Pardot is a new kid on the block. So, in most cases, Pardot is implemented after initial business set up. Not surprisingly, there was life before Pardot. So, organizations have existing pre-Pardot era forms in their orgs that trigger Sales (Business) processes, Web-to-Lead (Salesforce) and Online Purchases (Online store). Once Pardot is implemented, a decision needs to be made about how to manage pre-Pardot era forms. But, before we proceed, if you are unfamiliar with Pardot Forms then, please visit my previous blogs. In these blogs, I will discuss how to create a form in Pardot How to create a Form that prospects actually want to fill out and I explain how to use Progressive profiling to streamline the Pardot Form process.
In this blog, we will focus on the following: What is a Pardot Form Handler?; And, when, where and why is it used?
After implementing Pardot, you have two options to manage existing (pre-Pardot era) forms:
- Completely migrate pre-Pardot era forms into Pardot Hosted Form.
- Use Form handlers to pass prospects data in Pardot.
Let us take a closer look at the second option mentioned above – the use of existing form to pass the data to third-party applications. Under the second option, you may want to consider using a server-side post instead of migrating pre-Pardot era forms to Pardot. A server-side post occurs after the data has been captured by your existing form and posts the captured data onwards to a Pardot Form Handler. By using this mechanism, you can keep using your existing business processes intact without the need to migrate pre-Pardot era forms into Pardot.
To setup the second option, you have to create a Form Handler in Pardot to receive the fields that will be passed through your existing web form. Once the data is successfully passed to Pardot Form Handle, the prospects are tracked by Pardot in the similar fashion as if the information has been submitted directly through Pardot Hosted Form.
Whether you use Form or Form Handlers, Prospects will be tracked by Pardot is the same manner; unless and until, Prospects delete the browser cookie or enable Do Not Track feature in browsers feature. Before we look into a business scenario, let us review the difference between Forms and Form Handlers by reading this article How to create a Form that prospects actually want to fill out.
Now we have two scenarios as displayed in the preceding screenshot: Read the rest of this entry!
