Today's blog post on Keap Leadsources comes to us from Mike Hilton - current member of Keap's product team, and former member of the Keap Customer Experience team. That means that his focus was improving the experience Keap creates for their customers - and that's something I can get behind 100%.

Turns out that Mike isn't just a Customer Experience advocate; he's also a pretty sharp Keap user with a mastery of a number of tools and tie-ins that help stretch Keap. Well, today's post doesn't require any extra integrations; and it should resonate clearly with any Keap user who has ever struggled with tracking multiple leadsources through the same opt-in form. Take it away Mike!

Simplifying for Sanity

Why do some people freak out and start to sweat when they see:

• a² + b² = c²
• Microsoft Excel™
• “?firstname=~Contact.FirstName~&lastname=~Contact.LastName~&...”

The answer could be that each of the above examples is tied to discomfort and painful memories, but more than likely it is because they haven’t felt they could benefit from understanding how they work in the real world. Today, I am not going to focus on using the pythagorean theorem, or Microsoft Excel™, but I want to demystify the junk that comes after a URL

My goal is to teach you how to use Keap LeadSources to track contacts from multiple channels without having to duplicate the same webform over and over and over again.

To understand that junk (also known as the Query String) you need to understand 3 simple characters and how they work to make your life easier:

• ? - Question Mark: tells the page that you have some important information to pass along with the URL (ie - contact information, id numbers, lead sources, etc).
• = - Equal Sign: tells the page that there is a “value pair” in the URL. The value to the left is the variable name, and the value to the right is what that variable equals. For instance, firstname=Mike would be read as “For the variable named ‘firstname’ assign the value of ‘Mike’ to it.
• & - Ampersand: tells the page that there is more than one value pair in this URL

Here's an article from Keap's help center that expands on this a bit more. Let’s look at how you can use the query string and make your own “junk” after the URL actually do what you want it to do…

Assigning LeadSources in Keap:

You’ll need to do 4 things:

1. Create a lead source
2. Capture the Lead Source Id
3. Drag a hidden field to your webform and copy the hosted URL
4. Create a link that has the leadsource variable in the Query String

1) Creating a lead source -
From your dashboard:

• Click Lead Generation
• Click Create Lead Source
• Complete form & save

2) View the Lead Source ID-
From your dashboard:

• Click Lead Generation
• Click Edit/View Lead Source
• Identify the ID of your Lead Source

3) Drag a Hidden Field onto your Webform then copy the Pretty URL-
From within the Automation Builder:

• Create a webform
• Drag out a hidden field
• Select the Lead Source option
• Rename & Copy the pretty URL from the code tab.
• Publish the Form

4) Create a link to point to the webform and attach the variables to the URL-

• Paste the URL:
  https://jr207.infusionsoft.com/app/form/something-meaningful
• Add your ? to let the page know there are variables in the URL:
  https://jr207.infusionsoft.com/app/form/something-meaningful?
• Add your variable and assign its value:
  https://jr207.infusionsoft.com/app/form/something-meaningful?LeadSourceId=40

Paste this URL into your ad copy (feel free to shorten or customize it as needed):
Customized: Click Here
Shortened: https://bit.ly/my_Link

That’s it! Run a few tests on the lead sources. Change up the ID’s to other sources in your LeadSource table and verify that it is assigning them appropriately (TIP: Use a new test lead each time…as this process will not overwrite an existing lead source).

The first few times, it may take you more time to set up as you commit the steps to memory.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: For every traffic source or marketing campaign (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) you will want to have a SPECIFIC lead source so that you can tell where the leads are coming in from. Simply repeat the steps above to make sure that you create and capture the correct LeadSourceId.

If all of your traffic initially comes through the same lead capture webform, your URL will stay the same. Only the LeadSourceId will change.

Here's an example for how you can track ROI from a Facebook Ad using Keap LeadSource tracking.