Any event wait list workaround?

[Anonymous]

Hi all. I am returning to Marketo after several years working with Eloqua. One thing we desperately need that Eloqua has that Marketo doesn't apparently is having wait lists for Events. We have events throughout the year where we are limited in the number of people we can have attend. We have a 15-city tour coming up which would be very cumbersome to manage manually and would love some way to automate the procedure and once the attendance cap is reached people get put on a wait list and are sent an email saying the event is full. If anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Josh_Hill13 · Accepted solution]

Dan,

I think Heather had a thread on this. You can see this guide for help
http://hooshmarketing.com.au/blog/event-marketing/four-tips-to-building-a-limited-capacity-event-in-marketo

the reality is there is a manual component if you fully use Marketo for the event. If you are also using cvent or eventbrite, you can have those systems manage that.

My recommendation would be to

1. add a Wait Listed status to your events (similar to the one on Webinars)
2. add a Reg # as a custom field
3. follow directions in the article above.

[Sivaraman_Mani]

Looks like the above URL has been changed to https://www.hooshmarketing.com/blog/email-marketing/four-tips-to-building-a-limited-capacity-event-i...

[Madison_Lundqui]

Hi there @Sivaraman_Mani - The link you pasted in 2019 doesn't work anymore :(. Do you know if that post still exists? I'm trying to look into creating a waitlist workaround and would love to see what the original post had suggested.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Josh!! I will check out that guide. We'd like to do it all in Marketo but we do have a Cvent account that I could potentially use if need be.

[Jep_Castelein2]

Josh's article has the right approach. Currently there is no way to keep an even registration counter in Marketo. We've designed something similar for another customer. The external app does not only keep a count, but will also redirect to a 'wait list' page when the event is full, and will redirect to an 'event closed' page after the event has taken place. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Jep. We're a bit under the gun with getting this thing out so I think we're going to have to do the Cvent route. This might be something to consider in the future. Hopefully Marketo can implement this as it's a pretty crucial function for us.

[Josh_Hill13]

I think there's an idea for this, so vote it up.

[Anonymous]

Yep. I searched for existing ideas and didn't see any so I started my own. Let me know if you have run across one already and I'll vote it up. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

My boss really likes Eventbrite so we might go in that direction so your suggestion was right on the money!