Please note: This article was edited by the talented Linda David.
This article will describe the individual pieces of the Progressive Profiling Cloud App, how to have it enabled for your Eloqua instance, and how to configure it. This document assumes that the reader is an E10 user, and is familiar with using landing pages.
It’s often very difficult to convince prospective buyers to spend any time filling out information in web forms, let alone lengthy complex web forms. Add to that the resistance that can be seen when prospects are asked to fill out information they have already provided previously, and you have a recipe for poor conversion rates. Luckily, there is a solution – progressive profiling. The concept is simple, only ask for small amounts of information at a time, and never ask for the same information more than once. Each time a buyer engages, you gain a little bit more insight into them, without ever putting a form in front of them that is more than a few fields in length. This builds the profile of your potential buyer which helps marketing for segmentation and scoring purposes and improves the quality of leads that sales receives.
As important as this approach is, it has historically been difficult to implement and requiring some complex javascript. Now, with the Cloud Components in Eloqua 10’s HTML 5 interface, this technique can be done quickly, simply, and powerfully. Let’s have a look at how it can be accomplished.
In order to use the Progressive Profiling App, you will need to be registered at cloudconnectors.eloqua.com.
What is the difference between Appcloud.eloqua.com and Cloudconnectors.eloqua.com?
1. How to Install the Cloud App
The Progressive Profiling Cloud App is already available for use in E10, but may need to be enabled. See here for more information.
2. Let's Go! Add the Cloud Component on a Landing Page
A Cloud Component is inserted into a landing page via drag and drop within the landing page editor.
First, start by dragging and dropping the progressive profiling component onto the design canvas for the landing page you’re creating. You’ll see a sample image render, and you can double click it to begin editing the rules for your progressive profiling component.
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With the editing interface popped open (you’ll need to have an account on cloudconnectors.eloqua.com to configure this, which are free to create), put in the credentials for your Eloqua instance, and click 'Go'.
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A list of the forms in your instance is presented - select the form you want to build the progressive profiling rules for. The component takes a master form with all the fields you would want on a contact (say 20 or 30 fields), and gradually presents just a few of those fields. When you set up the master form in Eloqua, be sure of two things:
- The fields are not required (or any progressive profiling forms that don’t have those fields will not work)
- The form updates the contact record with the data submitted in the form, only if new value is not blank
With the form selected, click 'Save Settings' at the bottom of the screen.
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3. What if We Have No Existing Profile? Handling the Unknowns
The Progressive Profiling Component automatically looks up a contact in Eloqua based on the cookie that is stored in their browser if that contact is known to Eloqua. However, there may be occasions where the visitor is not known to Eloqua - the "If contact is unknown" setting allows you to specify what action should be taken. There are two options available:
- Show Lookup Button: This will show a single-field form that will ask the visitor to enter their email address so that the contact record can be located within Eloqua.
- Show Form: This will show the set of fields defined in the first Progressive Profiling Rule (or up to the number of fields specified in 'Show a minimum number of fields').
If you select ‘Show Lookup Button’, there is additional configuration required:
- Lookup Header Text: The text that’s visible above the email lookup field – this contains instructions for the visitor
- Lookup Email Field Name: The label of the field to be used in the component (i.e. Please Enter Your Email Address)
- Lookup Button Text: The text on the submit button.
When an unknown visitor visits the page, they will see the lookup form, can key in their email address, and click on “Find Me”.
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This then (still entirely within the component) retrieves that Eloqua contact (if it exists) and displays the appropriate progressive / gated form. This acts like the short form element in our original way of building a two-part progressive profile with “short form” and “long form”.
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This, of course, can be fully configured with CSS to define the style.
4. Configure the Profiling Rules - What Visitors Will See
The next step is to configure the details of how you would like your progressive profiling to work and requires the configuration of the ‘Profiling Rules’. These are essentially building a series of “If the contact has a value in contact field A (or doesn't have a value), then present fields X, Y, Z” rules. The rules are evaluated from top to bottom. When a rule criteria is met, only those fields in the rule are displayed on the form. If you choose to show a minimum number of fields, then more rules are evaluated (and more fields are shown) until the minimum number of fields is reached. You can reorder the rules, or add as many as you would like.
In order to do this, simply click on ‘Build Rules’ and another window pops up:
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Before walking through the rule configuration, there are a few things to highlight:
- Show Minimum Fields: If, for example, you want at least 3 fields displayed, then check the box and enter '3'. If you have 5 rules with 1 field each, then the rules will be processed until three fields are shown. Otherwise, your visitor would be presented with one field per visit.
- Identity field: This ensures that a field used to identify the individual is submitted with the form data, if the visitor is known by your Eloqua database. This field is hidden and prepopulated on all rules if not otherwise present. Click 'Options' to select which field will serve as your identity field (Email Address is recommended).
- 'CSS Styles' button: This allows you to set the style definitions for the Progressive Profiling form:
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The first contact field that the component checks is set to ‘Email Address’, as this will identify if the contact exists in the Eloqua database. Click on "Add Rule" to add another contact field to evaluate. For each contact field selected, you can specify the criteria the contact field should meet - the most common rule is “data in this field Doesn't Exist”, in which case you will generally request that information. However, you have a wide variety of other rules to look at including “Does Exist”, “Is In List (of values)”, and “Is Not In List”.
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If you choose any of the List options (“in” or “not in”), you can then click the Edit List button to bring up an edit window for a list of values in the list to be considered. You might use this, for example, to show certain fields if a person is known to be in certain industries, or from certain geographies.
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When a rule is met, you can then specify what field(s) to display. In the simplest case, this will be something like “if City does not exist, show City as a form field”, but can be whatever rules you need. When creating this set of fields to display, you can specify what type of field you'd like to show, how to show it, as well as whether it should be a mandatory field.
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The standard form field types are available, including Text, Select, Radio, Checkbox, and Hidden.
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The Edit button (pencil icon) opens a dialog box where you specify whether to pre-populate the field, and what contact field to pre-populate it from.
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For the Field Types 'Select', 'Multi-Select', and 'Radio Buttons', you can choose from List Values you had previously created in the Cloud Component. When you create a new select list, you can input values OR import values from an existing select list in your Eloqua database. To create a new select list, click the 'New' button. A new browser window opens.
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First, enter a name for your new list, then click 'Save'. You can now click 'Show Eloqua Lists' to populate the drop-down with all select lists in your Eloqua database. Select the list, then click 'Import Values' to bring the values into the Cloud Component. Once the values are brought in, they can be modified, ie. you may want to remove some option values, then click 'Save' again.
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5. What Happens if the Visitor Has All of the Data (the Field Display Rules are met)?
With all the rules set up, you then can specify what you want to have happen when a visitor to the page already has all the data that is being looked for. If no rules are met, you can select from the following:
- Show Content: Show a static piece of content - in which case you will be asked for the content (this can be HTML)
- Redirect to URL: Redirect the visitor to a specific URL - in which case you will be asked for the URL
- Submit Form Automatically: This will submit the form automatically and execute the form processing steps
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6. Dynamic Form Data: Grabbing Data From Query Strings etc...
It is possible for the component to read values that are passed in via query string parameters from the inbound link. To configure, click "Dynamic Fields".
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This opens a screen where you can set a form field to a certain value based on the value in the query string parameter. This allows you to alter values that are submitted into the Eloqua form based on the link that was clicked on, such as redirecting the visitor to a specific URL based on a doc value.
First, select the form field to be populated with the dynamic value, then indicate what the query string parameter will be.
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Using the page redirect example, you can use the same landing page (that contains the progressive profiling component) with an additional query string appended to the URL that will determine which page visitors are directed to after the form is submitted, ie. we have these three URLs:
- Document 1: http://landing.page.com/profiling?doc=1
- Document 2: http://landing.page.com/profiling?doc=2
- Document 3: http://landing.page.com/profiling?doc=3
You then simply configure the dynamic fields section to translate the values of 1, 2 or 3 to another URL so that this value is posted to a form field. All that you would need to now do is configure your Eloqua form processing step 'Redirect to Web Page' to use the form field ‘Redirect to URL’ to be able to send any submitters of the form through to these end locations as required.
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If you have a long list of values, you can prepare this in advance and upload to an Eloqua picklist, then use the picklist to populate the list of Input Values and Values (remember to click "Import Values" after you select the list). You can configure many dynamic fields, each with multiple values allowed to provide you with lots of flexibility on the outcomes available. Note that it is not necessary to have a form field in Eloqua for your query string parameter in order for this to work.
7. Finishing Things Off
There are a couple final pieces you are able to configure:
- Set constant values for form fields using the ‘Static Form Data’ field, such as ‘Asset=123&Source=Progressive’. Ensure that your query string parameters match the html form field name on your form.
- Set the submit button text.
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8. Taking it For a Spin - Let's Test it
Following these same simple procedures, you can build as simple or as robust of a progressive profiling system you want.
With that set up, Save the component, return to the landing page Editor, and preview your page. You can see that the first time you visit, it does not know who you are, so it requests your email address.
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If you type that in, and hit submit, it will send this to a form that updates your contact record and passes you back again to the same page (for example purposes).
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Now, knowing your email address, it passes to the next rule in the chain and asks for your City (with a hidden, prepopulated field for email address).
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Congrats - you're all done! Want to learn more? Take the Eloqua 10: Managing Social Media (Web-Based Training) and Best Practices: Managing Social Media Classes available in the Eloqua University (pass required).
Embedding the Progressive Profiling Component on non-Eloqua hosted pages
Your Progressive Profiling Component can now be embedded on an externally hosted page, ie. your corporate website, via an iframe. Click "Embed".
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Set the dimensions for your Component, then copy the iframe code provided & paste onto the page you want it displayed on.
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