The Leadfeeder Tracker can not only identify companies visiting your website, it can also track the form submissions on your website. This helps in identifying site visitors who have shown direct interest in your business by submitting a form on your website.
As well as helping you identify the people visiting your website, our form tracking feature also automatically enriches past and future visits from that same visitor. This gives you detailed insights into the behavior of visitors who have submitted forms on your website.
Quick Links:
Form Tracking Explained in 3 Easy Steps
If the Leadfeeder tracking script is installed correctly on your website and the form tracking feature is switched on and configured in your Dealfront account, the tracking script will start recording form submissions.
A visitor lands on your website, fills out a form and clicks the 'submit' button, or equivalent, to attempt sending this data to you.
Regardless of server-side success (meaning if the form data is successfully recorded at your end), that visitor's captured form inputs are attached to their visit details in the Leadfeeder Activity section. So long as the 'submit' button is clicked, Leadfeeder will recorded the input details, even if the user didn't fill out all the required fields for a successful website submission.
As an additional bonus, we will attempt to associate the newly revealed identity of a visitor with all the events we have for that visitor in the past 180 days. This is done via the Leadfeeder cookie stored on that user's device. If the local storage was cleared in the past we won't be able to associate the identity and backfill any previous data.
How Form Tracking Works in Detail
Whenever a user clicks on a form Submit button on your website, a form fill is recorded in Leadfeeder. If your website form has validation implemented on the client or server side that prevents the submission going through successfully, the tracker will still record a submission, since a button was clicked.
📌 Pro tip: You can use this behavior to your benefit, by identifying companies who “almost” filled in forms but ultimately couldn’t and reaching out to them.
Leadfeeder tries to validate the information that is being submitted by the visitor. If the submission contains an invalid email, we will identify the form submission behavior, but since it’s an invalid email address, we can not associate it with an identified person.
All the forms are automatically tracked by default. To exclude specific forms from tracking, you'll need to create Exclusion rules.
When we identify a form submission, we display a 'Form submitted' event in the Activity timeline for that company or person.
Please note: We don't distinguish between a successful or unsuccessful form fill as we can't read the activity on your server side - we mark all recorded fills as 'Form Submitted'.
The identified people will show up in the activity timeline of each identified company, and also in the People tab.
To quickly see only those who have filled out a form you can create a custom feed using the “Form fill” filter.
Enable Form Tracking
Before you can begin using form tracking, a user with full company access rights will need to enable this feature in your Dealfront settings.
Either follow this link, or navigate to Settings > Company > Website Tracker > Form tracking settings.
To start form tracking, toggle the option to the 'on' position.
Data Collection Preference
Once you choose to start tracking forms, the next step is to define your data collection preference.
The Data collection preference option allows you to define which data you’d like to collect through the Leadfeeder Tracker. It can be set to any of the following:
Data collection disabled: Visitors who fill forms on your website will not be identified. To track the past/future visits of people who filled a form, update data collection preference to Configured fields only or All input fields.
The Leadfeeder Tracker will not collect any data submitted by visitors in the form submissions, but it will collect the form submission behaviour on your website, which will be shown in the form of a 'Form submitted' event.
This means that the submitted email addresses, names or other information input into the form will not be collected, therefore Leadfeeder will not identify the people who submitted the forms.
You can still create a custom feed to filter for form fills.
Configured fields only: Use configured fields to identify people who filled the forms. This helps you identify future visits of the same person and also use the information across Dealfront.
The tracker will only collect the data submitted in the fields that have been configured.
A field is considered to be configured if it has been mapped with a Dealfront Property.
In this setting, the tracker will only track the values submitted in the fields you have already configured. If any of the configured fields contain a valid email address, the visitor will be identified with that email address.
For your convenience, we will try to automatically configure relevant fields under this setting. In certain cases, you can also manually configure the fields to start tracking them.
All input fields: Track the entire form submission to view the data in Leadfeeder. The configured fields will be used to identify people who filled the forms. This helps you identify future visits of the same person and also use the information across Dealfront.
In this preference, the tracker collects values submitted in all the input fields by default.
The form submission information will be available regardless of the field configuration status.
People will be identified based on the configured fields.
The tracker will never track sensitive information such as credit card details or passwords.
Field Configuration
Dealfront identifies the input fields present across all forms on your website. Each input field that is identified will show up in your Form tracking settings.
The name of the input fields (left column below) is taken from the name of the input field of your website's source code. These input fields can be configured for use within Dealfront.
It's helpful to configure your input fields because the same input field could be used in several different forms across the website. If you configure the input field, it works globally for all forms that have the specific input field.
Once you have configured the fields that are important for you, you’ll get better insights on form submissions across your website e.g. identified people will have more detailed information attached to them, such as first and last name. You need to configure all the input fields collecting email addresses in various forms on your website to identify people through form tracking.
Which properties can be configured?
Currently, you can configure an input field with the following properties:
Full name
First name
Last name
Email address
Phone number
I can't find any properties available to configure
For the tracker to identify an input field, there has to be at least one submission in it, so the form needs to be submitted at least once after switching on form tracking to allow for the mapping of the input fields above.
If you can't find the properties "Name, Email" in the left column it means the form has not been submitted yet. Try submitting the form yourself as a test and refreshing the configuration page. A new input field will show up soon after the form-submit event is seen.
How to configure input fields
Automatic Field Configuration
As soon as a new input field is identified, Dealfront will try to automatically configure it with one of the five Dealfront properties.
This is done based on the input name attribute of the input field.
Once an automatic configuration is edited or removed through the settings, Dealfront will not try to auto-configure it again.
Manual Field Configuration
For cases where input fields are not auto-configured, you can also manually configure each input field with a Dealfront property.
To manually configure an input field,
Go to Settings > Company > Website Tracker > Form tracking settings or click here
Scroll down to “Configured input fields”
Use the dropdown at the bottom of the table to find the input field you’d like to configure. You will see the input name, input type, and number of submissions for each field in the list.
You can use Inspect Element in your browser to find the correct input name for each field. Right click in the input box you want to identify the name of, select 'Inspect Element', then look for 'name=' in the highlighted code:
Back in your Dealfront settings, select this input field and choose the Dealfront property it represents.
Click on Add.
Identification of input fields
To identify and track all input fields within a form:
The form should be wrapped within HTML <form> tags
If the form or page URL is an external domain, it needs to be “Included” in Traffic Filtering
It should not be within an <iframe> tag
Each input field that needs to be tracked should have a name attribute in the <input> tag.
Submissions received while the form tracking feature was switched off will not be recorded. The feature needs to be switched on for a form submission or an input field to be identified.
Input fields will start showing up in the list after at least one submission has been recorded for them. Please note that if there have been no submissions after the feature was enabled, the field will not show up in the list.
Each Input field will be identified based on the “name” and “type” attributes of the <input> tag. The name attribute is necessary for a field to show up in the list of input fields.
If two input fields having the same “name” attribute have different “type” attributes, they will be considered as different fields.
Exclusion Rules
If you’d like to stop tracking specific forms, you can use exclusion rules to exclude these. This will instruct the Leadfeeder Tracker to ignore forms that meet certain criteria.
Available criteria: Page URL, Form ID, Form class, and Input name
Excluding forms using “Page URL”
You can add a URL for an exact match, or use wildcards to create rules that match multiple URLs.
For example, dealfront.com/blog* will match all URLs that start with dealfront.com/blog
Excluding forms using “Form ID” or "Form class"
If you have a specific form you'd like to exclude, you can do so using the Form ID or class based exclusion rules. Enter the "ID" or "class" attribute of the relevant <form> tag.
You can also use wildcards here to exclude multiple forms that have similar IDs or classes. For example, "contact*" will exclude all forms that have form IDs that start with "contact".
Excluding forms using "Input name"
This exclusion criteria allows you to exclude forms based on the presence of a specific input field by using the "name" attribute of the <input> tag.
You can also use wildcards to qualify multiple forms that have a specific input field.
For example, "refer_email*" will exclude all forms that contain an input field having the input name starting from "refer_email"
All forms that match an exclusion rule will be completely ignored: they will not be tracked. This means that no timeline event will be visible if such forms are submitted, and no identified people will be generated.
Past and Future Visit Identification
Where possible, Leadfeeder also provides additional information about the behavior of identified visitors by associating all of their past visits on your website.
If you have a paid account, past visits from up to 180 days will be associated with the identified person.
Past visit identification is done via the Leadfeeder cookie stored on that user's device. If the local storage was cleared in the past we won't be able to associate the identity and backfill any previous data.
All future visits from the same person will continue to be identified while the cookie is still active.
Troubleshooting
If form tracking isn't working for you, try these troubleshooting tips:
Is the form within <form> tags?
Is the form inside an iframe? If it's in an iframe it will work only if the iframe's source website is identical to the website it's on.
Is form tracking switched on in your Dealfront settings?
Are the input fields mapped correctly in your Dealfront settings?
If you have a lot of inputs with long alphanumeric names, we usually apply the normalization rule in the following format ######. Using [abcdef0-9] 3/4+ consecutive chars will by default result in normalization. The normalization rule can be switched off by our technicians - please contact support.
Mapping for input names will work only after the form has been filled out at least once after form tracking is switched on. If you do not see the input name (which you can find in Inspect Element > Dev Tools), in the dropdown while mapping the input fields, please fill out the form with some dummy data (e.g. test@dealfront.com) and submit it at least once.
The form will collect data every time the submit button is clicked, regardless of the validation rules you have set up. Therefore it's possible that Dealfront will show more data from form fills than you will, as you will only receive validated responses.
Privacy & GDPR Compliance
The General Data Protection Regulation, abbreviated as GDPR, is a privacy regulation that applies to the citizens of the European Union (EU). All organizations need to comply with GDPR while managing the data of EU citizens.
When it comes to forms and data collection, if your website collects information through forms, you need to make sure that you collect appropriate user consent wherever required. You need to collect this consent regardless of the Dealfront features you decide to use.
The contents of this article are not to be considered as legal advice. If you have any questions on how to make your forms compliant with GDPR, it’s best to consult your legal team, who can give you the best advice that fits the specific needs of your organization.
The form tracking feature is fully compliant with GDPR, same as the entire Dealfront platform. Form tracking is fully flexible based on how you want to handle the form submission data within Dealfront.
For collecting all data in Dealfront, you can set the Data Collection Preference to “All input fields”.
For collecting only specific data in Dealfront, you can set the Data Collection Preference to “Configured fields only”.
For collecting no personal data from forms in Dealfront, you can set the Data Collection Preference to “Disabled”.
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Questions, comments, feedback? Please let us know by contacting our support team via the chat or by sending us an email at support@dealfront.com.
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