Best way to auto-register leads in a webinar who EMAIL Me?

[Anonymous]

We've got a book launch coming up. Anyone who buys the book can join an exclusive webinar if they email us a receipt of the book. What is the best way to auto-enroll those who do? We use ReadyTalk. Two ways I can think of:

1 - I check my email every night, and manually enter their email address into a Marketo form, that triggers an auto confirmation. Downside, no immediate confirmation and requires me to manually do this!

2 - I set up an auto-response canned response and give them the link to register themselves. Person has to take another action to actually get into it.

Other options? Which of the above do you think is better?

[Anonymous]

Christine,

If you have Salesforce, you can do some cool things with Email to Case - look for a specific subject line sent to a specific inbox. You can send an auto-confirmation out of Salesforce, or tick a box that syncs back down to Marketo to trigger a confirmation.

Requires a bit of work, but doable and automated.

[Dan_Stevens_ · Accepted solution]

Christine - using option #1, Marketo will cookie you as the lead.  You should always try to avoid submitting a form on behalf of another user.  We always manually upload these types of leads manually to the program and have a trigger campaign that sends out the email confirmation.

[Michelle_Tizian]

Christine, I agree with Dan above.  I can't tell you what a nightmare it was when our sales did something similar when they were submitting a form on behalf of someone else.  

[Anonymous]

Okay I'll do a bit of research on Charlie's recommendation - never heard of that before!

In the meantime, I've just set up a canned auto-responder in my Gmail to confirm receipt of their email and letting them know that they'll get a webinar confirmation within 3 business days - after I have a chance to manually upload them into the program. I don't like the idea of having ppl wait so long, but I suppose we do have to review the email and make sure there is a book receipt so an auto-register might not work anyway.

[Josh_Hill13]

Christine,

I like Charlie's recommendation, but that's going to be hard for you to implement. if you do the canned response, you should be really clear about the subject line and setup the filters to manage that properly. But you might get scammed by a couple of folks if they don't attach the receipt. Probably not a big deal.
 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the added guidance on Charlie's recommendation. I'm just going with the auto-resonder then - set it up for all emails directed to a specific alias. They get a message that they'll get the actual event confirmation in 3 days, which, yes does mean I have to upload members every 3 days! Oh well.