Cookie Question

[heatherthedev]

I have a client who wants to:

1. Import a .csv of contacts (who have never visited the site or submitted a form to have a cookie set before)
2. Send them an email with a link to a landing page w/ a form
3. Have their email address be pre-populated in the form

I’m under the impression that unless someone has visited the site and submitted a form, there’s no way to have the contact form pre-populated. Is this correct, or am I misunderstanding how the cookies/UTK works?

[robertainslie]

Hi @heatherthedev,

You wouldn’t be able to rely on a cookie to do this pre-population, but you could include the email address in the linked URL.

HubSpot forms will pull a value from the URL query string in a name=value pair format and insert the value into a form field, as long as the ‘name’ component exactly matches a form field. The URL can be customized using personalization tokens.

So, in the email editor, you would create a link like:
<a href="http://www.domain.com/page?email={{contact.email}}">click here</a>

The {{ contact.email }} token would personalize for ever contact. When they hit the landing page, the email field on the form would auto-fill with the query string data. You could repeat this with any contact propery, such as first name and last name.

One note: On second visit however, the cookies should be tied to the individual contact, assuming that the portal has email identity tracking turned on.