How to Capture Lead Source in Pardot

Refreshed and republished on May 6, 2021

This post was originally published on October 19, 2015 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Lead source is an important data point you need to capture in order to report on the value of your marketing campaigns. This article will walk you through how to setup and track lead source within Pardot.

Where to find the Lead Source field in Pardot

The lead source field is a default field in Pardot and can be synced with Salesforce. The field can be found on the prospect’s record under additional fields.

How a prospect’s source is populated

The prospect’s source field is determined by the referring URL. The referring URL is the page the visitor was on before visiting a page. The page must have the Pardot tracking code embedded to pull in the referring URL.

For example, if a prospect’s referring URL is www.linkedin.com/profile/JennaMolby and no UTM parameters exist, Pardot populates the prospect’s source field as LinkedIn.

Here are some values that can appear in the source field:

  • Google
  • Yahoo!
  • MSN
  • Bing
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • PRweb
  • Business.com
  • Wikipedia
  • Quora
  • Eventbrite
  • Google Plus
  • Marketwire
  • MarketWatch
  • TechCrunch
  • StumbleUpon
  • Baidu
  • Craigslist
  • Ask.com
  • Reddit
  • Indeed.com
  • Feedburner
  • Monster
  • Scribd

The default sources can be extremely useful since it’s not likely all your links will have source parameters. However, try to use custom sources where you can.

How to create custom sources

To create custom lead sources in Pardot, you will need to use URL parameters in you landing page links. Pardot looks for the parameter utm_source within your URL. This will override the default Pardot lead sources, so you can use both to track lead source.

URL example

https://www.jennamolby.com/MyLandingPage.html?utm_source=Webinar

The parameter can be whatever you want, but try to have a standard way of defining your lead sources for better reporting. Here are some common lead source values:

  • List Upload
  • Partner
  • Referral
  • Phone Inquiry
  • Cold Call
  • Tradeshow
  • Webinar
  • Whitepaper
  • Website

Maunually set the source field value

You can manually set the source field value by using imports, automation rules, completion actions, segmentation rules, and engagement programs.

Questions?

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