Overview

Web Form's Merge Tags feature helps you increase lightbox conversion rates by allowing your website visitors to submit forms more efficiently. This added efficiency is achieved through Merge Tag's ability to seamlessly pre-populate lightbox form fields with previously collected visitor data.  When Merge Tags are utilized, a visitor who has provided their email address via a lightbox submission will not be required to re-enter their email address when they are shown subsequent lightbox forms. In short, Merge Tags provides you with an effective way to progressively capture additional visitor information while requiring a minimal number of user actions.

Merge tag data

The data utilized by Merge Tags is stored in localStorage and can be referenced in text fields, HTML, images, buttons, custom fields, ghost text, and hidden fields. There are two types of merge tags: GLOBAL and lightbox-specific. The GLOBAL merge tag format for an email address text field is [FORM_GLOBAL_EMAIL]. A lightbox-specific merge tag references the Lightbox Short ID in the second parameter of the merge tag. The merge tag format for an email address text field is [FORM_{BOX-SHORT-ID}_EMAIL]. If the Lightbox Short ID of a particular lightbox is 1011, the merge tag for the email field would be [FORM_1011_EMAIL].

Fallback values

You can provide fallback values within a merge tag. Fallback values are appended to the end of a merge tag and are preceded by an underscore . For example, the merge tag [FORM_GLOBAL_PHONE_444-444-4444] has a fallback value of "444-444-4444". When a merge tag includes a fallback value, this value is used to pre-populate the form field in the event that there is no corresponding data available in localStorage. When no fallback value is present and there is no data in localStorage, Web Forms simply replaces the merge tag with an empty string.

Merge tag examples

• [FORM_GLOBAL_EMAIL]
• [FORM_GLOBAL_FIRST_NAME]
• [FORM_165909_LAST_NAME]
• [FORM_273921_NAME]
• [FORM_342017_CUSTOM_17_fallback value here]
• [FORM_GLOBAL_CUSTOM_3_tim smith]
• [FORM_GLOBAL_PHONE_444-444-4444]
• [FORM_794303_EMAIL_your@email.com]

Use merge tags with a lightbox

1. Create a lightbox that invites your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. 

2. Create a second lightbox to display a form to visitors who submitted the lightbox form you created in Step 1. The form in the second lightbox should have two textbox fields for "email" and "job title".

3. Add the [FORM_GLOBAL_EMAIL] merge tag in the Input Default Text field for the "email" field.

4. This is what the lightbox will look like to a visitor who has already submitted their email address:

5.  Here's another option. If you want to forego the email field altogether, you can do so by using an "instant subscribe button". This way, when a new subscriber clicks on the button, their email will be seamlessly added to your “Android Newsletter” list.

You can set this up by adding a “FORM_GLOBAL_EMAIL” merge tag to a custom “Hidden Field”, as shown here: