Marketo is arguably one of the best acquisitions made by Adobe and it is getting increasingly popular among SMEs due to its unique features like sales partnership, cross-channel engagement, and content personalization. It also helps businesses automate experiences and personalize content and no doubt, it is gaining traction in 2023.

Being a relatively new platform for most companies, sometimes, marketing teams end up tearing their hair out due to the learning curve. While managing contacts and running campaigns is relatively simple, tasks like tracking Marketo forms using Google Tag Manager are extremely challenging.

To help our broad reader base, I have decided to create an actionable guide to help you set up Marketo forms on your website with the help of Google Tag Manager (GTM).

Let’s get started:

How to track Marketo form submission

Marketo form submission can be tracked in many ways:

• Thank you page - After form submission, if a different web page appears with a message (e.g. Thank you), a web page having a URL similar to somwebsite.com/thankyou.html
• with the data layer/listen layer in Google Tag Manager.

Marketo Form  Events

Marketo forms give event names of different types and here is the complete list:

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Track Marketo form using the data layer in Google Tag Manager

Step 1: Create a Container and Workspace in your Google Tag Manager account

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• Sign in to your Google Tag manager
  if you do not have a Google Tag Manager account you can sign up with a new account using this link - Google Tag manager account.
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• Create container and select your workspace
  If you do not know about workspace and container then please read more: Add a new container to an existing account

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Pro TIP: Create a new container and user ‘Default Workspace’

and if you have already having container and workspace then skip this step.

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Step 2: Copy the Data Layer Snippet

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Step 3: Create a Custom HTML Tag

• Go to ‘Tags’ > Click on ‘New’

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• Select Tag type > Custom HTML

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• Paste the code snippet (step 2) here

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• Select Trigger type > All Pages

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• The final configuration of the custom HTML tag looks like this

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Step 4: Create a Custom Event

• Click on ‘Triggers’ > Click on ‘New’

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• Select the ‘Custom Event’  trigger type

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• Configure custom event
  
  - Give meaningful name
  - Enter event name = mkto.form.success
  - This tag fires on = all custom events
  - Click on ‘Save’

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Step 5: Create a Data Layer Variable

• Go to ‘Variables > Click on ‘New’

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• Go to ‘Variables > Click on ‘New’

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• Configure data layer variable
  
  - Give a meaningfull name
  - Set data layer variable name = mkto.form.id
  - Click on ‘save’

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Step 6: Create Configuration Tag

Hope you know this step if not please make a configuration tag for GA4

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• Go to Tags > New > Select Configuration tag

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• Enter the measurement ID of the data stream of GA4

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Step 7: Create GA4 Event Tag

• Go to Tags > New > Select GA4 event tag
• Set configuration
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  - Set configuration tag
  - Set event name (give meaningful name)
  - Set the event parameter as form Id and select form id’s data layer variable
  - Set custom event trigger that is created

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Step 8: Preview Tag / Debug tag

• Click on ‘Preview’ and start preview / debug mode

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• Check the ‘mkto.form.submit’ event  and check tag is fired or no

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Step 9: Test data in GA4

• Open your Google Analytics account > Locate Property which is configured in the configuration tag

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• Check the event name

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• Check form Id

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Wrap Up

It can be difficult to keep track of all of your lead activities across several marketing platforms (such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn, and Google Analytics), especially when there are several Marketo forms and different sales and marketing operations teams involved.

It does seem a very lengthy process! but Tagmate’s pre-built templates help you create tags, triggers, and variables with just a few clicks.

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