This document outlines methods to set up Form Handlers and Automation in Pardot to create standardised lead management workflows triggered from Formulayt.com form submissions.


Master Form Handler

The basic setup for Formulayt.com Form Handlers is to have one master Pardot Form Handler that intakes all leads. The Master Form Handler can carry out any Completion Actions that should be triggered for every lead, for example:

  • Add to static tag
  • Add to static list
  • Notify Assigned User


For dynamic or custom completion actions, the following methods can be utilised.

Ways to Trigger Actions in Pardot

There are two practical ways to trigger Completion Actions in Pardot; Form Re-posts and Automation Rules...

Re-posting Submissions

It is possible to submit from one Form Handler to another. Gates can be configured to send the URL of the second Form Handler to the first Form Handler to create this behaviour.


The following actions: 

  1. Create a Hidden Field called “success_location”
  2. Set Pre-Population Source to “Gate editor” and click “Configure”
  3. Set the field Label to “Repost to Form Handler (URL)” or something similar
  4. Close the popup and Create the field
  5. Publish your configuration changes (Push to Live)
  6. In Pardot ensure that the Master Form Handler has “Enable data forwarding to the success location” checked
  7. Ensure that any Form Handler you are re-posting to does NOT have ‘Enable data forwarding to the success location“ checked (otherwise you will get a re-posting loop)


To configure a gate to re-post:

  • In Pardot Copy the Endpoint URL from the Form Handler you wish to repost to (always copy the HTTPS URL)
  • Paste this URL into your gate in the Misc tab in the “Repost to Form Handler (URL)” field.
  • Now when the gate is submitted Pardot will forward the submission data from the Master Form Handler to your re-post Form Handler



Triggering Actions from Fields

Actions can also be triggered from a field change. This is done using an Automation Rule. Create a new automation rule based on a Prospect field equaling or containing a specific value. The field that you choose can be anything received into Pardot.


If you want to trigger based on a specific gate, you can use GateID (as shown in the example below). In the example we have used the “Contains” clause because the GateID is so specific it cannot be confused with any other value.


You could also use a hidden field such as SFDC Campaign ID. Look for a specific value and make the completion action add users to a Salesforce campaign.


If you only want the action to trigger once, do not tick “Repeat Rule”. If you DO tick “Repeat Rule” the rule will re-run every day (or more days if you configure it) as long as the field has that value. To stop that occurring (when “Repeat Rule”) is ticked, you can add a completion action to change the value of the field being evaluated (to stop the rule triggering the next day), for example set the value of the field to “Cleared By Automation Rule”. If the user completes the gate again, it would then be possible for the Automation Rule to run again.


NOTE: The minimum time that an Automation Rule can re-run is 24 hours. If you require faster repeating actions than that, a form repost would work better.


Typical Actions

The following examples are typical activities that are triggered during lead management workflows.

AutoResponders

A Form Re-post or an Automation Rule could be used for Autoresponders. An Automation Rule can only run once per 24 hour period and may not be as immediate as a repost. 


For a more generic solution you could send the name of the email to be sent to the user in a hidden field and set up an Automation Rule per email template; triggered off of that field value change.

Assigning to a Salesforce Campaign

Again a Form Re-post or Automation Rule can both be assigned to Salesforce campaigns. If you have more generic field values such as Product of Interest, that field could be used as a trigger for Automation Rules.


A more robust method for assigning to SFDC Campaigns is to do the assignment in SFDC itself. Create a field called SFDC Campaign ID and sync that into Salesforce. Then create a process flow in SFDC triggered by that field change to assign that lead to the SFDC Campaign. 

Creating a Salesforce Task

Again a Form Re-post or Automation Rule can both create Salesforce tasks. An Automation Rule is probably better suited if your tasks are standardised. For example if you want to highlight a task of “Has read our 5 ways Guide”, you could trigger a rule based on the Last Asset ID on the prospect being “5-ways-guide”. The rule would only have to trigger once to record the fact they downloaded the guide.

Notification Email

Notification emails (i.e. internal emails) can also be triggered from Re-posts or Automation Rules. However it is also possible to generically trigger a notification email by selecting the Completion Action “Notify Assigned User”, if your user assignment rules are working well this will send an email to that assigned user. 

Adding to a List

Adding a prospect to a list can also be done from a Form Re-post or an Automation Rule.

Adjust Score

Adjusting a prospect score (on top of whatever generic scoring is running) can also be done from a Re-post or an Automation Rule. A useful method here could be to send a hidden value for score through and trigger different Automation Rules based on that value e.g. “High”, “Medium”, “Low”. A Gate Editor field in Formulayt.com could be configured with a drop down list with these values. The Automation Rules would trigger off of these values and adjust the score. In this scenario the rule should be set to repeat and the hidden score field should be cleared out at the end of the Completion Actions in the rules (see above).

Register for Webinar

Registering a prospect for a Webinar will be dependent on the nature of the integration you have with Pardot. If your integration provides a set of Completion Actions in Pardot they can be triggered within a Re-post or Automation Rule. 


Another solution might be a Re-post to an external end-point within the 3rd Party Webinar system. It is typical to send a Webinar ID as a hidden field which corresponds to the Webinar ID in the Webinar platform.

Immediate MQL Process

An efficient way of improving lead management is to create a standardized process to MQL a prospect. This would be done in an Automation Rule by monitoring a hidden field (for example called “TriggerMQL”). 


  • Create a hidden field called “TriggerMQL” (you will need a corresponding field in Pardot on Prospects and your Form Handler)
  • Set the Pre-population Source to be “Gate editor”




  • Configure the gate editor settings to be a Yes/No toggle with a label of “Immediate MQL”.



  • Now create an Automation Rule that is triggered from a value of “true” in the TriggerMQL field
  • An MQL process would typically perform these kind of actions:
    • Sync Prospect into SFDC
    • Assign an owner in SFDC
    • Add to an SFDC Campaign
    • Send a notification email to owner
    • Record an MQL date
    • Set a lead status value
    • Set a lead source
  • Now when creating any gate, the author need only select “Immediate MQL” to trigger an MQL from that individual gate e.g. a hand raise form or high value asset