Web To Lead forms; capturing tracking parameters

[wmflan]

OS Windows | SCRM 4.5.1 | don't know)

I have been using tracking parameters to associate a campaign or source to the visitor (example: www.mysite.com/landing_page.php?source=campaign) and capturing visitor contact data into MySQL then inmporting to SCRM.

I'd like to use the WebToLead service, but I can't get my testing to transfer the contents of session variable $campaign into SCRM. Any ideas?

Many thanks for the product and for any help you can offer.

WmFlan

[labanjohnson]

Isn't the variable $campaign_id ?

[wmflan]

Not excatly; this is a variable which is created on my pages to hold the tracking parameter. Someone who responds to an ad for my camapaign 'widgets' is tagged with ?source=widgets. When/if they register, I need to capture that value - and others - and populate their Lead record....that variable...

WmF

[labanjohnson]

I mean in sugar, the field is campaign_id.

Go to campaigns and create your campaign. Get the campaign_id

In your form which submits to WebtoleadCapture.php

put a hidden input, the name=campaign_id value={campaign id of the widget campaign},

which can be inserted dynamically by your website script

Once you are doing email and web marketing with Sugar, this will tie in very well as you will already have the systems in place to track response of the campaign

[wmflan]

Thank you Laban for your thoughtful reply...

This method works well when you create a new form for each campaign. That can be a burden if you are manageing several, virtually identical campaigns, however. Let's say the 'Widgets' campaign can draw prospects from several ad groups (small widgets, medium widgets and large widgets); If I can pass a tracking parameter for each of the ad groups to the single registration form, then I can associate each prospect directly to the sub-campaign without erecting three registration forms.

How can I pass an incoming variable to WebToLead forms?

[labanjohnson]

use a session variable

You can also track quite a bit more data using session variables, such as the site which referred each user to you, so you can see what marketing efforts are working best.

[labanjohnson]

Some tutorials on session variables I found on Google for ya

http://php.about.com/od/advancedphp/ss/php_sessions.htm

http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=9625

http://smartwebby.com/PHP/aboutsession.asp

[wmflan]

Laban,

Tha's EXACTLY what I'm trying to do!

I can do it effectively with my homemade php forms and pages but I can't get it to work with SCRM. Do the session variable have to be declared on some internal SCRM page other than my form page? If so, which page(s). Once defined, how can I insert the incoming value of the session variable into a VARCHAR field via the form page?

WmF