Good marketing depends on good data. That doesn’t just mean collecting information, it means collecting the right data, making sure it’s accurate, and being able to act on it quickly.
On Heroku, developers build the tools that make this possible. They create fast, lightweight applications that handle form submissions, sync with CRMs, trigger automations, and even generate real-time reports. These tools are in use every day by marketing teams running product launches, partner campaigns, and customer engagement programs, and their capacities are to be further expanded and refined in coming years.
Building the Right Tool for the Job
Instead of relying on bulky CMS plugins or rigid form builders, developers working with Heroku often build small, purpose-built apps that do exactly what a campaign needs. These are full-featured web applications, but they’re scoped tightly to their job: fast to develop, easy to test, and straightforward to maintain.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Event sign-up forms that capture attendee data, validate fields, and connect directly to campaign workflows.
Location-aware landing pages that adjust content or track user behavior based on geography or referral source.
Surveys that adapt as users answer questions, storing responses in a structured, reusable format.
These tools can be branded, A/B tested, and adjusted mid-campaign without needing to rebuild everything. Heroku’s lightweight runtime and Git-based deploys make it easy to experiment and roll out improvements quickly.
🛠 Real Story: A Partner Portal That Tracks What Matters
A global CRM company was managing a large network of partners through a web portal that had grown outdated. Over time, it became harder to maintain, slower to use, and limited in how it tracked partner activity. Core data—like certifications earned or product demos completed—was siloed or missing altogether.
Oktana’s developers stepped in to rebuild the entire platform architecture using Heroku and Lightning Web Components (LWC). The new version:
Simplified login and access management through a custom-built Org Picker, reducing access-related issues by 45%.
Improved navigation and page load performance, making the portal easier to use for thousands of partners.
Connected to multiple data sources, including MuleSoft APIs and Snowflake, to display unified partner progress in a visual Scorecard.
Enabled Slack-based AI support, helping partners find what they need faster without opening tickets.
In just three months, the portal saw a 16% increase in lead submissions. More importantly, internal teams finally had visibility into what partners were doing—so they could offer support, recognize top performers, and find areas to improve.
Real-Time Sync with Marketing Platforms
In most campaigns, forms and tools aren’t useful if the data just sits in an inbox. Developers often wire Heroku apps directly into marketing platforms—pushing new entries into subscriber profiles, triggering email journeys, or updating lead scores.
For example:
When a user signs up for a webinar, their data is pushed immediately into the marketing system, flagging them for follow-up.
If someone downloads a whitepaper, that action gets logged, and their profile is tagged with interests that influence future targeting.
These direct connections reduce lag, remove manual work, and keep marketing data fresh and actionable.
Data That Arrives Clean and Ready
Poor-quality data creates noise and slows everything down. On Heroku, developers write custom middleware to clean, validate, and reshape data before it hits the database or downstream systems.
They build logic to:
Enforce required fields and value types, like ensuring phone numbers are formatted consistently.
Map fields from different form types into a common schema.
Flag duplicates or spam-like submissions before they enter the CRM.
This approach ensures teams aren’t stuck cleaning up data later—and that the information flowing into segmentation, automation, or analysis tools is actually usable.
Modular Apps That Don’t Step on Each Other
One of Heroku’s strengths is that each deployed service or app is isolated. Developers take advantage of this to keep tools focused and modular.
A few real-world examples:
A microsite running a referral campaign lives in one app.
An admin tool that reports submissions for legal review lives in another.
A real-time coupon tracking backend sits separately so it can scale under traffic spikes without slowing the rest down.
This modularity lets different teams update different parts of the system without stepping on each other’s work. If one tool needs maintenance, the others stay online.
Dashboards Built Alongside the Apps
Collecting data is only part of the equation—you also need to understand what’s happening. On Heroku, developers often connect tools like Metabase, Chart.js, or even custom-built UIs to the same databases their forms use. This enables:
Campaign dashboards that show submissions by region, source, or time of day.
Internal tools for sales or marketing to pull reports without waiting on analysts.
Alerts when behavior shifts suddenly, such as a sudden drop in signups or a spike in bounce rates.
By building dashboards into the same environment as the data tools, teams get visibility faster—and they don’t have to wait for nightly data syncs or exports.
Built-In Security Without Extra Overhead
Security is part of how Heroku works. Apps run in isolated environments, connections are encrypted by default, and developers can integrate with SSO using Salesforce Identity.
For teams with stricter requirements, developers can deploy in Heroku Shield or Private Spaces. These setups support:
HIPAA and GDPR compliance
Data residency controls
Audit logs and stricter access policies
That means even regulated teams can move quickly without giving up the security controls they need.
Heroku gives developers a straightforward platform for building marketing tools that aren’t just quick to launch, but easy to evolve. Instead of forcing campaigns to fit into rigid systems, developers build apps that fit the campaign—and connect smoothly into the rest of the stack.
Whether it’s capturing leads, tracking behavior, or creating internal dashboards, Heroku supports teams that want full control without the overhead. At Oktana, developers help teams design these systems from the ground up: custom, clean, and ready for what comes next.
Want to see how better tools lead to better insights? Let’s talk.
