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Pardot form handlers are a great marketing automation tool to use when you want to use your own forms instead of a Pardot iFrame form or external forms on your website(s). 

The benefit of the handler form tool is that you can transfer any form data that is captured in a successful lead form fill to your Salesforce Pardot account with only a little bit of code. 

In addition, you’ll have the control to fully customize how your form looks and you’ll be able to leverage the same completion actions as you can with a Pardot iFrame form. 

In this article, you get a step-by-step checklist for how you can create and add a form handler to an existing web form submission.

Create a new Pardot Form Handler

The first step to using form handlers in Pardot is to go to the form handler builder landing page (Marketing -> Forms -> Form Handlers).

Then click the blue “+Add Form Handler”

You’ll then be taken to the “Create Form Handler” page where you’ll be asked to complete the following information:

• • Name your new form handler
  • Select the appropriate Folder the form handler should go under from the dropdown
  • Select the appropriate tag(s) that should be associated with your form handler
  • Select the campaign the form handler should be associated with
  • Kiosk/Data Entry Mode – select this if you want prospects to be cookies when there is a successful form completion
  • Enable data forwarding to the success location – select this if you have another database in addition to Pardot that you want to send the form fill information to
  • Disable Visitor Activity throttling – select this if you want to disable Pardot’s spam protection and want to allow multiple activities and autoresponder emails.
  • Success Location – select the Thank You page URL where you want the visitor to go when the visitor successfully completes the form.
  • Error Location – select the Error page URL where you want the visitor to go if there’s an error with them filling out the form.
  • Completion Actions – add any automation rules that should take place when the visitor successfully completes the form.

• Form fields – pick the prospect fields that you want the form handler to capture from your web form. When you do this, keep the naming convention the same for the web form and the form handler field so that there’s no confusion. Also, you can change your error message in the Advanced tab.

Add the form HTML or CSS

Once the form handler has been created, the next step is to create the form HTML functionality that you’ll embed on your website.

Copy the form handler endpoint URL and place it at the beginning of the HTML.

Here’s a short example of how to set up the HTML

A few things to note:

For form action – you need to make sure that it’s your Pardot form handler endpoint URL 

For method – it needs to equal post

For input – make sure to include all of the form handler fields that you mapped to the existing form

For type – make sure to select the right type

For required – make sure to include this if you have any custom fields that you want the user to conduct a specific action (either filling out a specific field or clicking on the form submit button).

That’s it! Before you drive traffic to your web page, make sure you and one of your marketers check that the form handler implementation has been set up correctly. Good luck and please let us know if you need any help.

Topics: Marketing Automation