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Liz_Davalos
Level 4
February 8, 2018
Question

Automation dependent on what point users abandon a form

  • February 8, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 3896 views

I am building an abandon form email program. I want to have different emails sent based on when someone abandoned the form. I'm not sure of the best practice for this. We have the munchkin script in our website, but since I could already have certain information from them prior to them filling out the form I somehow need tags or something submitted on how far they got.

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1 reply

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
February 8, 2018

Liz, underlying this goal is what we on the tech side call a "Dead man's switch" problem.

To quote myself from another Nation thread:

Dead man's switch refers to the impossibility of determining that a person or device has stopped doing something if you don't have some kind of external observer. When that "something" is "filling out fields," it should make sense that the same device that stopped can't always tell you that it stopped, depending on how gracefully it stopped (close browser, crash browser, navigate away from the page, etc). Think about the difference between a train engineer radioing "I'm about to pass out" and simply passing out, which is what the original Dead man's switch technology was for.

With a Marketo form, in order to track each field as it gets filled out, you can wire up a synthetic Munchkin function (Munchkin.munchkinFunction("visitWebPage");) to fire when a field changes.  But I'd be very cautious about the overhead this will cause on your instance. Consider limiting the "interesting" fields to only a few that you want to know if someone started filling out. Marketo, at the present time, isn't equipped for the massive increase in traffic you'd get by sending an update for every field. (It's equivalent to every page view being multiplied by N additional Munchkin hits.)

Liz_Davalos
Level 4
February 8, 2018

I was thinking more along the lines of when someone hits the page an interesting moment is submitted with a note on the last field to be updated/to have an entry. That isn't looking for what "wasn't done" and shouldn't be much more data than what is currently captured (I'd guess). I do have 3 specific fields on two main forms that specifically interest me. I'm just not clear if the munchkin script can capture that somehow?

Nicholas_Manojl
Level 8
February 8, 2018

I have seen some people use a multi-part form.

Page 1 - Form 1. On submit = redirect to page 2.

Page 2 - Form 2. On submit = redirect to page 3.

Page 3 - Form 3. On submit = "Form" completed.

The idea is a smart list says "you have completed form 1, visited page 2, but not filled out form 2... therefore send reminder email with a CTA back to page 2".

Do I like this approach? I don't know. It works, I guess.