Question: How do I create a Page Designer landing page in Act! Marketing Automation?
Product Details:
- Product Family: E-marketing
- Product: Act! Marketing Automation
Answer:
Creating a landing page through the Page Designer allows you to build out an Act! Marketing Automation hosted form. Unlike the HTML Page landing page builder that is non-customer facing and only captures data from your existing web forms, the page designer form is customer facing and allows for a wider variety of question types and customisation tools. The landing page will generate a unique URL that you can use to include in your email campaigns. It also generates an iFrame script so you can iFrame this form onto your website in lieu of having to build a website form.
To create a Page Designer landing page, follow the below steps:
- Navigate to the Landing Pages menu item with Act! Marketing Automation.
- Click the Actions dropdown and select New Page.
- In the New Page pop up, select Blank Page Designer under the All Templates tab, the click Continue.
- On the next screen, you will see a series of fields where you will enter the following information:
- Landing Page Template - If you wish to create a landing page from scratch, select Blank Page Designer. You can also use some of the pre-built templates, however for this article we will build from scratch.
- Page Name - The name is only internally facing, so give it a name that is easily searchable and recognisable by yourself and other users.
- Smart Tags - These help you keep your pages library more organised. You can place multiple tags by typing in a tag, such as "survey", click the Enter key, then begin typing the next tag.
- Page Type - This option is greyed out because we selected Page Designer type in the previous screen.
- Select Skin - You can select a skin for your landing page from your template library. For more information on how to create a skin using the drag and drop template editor, read this article:
- How can I create a landing page skin in Act! Marketing Automation?
- Once all of the above fields have been set up, click Continue.
- You are now taken to the final set up screen where you will fill out the following fields:
- Notifications - When someone completes the form, you can send an email notification to whomever you enter in here. Often times you will want someone on your sales team notified of form completions.
- Auto-Response - You have the option here to automatically send a follow up email to anyone who completes the form. You will be able to select any existing active campaign from your campaign library. This will place them at the beginning of the campaign flow that you select.
- List Name - After completion of the form, you can select a marketing list for the contact to be placed into. If this list is enrolled in a campaign with campaign list sync turned on, they will be placed into that campaign.
- Lead or Contact - This selection determines whether a record will map data back to Act! via the Contact table, or stay within AMA via the Lead selection. This selection also determines which fields you will be able to use to map your questions to. If you select Contact, you will be pulling in Act! fields. *Note: You may not have the option of Personal Lists, in which case your only option will be Contacts.
- Assign Contact To - Select the user you would like any new Contacts to be assigned to. A new Contact will be someone who completes this form that is not already in your database. We use email address to determine this. If the Contact already exists in Act!, their assignment will not be overwritten.
- Allow Duplicates - Choose to not create or create duplicate Contact records in Act! when someone completes your form. By default, this will be set to "Do Not Allow Duplicates".
- Once these fields are set up, click Create and you will be taken to the page flow designer.
At the bottom of this screen, below the flow designer, you will see a blue URL that has been generated for this form. This is the URL you will use to link your customers or potential leads to the form to fill out. You can also use this URL to test the form for yourself. Just click the URL, and your landing page will open in a new browser. Right now however, it will be blank since we have not added your form questions yet.
The other resource that is created for you is iframe script that can be used to iframe this form onto your website. This method can be used in lieu of creating web forms directly on your website, which can save your web developer some time! To access the script, navigate to the Actions dropdown and select Edit Page Properties. You will be taken to a set setup page that contains the fields you just completed, but you will notice there is a new section where you can change the URL or get your iframe script.
Change URL allows you to customise the URL after the last forward /. So rather than the random letter and number assortment, you can customise it to say something more related to what your form is. In this case I might change it to /customersurvey.
iFrame Script will open up a pop up window with the script you will want to use to iframe your form onto your website. You will want to give this iframe script to your web developer if you decide to iframe this form onto your website.
Note: Placing iframe script onto your website is out of scope for Act! support. If your web developer needs support on how to place the script, they should reach out to their website management system.
From this screen, click Actions then Save to return to the page flow designer. Now it is time to add your questions to your form. To do this follow these steps:
- Click the Form step in the landing page flow.
- In the Edit Form Step pop up, select Edit Form, then click Go.
- In the Pages top section of the next screen, enter a Page Title and Submit Button Text that you would like for this form. **A page title is the text that is displayed in your web browser tab when that page is opened.
- Once those fields are set up, click Actions and Save to save those entires.
- Next, in the Layout section of this screen your questions will be displayed. To add your first question click Actions and select Add Control.
- A pop up window will appear asking you what type of question field you would like to use for this question. Once you have made your selection, click the Add Control button. The most standard and common question type is the Single Textbox control.
You will now be taken to your question (or, control) editor. You can fill out the following fields, though most of these are not required and often times, you will not need to fill out everything on this page:
- Enter Your Question: What you enter here is how the question will appear on your form. This is customer facing.
- Empty Message Text: You have the option to enter pre-fill text for those completing the form. For example, I could put "enter your first name here". This is not required.
- Default Value: You may enter a default value that will auto-populate in this question when the landing page is opened. This is not required.
- Require an Answer to This Question: Check this box if you want this question to be required. If the box is checked, they will not be able to submit their answers until the question is answered.
- Survey Graph Type: If you would like a report on this landing page once people being completing the form, select the type of graph would you like to use to display the statistics for this specific question.
- Map to an Act! Field: Select which Act! field to map this question to. This is not required, but if you would like your Act! database to be updated, then you will need to select a field here.
Once you have completed the setup of your question, click the Actions dropdown and select Save & Return.
Use the above steps to continue adding in all the questions you would like to use in this form. Once all of your questions have been added, you will see each one displayed in the Layout section of the screen. If you wish to edit an existing question, click the pencil icon above the question name.
Captcha
You have the option to add a captcha to the end of your form to help prevent spam bot submissions. It is important to note, this method is not a perfect solution, as spam technology is always evolving and no solution out there is 100% effective. **For this reason the Act! support team can not support this feature if spam is still able to submit through the captcha.**
To add a captcha to this landing page, click Actions and select Captcha.
In the pop up window, check the Enable Captcha checkbox. The next checkbox allows the contact to generate a new image if the original image is difficult for them to see. If you would like this on, check the box.The remaining fields allow you to customise your message, or you can keep them at the default messages. When done, click Save. You will see the captcha now displayed at the bottom of the Layout section of the page.
Once this form's setup is complete, click the Actions dropdown and select Save & Return.
Creating your Thank You page
The last step in building out your Page Designer landing page is to create your thank you page for contacts to be redirected to once they complete the form. In Act! Marketing Automation, the thank you page editor for your landing page is in the End step of your page flow designer. To edit:
- Click the End step.
- In the pop up window select Edit End Page and click Go.
- You are now taken to a simple HTML editor where you can enter your thank you message. You can change the font, font size, color, add an image, etc.
- Once you are done editing, click the Actions dropdown and select Save & Return.
This landing page is now ready to use! Use the blue URL at the bottom of the page or the iframe script to place or send out to your recipients to complete the form.
For information on viewing the results of your landing page completions, read the article below:
What are View Results in Act! Marketing Automation landing pages?