Templated experiences are a powerful way to streamline your digital marketing efforts, but to truly harness their potential, you need to integrate an effective Form Strategy. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of setting up Form Strategy within your Templated Experiences, ensuring that you can collect valuable data, engage your audience, and tailor your marketing approach for success.
Forms enable you to collect specific information from your audience, helping shape your marketing efforts. Form Strategy enables you to select and govern your form’s behavior to indicate when you want the form served (Experience Rules), on which assets you want the form served (Content Rules), and the content assets on which you do not want a form to appear (Exclusion Rules).
When you open or create a new Templated Experience, you’ll notice there is a tab along the top named Form Strategy, highlighted in the screen capture below.
On the Form Strategy tab, you can indicate which forms to serve, and add and edit form rules to control their behavior.
When you click on +Add Rule for each of the rule types, you see a popup menu where you can select the form you want to serve, based on the forms available for your role.
For a refresher on Form Strategy, read Form Strategy Best Practices.
There are three types of rules you can add to Form Strategy: Experience Rules, Content Rules and Exclusion Rules. To add a rule, click on the associated +Add Rule button as highlighted in the screen capture below.
Note: The Content Rules are not configurable unless you have first added content via the Content Configuration tab.
Experience Rules
Experience rules dictate how and when Forms appear, based on a visitor’s interaction and engagement with the content. This type of rule determines the timing and conditions under which Forms will be served, which enables you to control a form’s behavior.
Examples of Experience Rules
- Sequential form display: Show a form after a visitor has viewed three content assets in succession.
- Engagement threshold: Display a form when a visitor spends more than five minutes exploring your website.
- Custom trigger conditions: Set up unique conditions, like a specific page visit followed by a click on a particular link, to trigger the appearance of a form.
To set up Experience Rules:
- On the Form Strategy tab, click the +Add Rule button. The following menu appears.
- On this menu, select the form you want to use, and indicate which behavior you want the form to follow.
- Remember to Save to lock in your changes, or Cancel to exit this menu without saving.
Content Rules
Content Rules define the circumstances under which a specific form will be displayed on particular content assets. These rules allow you to decide which forms are associated with which content and control when they are presented to visitors consuming that content. You can set up multiple content rules.
Examples of Content Rules
- Form on Landing Pages: Display a specific form on landing pages to capture visitor information.
- Form on product pages: Show a form related to product inquiries on product pages.
- Form on blog posts: Present a form for newsletter sign-ups on blog posts.
To set up Content Rules:
- On the Form Strategy tab, click the associated +Add Rule button. The following menu opens.
- On this menu, select the form you want to use, and indicate which behavior you want the form to follow.
- Remember to Save to lock in your changes, or Cancel to exit this menu without saving.
Exclusion Rules
Exclusion Rules enable you to specify conditions under which certain forms will not be displayed. The rules provide control over preventing specific forms from appearing on particular content assets or within specific scenarios. Exclusion Rules are useful for tailoring the form experience and avoiding unnecessary repetition for visitors.
Examples of Exclusion Rules
- Exclude form from blog posts: Specify that a particular form should not appear on any blog post.
- Exclude form for logged-in users: Prevent a form from displaying to users who are known.
- Exclude form for specific products: Ensure that a form related to a particular product is not shown on unrelated product pages.
To set up Exclusion Rules:
- On the Form Strategy tab, click the +Add Rule button. The following Edit Exclusions menu appears.
- On this menu, select the content asset on which you do not want a form to appear. Click the dropdown arrow to see the content assets you can choose from.
- Remember to Save to lock in your changes, or Cancel to exit this menu without saving.
Rules Hierarchy
The rules have a hierarchical structure. If there is a conflict between two or more form rules, priority is as follows:
- Exclusion Rules – precedence over the other two rules.
- Content Rules – precedence over Experience rules.
- Experience Rules – lowest priority of all three rules.
Note: After you select a form, the forms library updates so you can see in which Experience this form is being used, if any.
For more information about Standard Forms, read Adding Forms and Managing the Forms Library.