If your Form report shows a handful of email addresses submitting over and over instead of the number of unique people you expected, the cause is usually how Act-On's browser cookies track submissions - not a problem with the Form itself.
Quick Reference (Advanced Users)
- Check duplicates at Content > Forms, hover the Form, click View report, then click the submit total in the SOURCE table.
- An asterisk next to an email means Act-On overwrote the submission using a recognized cookie from a prior visit.
- Fixes: enable Always Append in the Form's properties, suppress cookie logging, or set the browser to a no-cookie mode for shared or event computers.
Check Your Duplicate Submissions
- Go to Content > Forms.
- Locate the Form you want in the list, hover your mouse over it, and click View report.
- In the SOURCE table, click the total number of submits in the report.
If there is an asterisk next to some of the duplicated email addresses, this means that the data has been overwritten by Act-On due to a recognized cookie from a previous submission. You can hover your mouse over that row to see the address that was provided.
Why This Happens
If Act-On can identify the user's browser cookie, it will make sure that the Form submission is linked to the contact information for that same person. This is useful for allowing contacts to add or update personal information by submitting the Form again.
If multiple people 'inherit' the cookie from one of your contacts, this will tell the system that the same person is submitting the Form multiple times. This can be caused by:
- Forwarding an email with a link to a landing page with the Form
- Submitting the Form multiple times on a single computer
- Sharing a link to a non-Act-On web page that has an Act-On Form embedded in it
These actions may cause a user's cookie to carry over to another person. Even if different personal information is submitted, Act-On will tie this back to the original contact.
Solution Options
Append Feature
By checking Always Append in the Form's properties, you can force Act-On to view each submission as a separate contact. The Form submission list will always show a unique email address and name for every entry.
Note that with this feature enabled, contacts cannot resubmit the Form to update their information (eg., if they spelled their name incorrectly the first time). Their separate submissions will be treated as unique contacts.
Suppress Cookies
You can choose to suppress cookie logging on Form submission to prevent cookies from being used altogether. See that article for more information.
No-Cookie Browsing
If you want contacts to submit a Form using your computer (eg., at an in-person event), make sure that browser is set to a mode that does not track cookies.
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