Eliminate Form-Fill Burnout with Account Engagement Progressive Profiling

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Progressive Profiling is an out-of-the-box functionality and a powerful solution for B2B marketers who want to get detailed prospect data without overwhelming them with a large number of form fields to complete.

This advanced form feature allows marketers to gather additional information about prospects over time, without creating lengthy forms. On one hand, it helps the marketers gain higher conversion rates, while on the other it enhances the user experience and reduces form fill burnout.

How does Progressive Profiling work?

Through Progressive Profiling, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement replaces the form fields for which data is already collected with new fields.

So when a prospect visits your progressive profiling enabled form, it will only present the fields they haven’t

filled out before, unless the ‘Always display even if previously completed’ setting is enabled. By doing so, you gradually collect more information about your prospects over multiple interactions.

• When a prospect first interacts with your marketing content, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement should display a short form with essential fields such as first name, last name, email address, and company name. The goal is to capture basic prospect data to initiate the engagement.
• Upon subsequent engagement, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement flips previously completed fields with new ones. For instance, if the prospect has completed the Company Name field, the next time they interact with a form, it could be replaced with the Job title field.
• Through every interaction, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement will ask the prospect to provide additional data beyond what is collected already.
• Gradually you can build a comprehensive profile of your prospects, and it can be used to tailor your marketing campaigns to cater to their specific needs and preferences.

Key Benefits of Progressive Profiling

• Progressive profiling ensures that quality prospect data is collected, as the risk of data entry errors is minimized due to this gradual approach of presenting fields.
• Since the number of fields displayed at a time is limited, it makes the form submission exercise seamless, reduces burnout and increases the likelihood of getting more form submissions.
• Segmentation and targeting of prospects also becomes a lot more easier and effective as more and more prospect data is collected.
• Through better segmentation, marketers can send personalized content to the prospects and improve the chances of conversion.
• Collecting additional information regarding the needs and preferences of the prospects can aid marketers in channelizing marketing efforts in the right areas.

How to set up progressive profiling in Account Engagement

• Create Custom Fields:

Before setting up progressive profiling, you need to ensure the custom fields to collect the incremental prospect data are created.

• Create your Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Form:

This feature requires you to first create the forms you intend to use for capturing prospect data. Create a form and either add new fields or use the existing ones such as First Name, Last Name, Email and Company.

• Enable progressive profiling for your form:
  • In the form editor, click on the pencil icon adjacent to the form fields you seek to progressively profile.
    (The screenshots below show the example of progressive profiling on the ‘Department’ field, which will be displayed only when the ‘Job Title’ field is already completed.)

• Then, in the form settings dialogue box, switch to the ‘Progressive’ tab and enable progressive profiling by checking the checkbox labeled as ‘Show this field only if the prospect already has data in the following field(s)’

• When adding multiple progressive profile fields, you can also manage the sequence in which they are displayed.
• Remember to save the changes you made to the form settings, and click the ‘Confirm and save’ button before exiting the form editor.

Conclusion 

Overall, progressive profiling addresses the issue of form fill burnout by creating a dynamic, user-friendly and incremental approach to collect prospect data. It ensures quality data is collected and aids segmentation and targeting. 

This approach also ensures that marketers respect their prospect’s time and effort in the form completion process, while increasing engagement and prospect data quality. When using this approach remember to maintain a balance between asking information and honoring the prospect’s preferences.

Need help creating sophisticated prospect profiles and segmentation strategies? Reach out to the team at Sercante to get the conversation going.