Maybe the most frustrating thing for online marketers is trying to calculate ROI for campaigns. This is especially difficult when doing lead generation, because there’s often a disconnect between our efforts as marketers and what happens after the leads go through the sales department.
Sure, we all know how to set up conversion tracking, but things can go really haywire when you’ve got additional CRMs that your leads are going through. However, there’s one trick many marketers have started using that can help tie it all together: hidden form fields!
Hidden fields are fields on your lead forms that you’ve made invisible to the user. However, they can still be used behind the scenes in calculations and to pass on default values. You can use them to pass along campaign data. It makes campaign tracking much easier.
Since tracking is embedded into the lead form, campaign data will pass on to any CRM linked to the form. Then, you can pull back-end reports in your CRM that show what happened with the lead in sales and all that sweet campaign data as well.
This method is easier, more accurate, and more consistent than other methods of campaign tracking. For instance, manually tagging all of your URLs can get some of this data over.
However, you have to manually tag every URL, which we all know means there are going to be errors and/or oversights. Even if there aren’t, there are loads of opportunities to lose those UTMs in the URL, and for them to not carry over into your CRM.
By embedding the tracking into the lead form itself, there’s a much higher accuracy level. Formstack actually has a product add-on called Conversion Kit that includes UTM Tracking via hidden fields. Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like and the options:
After you’ve got this all set up, you’ll be able to tell where your revenue is coming from. That will help you make more informed optimizations, which will help you increase your revenue. Having the full picture of what your marketing budget is doing for you is the only way to be a successful marketing manager.
If you’re part of an agency, getting your clients to buy-in to this will finally let you prove your agency’s worth. There’ll be no more calls where the client says revenue is down when you’re showing increases in conversions. Getting these hidden form fields in will allow you to properly track your campaigns and prove ROI, which will allow you to focus on where the money, not just the conversions, are coming from.W
e all know that just because someone has “converted” doesn’t mean that’s where the money is. Conversion could be signing up for a trial, signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to the lowest plan, or just submitting a lead form and never actually becoming a paying customer.
To truly be able to run a successful marketing campaign that involves any kind of lead generation, you’ll have to be able to track your campaigns all the way through the sales process as well. Hidden form fields are one of the easiest and most accurate ways to do that!
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