier, within Eloqua, you can set up Display Lookups to allow to to track the codes in their raw form, while displaying a more intuitive, readable source to the person reading your reports.

In the Web Profiling -> Query Strings tab, when you are setting up a query string to be tracked, at the bottom of the page, there is a line for Display Maps. A Display Map is a very simple thing - it takes a list of your raw "codes", what shows up in the actual query string, and it maps them into something more friendly to display.

By clicking "New", you can create a Display Map that fits the codes you are using. If the code does not exist in the Display Map, you will just see the original code rather than the mapped value, so there's no issue with a less-than-perfect mapping.

Once you have the codes and values mapped, you are all set. From here, report on your query strings, the way you normally would, and the values that are presented will come from your Display Map rather than the raw codes. A much more presentable way to show the data.

For example, here is the basic Query String Values report, and you can see that it now shows the values rather than the original codes.