Managing web forms with Dynamics 365 Marketing

Digital marketing platforms typically focus on email marketing or social media marketing, while avoiding other important digital marketing aspects like landing pages, forms, and event management, Dynamics 365 Marketing differentiates itself by housing all of the features above in one place and integrating with the powerful contact and account management capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales (Dynamics CRM.) For marketing forms specifically, the true benefit lies in embedding marketing forms on external websites and collecting contact information that can be used in email campaigns or tracked as leads in Dynamics 365 Sales. In this blog we’ll cover how digital marketers can utilize marketing forms in Dynamics 365 Marketing to collect contact info and manage it effectively.

Building marketing forms

Like all digital marketing content in Dynamics 365 Marketing, marketing forms can be built with the easy-to-use, drag-and-drop content designer. Any fields available on the contact or lead record in Dynamics 365 can be added to the form. When the form is submitted, the field values automatically apply to the contact or lead field in Dynamics 365. Marketing forms can also be stylized using design elements like images, dividers, and custom colors. If advanced stylization is required, Dynamics 365 Marketing users can dive into the HTML of the form to update the look and feel at a granular level.

While there are multiple types of forms, the most common is landing page form. These forms are meant to collect contact information and create lead or contact records in Dynamics 365. Users have full control over what record is created meaning they can choose whether form submission create a lead record, create/update existing contact records, or both. Other form types include event registration forms, forward to a friend (specific to email campaigns), and subscription centers. With subscription center forms, contacts stored in Dynamics 365 can update their subscription list preferences at will.

Embedding forms on external sites

When a form is built and marked for go-live, users can generate javascript code to embed the form on external websites. In order to host a form, a domain record must be created in Dynamics 365 Marketing and marked for form hosting. For more info, check out Microsoft’s step-by-step documentation. If the domain is already in Dynamics 365, it can be accessed by the form in the form hosting tab of the form. Click New Form page to create the record and generate the javascript. When creating the form page record, additional details can be added including a customized confirmation message when the form is submitted, error message if the submission fails, and a redirect URL. After the form page is saved, a javascript code will be generated. Users can copy this code and paste it onto the external web page.

Managing form submission data

Collecting form submissions is important, but ensuring visibility into submission metrics and individual field values can provide necessary feedback to digital marketers. Successful form submissions of Dynamics 365 Marketing forms can be viewed on the form record under the insights tab. Of course, if a form is successfully submitted, submissions can be viewed as a new lead or contact record depending on form settings. The insights tab also tracks all visits to the form giving marketers insight into the number of people that are navigating to the form, but not completing a submission. The submissions tab will either track only failed submissions or all submissions depending on the Store form submission field in the summary tab. By default, the submissions tab only tracks failed submissions. From this tab, users can view why a form submission failed and fix the issue so it doesn’t happen again. Any failed submissions can be resubmitted using the resubmit form submission button.