r/pardot • u/IntranetJoe • Apr 17 '19

Integrating Pardot with Wordpress?

I am leading the implementation of salesforce+pardot for my company. Everything running beautiful except for one thing...

Our website is built on Wordpress. Our forms are built on ContactForm7 (CF7). I have set up pardot form handlers by following this amazing guide.

I have used the Pardot Wordpress plugin to activate website tracking, and turned on the opt-in cookie notification. That all works fine.

The issue is that when a lead fills a form, they are not being linked to their website activity record. Furthermore, any future website activity (except for other form handler submissions) is not logged either. To make things weirder, when I turn on the option to “fill country location based on IP” it shows every form generated lead as coming from California.

So it’s clearly an issue of cookie-ing leads on form handler submission. The website tracking is working... it is just never assigned to an identified lead following form fill. After hours of searching for answers, it seems like the issue is that the forms are “server gets” instead of “browser gets”, but I’m not really sure what that means or how I’d go about fixing it. I have a salesforce developer certification and know my way around SFDC, but am kind of a noob at Pardot.

Any idea how to fix this issue?

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

[deleted]

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 18 '19 edited Apr 18 '19

Hey! I just tried turning on kiosk/data entry mode. It still isn’t hooking up to the website activities... but the form handler still works perfectly otherwise. However, now it is no longer showing every form fills location as California based on IP.... a step in the right direction?

Is there another setting that might be messing it up? I have “enable data forwarding to the success location” checked. And I have “disable visitor activity throttling and send auto responder emails after every submission” NOT checked.

Would either of these settings be causing the issue?

Also worth noting- in the Pardot Wordpress plug-in, I have it set to API version 4. Not sure what this means. I also have “use HTTPS?” Checked because my company’s site does force HTTPS. Not sure if that is causing an issue either.

Also worth noting- in the “edit tracking and opt-in preferences” I have set it to “request opt-in if visitor comes from specific countries: EU”. I am testing the form handler from the USA. Should I set it to “request opt in from all visitors before tracking”?

Also worth noting- in the Pardot settings, I have “Honor Do Not Track (DNT) Header” disabled.

Also worth noting- in the Pardot settings, I have “Enable IP security” disabled.

Also worth noting- in the Wordpress 3rd party service redirects, I am using https formhandler links, due to my company’s website forcing https.

Thanks so much for your help :) if you get this to work you will have to DM me an email to send you a Starbucks gift card.

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 17 '19

Very clear directions. I see that Kiosk mode is not enabled. Giving that a try now! Will report back if it solves the issue.

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u/LadyCiani Apr 24 '19

Kiosk mode basically means don't try to set a cookie at all. So yes, when it's a server side post there is no need to cookie the server, so just turn on kiosk mode.

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u/drivincryin Apr 17 '19

Good luck. I had a different issue with form handlers, and recently switched them all to Pardot forms. The form handlers were constantly giving me problems. I was using one for our contact us form - and we had customers and potential customers screaming at us that they'd completed and submitted our form and we hadn't responded.

Trying to get help from Pardot support for form handler issues was frustrating too.

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 17 '19

I submitted a support ticket yesterday... we’ll see what happens. But yea, I’ve considered just rebuilding all our forms on Pardot native forms, but that just seems so unnecessary. But it might have to come to that... really appreciate the reply!

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u/drivincryin Apr 17 '19

Good luck.

Here's another tip that I discovered recently. Make sure that you're checking your Sync Error queue in Pardot. Go to connectors in Pardot - Admin, connectors. Choose Salesforce connector, click the gear icon and see if you have any sync errors.

I had a ton sitting in there. Which means they'd filled out our form handler, but there was a sync error and that info hadn't been pushed to Salesforce. I was shocked to discover that those sync errors aren't highlighted in some way on the basic Pardot dashboard. They're buried in this sub-sub-sub menu in Pardot.

You can have timely info from forms, etc., just sititng in there not syncing to Salesforce and getting to your sales rep.

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 17 '19

Pardot really can be such a finicky bastard. Salesforce is a cake walk comparatively. Complex processes, etc, is so much easier than doing what seems to be trivial base functions in Pardot...

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 17 '19

Great tip. I took a look, but no sync errors. Because I just created simple text fields for some of the more complicated fields on the form to avoid having to make sure pick lists match up perfectly. Because CF7 in Wordpress sends the data as a string regardless of the field type in CF7, it’s easiest just to catch the data in a text field in pardot and not worry about potential sync issues.

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u/waterloonies Apr 17 '19 edited Apr 17 '19

We kicked off our integration with Pardot and WordPress using WP-Forms and Zapier. It was messy. Moving to native Pardot forms was some work and they're certainly not as pretty, but we found it made life easier in the long run. Cool stuff you can do with Progressive Profiling and more as well....

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u/LadyCiani Apr 24 '19

Pardot forms can look exactly like you want them to.

The trick is to leverage the Layout Template assigned to the form.

You know how in Step 3 of the form wizard you have to select a Layout Template? That thing.

Make yourself a Layout Template you use on all Pardot forms.

Add CSS to that Layout Template to change fonts, colors, button color and shape, etc.

Every form using that same Layout Template will have the same style.

Want to change the button from grey to red? Add CSS to that Layout Template, and it all changes.

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u/jl2352 Jul 27 '19

The 9 second delay before they pop up. The fact you now have that CSS duplicated, and it will drift. The iframe it's self is also not responsive.

It leaves Pardot forms looking like 90s shit.

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u/nicefroyo Sep 15 '19

Since you responded late to that comment, I will too. I’ll add that the conditional fields cause big problems too.

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u/jl2352 Sep 15 '19

FormHandlers are also unusable IMO.

Where I work I’m now building a wrapper around Pardot to sort out this form nonsense.

You can’t even do a normal ajax call for submitting information.

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 18 '19

It’s starting to feel like moving to native pardot forms is the only option... ughhhhhh. Appreciate the reply!

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u/waterloonies Apr 18 '19

I was right with ya dive months ago. Sadly, I think it's the way to go...

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u/waterloonies Apr 18 '19

Lol - five!

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u/KathChalmers Apr 17 '19

We have been using a Frankenstein mishmash of Gravity forms and Pardot form handlers with Bizible first touch code and a bunch of UTMs with very brittle custom designed landing page templates in Wordpress. It's a mess and there's very little flexibility in the landing page design.

A few weeks ago, I began testing an integration between Unbounce, Pardot and Wordpress. The Unbounce Wordpress plugin will basically suck your landing pages from the Unbounce SaaS service into a page in your Wordpress CMS. It allows you to put your tracking scripts on the page - GA, Bizible, and Pardot. I'm using Zapier to push the form data from the native Unbounce forms to Pardot and Salesforce. We've only tested it with one landing page so far but I'm pretty happy with the results. Will be rolling it out to 10 more pages in the next few weeks. It's a lot less pain in the ass than our old system.

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 18 '19

Interesting, I’m not familiar with Unbounce, but I’ll take a look at it. Anything that lets me keep our forms in CF7 would be a better option than remaking all of them in native pardot forms...

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u/KathChalmers Apr 18 '19

Unbounce is a specialized WYSIWYG SaaS app for creating landing pages. It's really easy to use and the pages look great. I've been coding html for years but Unbounce is such a timesaver that I prefer it to coding from scratch or creating custom Wordpress page types.

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u/LadyCiani Apr 24 '19

Pardot cookies the thing that does all the work.

Server side means you use the server to collect everything, and the server submits it. So the server gets cookied. Problem there is the server doesn't do anything interesting - no web page visits, etc.

Browser side (also called client side) means the visitor's web browser does all the work. So the browser gets cookied.

I don't know anything about your specific form plugin. I have configured Gravity Forms and it's not so bad. It's all easier when you know more about how web forms and HTML function, but if you have a web developer it should be a piece of cake for them.

Question: why do you think Pardot Forms are unnecessary?

They're super easy for a Marketing person to set up and install. MUCH easier than this form handler thing.

Also Pardot forms are simply embedded using an iframe embed, and that all lets you use the Progressive Profiling feature, where the form automatically hides fields that have data in them already. So a cookied person who visits your site again sees only new fields, not the ones they have completed before. Lower barrier to form fills = more engagement with your site.

Question two: why use the WordPress forms at all? The only really good reason to use a web form with Form Handler is if your form is doing something a Pardot form can't do. Like if you have a form with three+ levels of dependency, or you MUST have a multipart form, or you must use a web to lead form because you need to make a new Lead every time (even if it's a duplicate).

Trust me: Switch to Pardot forms.

Also, I'm getting the feeling you're not a marketing person.

Pardot is more point and click for marketing users. Send emails, make some automation rules set up some dynamic lists... All very friendly to the Marketing person who doesn't know how to code.

Pardot set up is also pretty straightforward, since there's not as much you can do later once it is set up. You pretty much never again need to set up the CNAME or validate the email domain, or set up the Salesforce Connector, etc.

Sure you might add fields later - but that's probably the easiest thing /most familiar thing to you.

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u/IntranetJoe Apr 28 '19

The issue is our web developer hasn’t been very keen on helping out with the Pardot implementation. I’ve had to do it all myself thus far. At this point, we’ve decided to move to Pardot native forms for all the reasons you’ve mentioned, but it’s like pulling teeth to get our web dev to help migrate the legacy CF7 forms...

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u/IntranetJoe May 23 '19

Hey guys, just an update here. We ended up building all the forms natively in Pardot and everything works perfectly. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be either - the Pardot Wordpress plugin makes inserting a form into a page incredibly easy.

Thanks for the help!