Creating a New Profile Update Form
To add a new Profile Updates form, select Marketing+ > Profile updates > New.
Setting Form Properties
On the first step, the system will ask you to configure the following properties:
- Name: enter a name for the form: this is not shown to your recipients
- Description: enter a description for what the form is for. This is also not shown to your customers. It's for internal, administrative purposes only.
- Enabled: click to enable the form. You will need to enable it to test it. Since there are no public links to the form (until you include a link to it in an email message), you can enable a form even when you are just working on it.
- Type: specify when the form is Public or Private. See the section below for an explanation of the difference.
- One-time fill: specify whether the same recipient may update the form multiple times or not. This is useful when you are using the Profile Updates feature as a basic survey tool.
- Start date and End date: you can decide to make the form accessible only between certain dates. This is useful, for instance, if you are using the Profile Updates feature as a basic event registration tool.
Click on Save to continue.
Creating the Actual Form
The page will reload and display the HTML editor, with a default HTML form pre-loaded in the editor. By default the system creates a form that contains all the Recipient fields and Groups used by the selected List. The fields loaded into the form...
- Are set up as input text fields. Use the link Instructions on how to modify the form for some guidelines on how to modify the form
- Can easily be removed by right-clicking in the form and selecting "Delete Row"
- Are setup to pre-load into the field the value currently stored for that field in the recipients database. So if you are showing the First Name field, for example, the "First Name" currently stored for a certain recipient will be preloaded in that field when the form is rendered in the Web browser.
By editing the HTML code you can change the type of field used in the form. For example, you can change a text field into a drop-down, a list of checkboxes, or a list of radio buttons. Even if you are not that familiar with HTML, this is easier than you may think. Click on Instructions on how to modify the form for some guidelines on how to modify the form.
- To edit the HTML code, click on the "<>" icon at the bottom of the editor. Click on the pencil icon to go back to editing mode.
- Click on Add/Edit Code to Head Tag to add links to JavaScript files that you may use for performing field validation.
- Click on Save when you are done editing the form.
How to Send the Form to Your Recipients
The form is not sent directly to your customers. Instead, you will place a link to the form in an email message that you will send to them. Recipients of the message will click on the link to view and fill out the form in their browser.
- To insert the link in a message click on the Profile Updates Link button in the toolbar of the message editor: select the form that you wish to link to, and enter the text for the link.
- Only active forms are displayed in the list
The rest of your message can contain any content you wish to add, just like any email message. To send a message, take the same steps you take to send any message.
Public vs. Private Forms
When the form is public, the person that receives a link to it can immediately view it and edit it.
When the form is private, the person that receives a link to it cannot immediately view it and fill it out. Instead, they are shown a message that prompts them to check their mailbox: an email message is sent to the email address associated with the link. The message is referred to as the "Private Form Access Email".