Understanding Forms

  • Updated

Demandbase Form Enrichment enables you to provide form fills to visitors to your site with minimal effort from them. Whenever available, we append information about visitors, making minimal effort from your accounts more valuable. 

Here are some of the features of Demandbase Form Enrichment that make it more useful to you. Form enrichment begins with API calls that are transparent to the visitor to your site, associating known information with the visitor.

 

API Priority

As explained in Understanding Forms Visitor Identification, Demandbase returns firmographic information using three APIs:

  • IP
  • Email domain
  • Company Autocomplete

The Company Profile that Demandbase returns to the Form Connector, however, will choose only one of the API return values. The Company Profile value is determined by the Form Connector's API priority order.

The default API priority order is Email domain API -> IP API -> Company Name API. This means that if all three APIs identify the visitor, the Demandbase Forms Connector will use the information returned by the Email domain API. Likewise, if the IP API and Company Autocomplete APIs return data, but the Email domain API does not, the Forms Enrichment will use the information returned by the IP API.

Example

Demo form using API priority: Example Form.

Any data within the object Demandbase.Connectors.WebForm.CompanyProfile is the data the Forms Connector has currently selected. Demandbase.Connectors.WebForm.dataSource indicates the API source of the data (domain, ip, and company.)

Autocomplete Drop-Down

The Demandbase Autocomplete drop-down is the visual representation of the Company Name API. The drop-down allows the user to search for company names and select them from the drop-down. If a company was already identified by the email domain API or the IP address API, then those companies will show up at the top. If both API calls identified a company, the company identified by the email domain will appear above the company identified by the IP address.

The rest of the companies that appear in the autocomplete drop-down will be based on:

  1. The text that was typed into the search field.
  2. The IP address's geolocation (as identified by the public IP registry.)

This means that the rest of the companies will be in a geographic location near the user. For instance, if a user located in Buffalo, New York types 'Apple' into the search field, Apple's headquarter office in Cupertino will not show up in the dropdown. Rather, you may see Applebee locations in Buffalo, New York.

Important: Reach out to your CSM or account manager to enable the autocomplete drop-down feature. 

Data Append

Once your Demandbase Tag has finished executing an API call to our servers, it will attempt to append the data from the API response into your form fields. Every form page that is integrated with Demandbase MUST have the correct field configuration for the data to append properly. This means that the 'name' or 'id' attributes of your form fields must match the configuration specified in the design reference during the implementation process.

If you no longer have a copy of your form design reference, you may ask your Demandbase CSM for a copy. It is important to make sure your form template matches the configuration specified in the design reference because your Demandbase Tag will be configured to match the design reference. If your form page has misspelled or missing input fields, the data will not append properly to the correct fields.

Hidden Form Fields

Hidden form fields allow you to attach non-visible data to a form before submission. Sending data underneath a form is useful for a variety of reasons, but it is primarily valued for being discreet. To enable this feature, add hidden input fields to your form and then inform your Demandbase representative of the data mapping that you would like applied to these fields. The data mapping would need to relate the 'name' or 'id' attribute of the HTML input field to the firmographic information that you are looking to receive from Demandbase.

What Are Toggle Fields?

When using the Demandbase Forms Enrichment product, you can define form fields to hide at first and then show if Demandbase does not populate them with data. These are known as Toggle Fields. (For your Web developer: These elements are not typically the input fields themselves, but rather the wrapper divs that also contains the field labels.)

If the Toggle Fields are not populated after all three Demandbase API calls, then we show the fields to the user.

Why can't I make Toggle Fields required?

Forms Enrichment cannot be submitted if a required field is left blank. Hiding a required field goes against best practice, as it presents a small amount of risk that a required field could remain hidden unintentionally. 

Should this occur, your visitor would be unable to submit the form due to the blank and invisible required field.

Growing Forms: Auto-Show Hidden Fields

Growing forms is a feature that auto-shows the normally hidden form fields that remain unfilled/empty after the Demandbase APIs have been exhausted from user's input. This last resort serves to make form submission seamless and provide the visitor a chance to identify crucial lead-routing data such as zip or country. 

For example, the visitor remains unidentified after exhausting all APIs because:

  • IP is non-company or is residential
  • Email was non-company

See Set Up Demandbase Forms Enrichment.

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