How to create and edit forms

Now that you’re familiar with how forms work, let’s begin the process of creating one. In our example, we’ll be showing you how to create a default program where your form will be built, use best practices to keep programs neatly organized in your Marketo instance through creating an organized folder structure, add fields and format their properties and behaviors in building a form, use form themes and modify settings while designing your form. Learn where to acquire your form embed code and how to clone, delete or move a form.

First, let’s log into your Marketo account and navigate to marketing activities.

We’ll start by creating the program where your form will be housed. We’ve already created a folder to hold all of our marketing initiatives for the current year. So we’ll right click on the same folder and select new program.

The campaign folder should be the same as the one we just right clicked, but a different folder can be chosen here if needed. Name, for this example, we’ll name the program, website downloads. For best practices, make sure all your naming conventions make sense to you, your company and to anyone else using your Marketo instance. For program type, choose default. The default program type is for programs that are not event related, nurture or email.

For channel, select web content or content in your list of channels. This channel is the best choice for downloadable content, such as eBooks, whitepapers and videos. And for the description field, we’ll add all forms and downloads and click create.

With our program created, we’ll add a few folders. Folders keep all of the elements of your program in one place, so your Marketo workspace stays organized. We’ve already created a folder to hold all of our marketing initiatives for the current year, so we’re now creating sub folders to hold different subsets of similar items. Select the website downloads program we just created. Right click and choose new folder. Give it a name. For this example, we’ll name this folder assets. We’ll create one more folder by right clicking the website downloads program, choosing new folder and this time, name it forms. Now drag the forms folder into the assets folder.

With our form folder structure in place, let’s build a form. Right click the website downloads program and select new local asset. In the new local asset gallery window, select form.

The default program should be the same as the one we just created, but we can choose a different program here if needed. For name, we’ll title this whitepaper form. Check the check box for open in editor and click create. With the form asset created, let’s discuss form fields and settings. There are three default form fields. First name, last name and email address. To add a new field, click the plus sign in the top right corner. In this example, we’ll create a couple of new fields, one for industry and one for company name.

When a field is added, you can select your field from a dropdown menu where you will see all your standard out-of-the-box fields, fields from your CRM, as well as any custom fields you’ve created within Marketo. Fields can be added as a field set whose purpose is to group multiple fields together, for example, if you have an address field including country, city, and state, you can drag these fields into a field set so that you can use rules to show or hide blocks of fields depending on the data entered by the visitor. Fields can also be added as rich text where content can be added via a rich text editor, like instructions, additional information in between fields, when adding a graphic like a horizontal line or when using images and hyperlinks. Each field in a form has its own set of properties and behaviors. In property settings, we start with the field label. The text entered here is what people will see when they view your form. For example, this could be changed to a language or phrasing targeted to your audience, something different than the default. Below the field label is the field name, which is only visible to you. This is also known as the API name. Field type. This dropdown provides several field types available to help collect data when someone fills out a form. Some examples include check boxes where people can select one or multiple interest options, date, where people specify a date including a month and a day, radio buttons, where people choose just one from a predefined set of options, telephone, where people provide a local or international phone number and text, a field used for general questions where people provide typed responses. Label and field width. The up and down arrows can be used to increase or decrease the width of these fields. Instructions and hint text. These two properties allow the ability to guide people on how to fill out the field. The difference in the two is the instructions property appears as tool tip popup text when hovered, whereas the hint text appears inside the field and disappears as someone types into the field. Default value sets the value for the system in the event a value is not entered during the form submission process. For example, you could set the default value for your first name tag to friend. So when you use this data field in emails or on landing pages, people whose first names were not entered in the field and database, will default to something like hello friend. Validation message. This is the error message you would get if you say, for example, entered a bogus email that doesn’t have an at symbol in it. There are standard messages such as enter a valid message or this field is required. Knowledge of JavaScript is required to customize these messages. Now we’ll go over field behaviors. When fields aren’t required, people tend to fill out the ones they deem necessary to them, but sometimes you’ll want to make sure you collect data from people when they fill out your form by making the field required. For visibility rules, you can set the field to appear or be hidden based on a condition you build around it. When a web visitor is known, Marketo forms will pre-fill fields with their information. This feature can be enabled or disabled here, as well as on the landing page itself. Just as fields can be added, they can also be deleted. To delete a field, click to select it, then click delete at the top right of the properties section. Fields can also be reordered throughout the form by clicking to select the field then dragging it up or down to relocate it.

Once the form structure has been built, we can move on to designing it using form themes, custom CSS and by modifying settings. The first step in designing a form is to select a form theme. Click form settings to move to the next step. Here there are seven themes to choose from, simple, inset, glow, round, dark, shadow and plain. After making a selection, we’ll click next.

The second step is to modify the settings of the form. Form language. Select the form language on standard fields from the dropdown. Form locale. Select the preferred form locale from the dropdown. Progressive profiling. This option allows users to have a form with many fields, but display them a few at a time. This progressively displays a different set of fields upon each return visit to a landing page using this progressive profiling form.

Label position. Assign a position for the field labels either above or left of the field. Font family and size. Choose a typeface and size that works with your branding and if they are a known visitor, you can choose if they will see the form or any custom HTML. In the social form fill section, you can choose to have Marketo capture data from someone when they authorize their social network to pre-fill a Marketo form. Also, you may want something to happen after people fill out your form, like being directed to a thank you or landing page or an external URL. Use the dropdown here to designate what people will see once they fill out your form. Once all form settings, design and modifications have taken place, click next to move to the finish step. Click preview draft to view the form you’ve created. Then click edit draft to go back. Once you’re satisfied with the form content, click approve and close to make your form live.

Now that you’ve created your form, you have the option to either add it to a Marketo hosted landing page or embed the form code directly onto your company’s webpages. With your form selected, click the form actions dropdown and select embed code where you’ll copy and paste the code into your site. Or you can add it to a Marketo hosted landing page by adding it as you would any other element. In the form actions menu, you also have the options to clone a form if you want an exact replica, delete a form if you no longer need it or move a form to another folder. Now you have a working form built. When someone fills out your form, you can use the information provided in your database for setting up gated content, targeting your audience and many other marketing initiatives. -