Learn about creating and editing forms

Forms can be a bit tricky for marketers. Your instinct is to collect as much information as possible but that isn’t always the best strategy. Ask for too much information and the visitor may decide not to fill out the form at all. All too often, we see online forms that ask for more information than what someone might be willing to give in exchange for what is being offered. What is a piece of content worth? If we think of personal information as a type of currency, then we need to determine what a visitor is willing to pay to receive the content. What we do know is that the less we charge for content, the more likely a visitor will be to access it. To prove this point, Marketo decided to perform an A/B test of short forms versus long forms. We tested three form lengths, one with five fields, one with seven and one with nine. The shortest form asked for name, work email, job function, and company. The medium size form also asks for number of employees in industry. The longest form asked for all of this information plus work phone number and which CRM system they used. The results? The shortest form performed significantly better than the longer forms.

A form is a set of fields that users fill out in order to obtain some kind of content or offer that they are interested in, like an ebook, a white paper, an on-demand webinar or a free trial.

Form fields are used to capture lead data that can be used to target leads with the goal of converting them into customers. Even though the instinct is to collect as much data as possible at first, it’s best to collect it slowly and build the lead’s profile over time. The amount of information you try to capture depends on the value of the content you’re offering. If you’re offering something simple, like a white paper, you should collect only minimal information such as name, email, and company. If you’re offering something of higher value, like a demo or a free trial, then you can collect a bit more information. It’s all relative to the value of what you’re offering. Requiring a form in order to view content is called gating content. You’ll need to decide which content to gate and which to give away for free, meaning the user doesn’t have to fill out anything in order to view it. People can be hesitant to gate content, but when used properly, it can be an effective way to gather lead data. Don’t gate everything though, you should allow some content for free and gate only your premium or high demand content.

Progressive profiling is a feature in Marketo that makes it easy to build a leads profile over time. Forms are dynamically updated to reflect information that may still be missing for that lead. You tell Marketo how many fields to present each time a lead completes a form, then Marketo presents the fields in the order you created them, offering up a set number each time a lead wants to access additional gated content. Using progressive profiling, marketers are able to reduce the initial number of form fields required for the visitor to receive an asset, which improves conversion for landing pages.

There are several things you should consider before you start building forms in Marketo. Determine how many forms you need. It may be possible to use only four master forms. One for accessing downloadable content, one for accessing premium webpages, one for viewing videos and one for registering for things like webinars. Depending on the number of forms you need, decide whether to create the forms locally, meaning they are attached to one specific marketing program, or if they should be global, where they are intended to be used in any marketing program. If you ever need to change a field in a form, it’s much easier to update four master forms used globally versus changing multiple forms spread across all of your marketing programs. Global forms also make progressive profiling much easier to implement. You’ll also need to determine how many fields to use. Consider using shorter forms, since they are proven to be better for conversions, along with progressive profiling, to gather lead information over time. Consider whether to pre-fill form fields, so that basic information, such as name and email are pre-filled. But other information, such as job title and size of the organization, are not. This way someone only needs to add two fields, then submit the form. You can also use social form fill with data from Facebook or Twitter. Plan what follow up page or pages are displayed after someone submits a form. Does everyone get the same page or is this dynamic and based on their data? For example, someone in the healthcare industry might see a different follow up page than someone in the tech industry would after submitting a form. Finally, consider whether to bypass a form entirely if you have all the information you need. This way, when a known person visits your landing page, rather than seeing a form, they can just access the content directly. Now that we know how and why to use forms, let’s look at how to build one in Marketo. -