Blind Submit Forms in Marketo

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I am new on the Marketo platform and was looking to build Blind Submit Forms in Marketo.

I am very well experienced with Eloqua where we had implemented Blind Submit Forms and found it very useful and effective for capturing customer responses for events as well as any marketing activity which needs to trigger a Salesforce action/alert to the sales teams.

In a nut shell, I would like to send a contact (known and present in the database) an email with 2 buttons, 'Yes' & 'No'. Both buttons trigger the auto filling of a form in the back end of Marketo, and, based on the button clicked, trigger a unique set of actions. The 'Yes' button once clicked, will trigger a Thank you page, an email sending the contact further details of the event and a notification to the sales person of the territory (based on the contact's location).

The 'Yes' button once clicked, will trigger a Thank you page, an email sending the contact further details of the event and a notification to the sales person of the territory (based on the contact's location). The 'No' button will trigger a 'We will miss you' page and the contact to a list which will be used in a segment post the event to send out highlights of the event.

(An alternative version of this is, the 'Yes' button triggers a creation of a lead for the campaign in Sales force while the 'No' button triggers a survey form opening)

I am sure Marketo can do this I am not sure how to set it up and the best way to begin.

Regards,

Cliff Pereira

[Pavel_Plachky]

Hi Cliff, you can do this by setting a trigger campaign that will react to an email yes click. You specify Clicks link in email,  the email and the link in your trigger. In your flow steps you set up a step for sending an email with additional details and anorher step for sending an alert to sales.

For the no responses, you set up another trigger campaign this time reacting to the no click and in your flow steps you specify adding the person to a list

No hidden forms necessary IMO.

I hope it helps

Pavel

[SanfordWhiteman]

While I appreciate everybody's optimism about a Clicks Email trigger, you're forgetting the mail scanners that follow all links in an email.

It's for this reason that we can't use concepts like "one-click unsubscribe" anymore.

And actually, an auto-submitted form and Fills Out Form trigger can have the same problem when they hit an advanced scanner that opens up the destination page with JS enabled.

Unfortunately (though it's a good thing in the larger war against hackers) you can't trust any vital function like event registration to be done without an additional manual click.

[Pavel_Plachky]

Interesting, I was not aware of such email scanners. That would mean the email click-through rates we are seeing are higher than actual clicks by the people we are targeting. So the options are either to have false positives or to require the user to submit a form or at least click on a button (with a known visitor form) to confirm.

I would hope that Marketo could discard all the clicks from an email scanner with a rule that if there is a burst of clicks on all the links at the same time, including the CTA and unsubscribe links, not to mention all the social icons, such clicks are not to be counted or recorded.

[Dan_Stevens_]

When you have some time, head over to this thread for more info:

Spam filters registering clicks?

We now use some additional tactics to weed out those scanners - specifically when the CTA includes a visit to landing page/direct download of PDF.  In addition to the "Clicks email" trigger:

NOTE: for direct links to PDFs, we use Sanford's proven and effective method here: http://blog.teknkl.com/stop-using-direct-download-links-unless-you-like-losing-tracking/

And then here is where we add some extra filtering:

• We include a 15 minute wait step since we've seen delays in writing the "visits web page" activity back to the lead record in Marketo
• We then include a choice of "visited web page" to ensure the user that clicked also visited the landing page (or viewed the PDF file)
• Another small wait step just to ensure program status was properly defined
• And then if the lead didn't receive the appropriate program status, we remove them from the flow.  Otherwise, they would proceed with all of the other flow steps around attribution (last touch channel, program, date, programID); sending campaign alerts (if necessary), etc.

Obviously this won't fix the standard/basic email reporting in Marketo (e.g., email performance, email insights), but it will help at the program membership/success level.

[SanfordWhiteman]

...that if there is a burst of clicks on all the links at the same time, including the CTA and unsubscribe links...

Supposedly such heuristics are under development.

[Anonymous]

Thinking out loud here, what if the first email click was followed up with

a second email which works like a double opt in that confirms the first

click ?

On Aug 8, 2017 00:50, "Sanford Whiteman" <marketingnation@marketo.com>

[SanfordWhiteman]

Sure, that will definitely eliminate false positives... but if you generate a bunch of unsolicited confirmations that itself isn't great for your rep.

[Pavel_Plachky]

One more note: make sure you have a special link for forwarding the email using Marketo's forward to friend token. I am not sure if your leads are likely to forward the offer, but if they do using the email client forward button as opposed to Marketo's forward link, then the recipient would register using the forwarder's identity.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Just note the following with FtF:

• Most people, even though the functionality exists, will still use the most effortless path to forward their emails to colleagues/friends (and that's to simply use the "forward" function of an email client).  Most don't even think about the fact that their unique tracking links are contained in the email.
• When FtF is used, the person on the receiving end automatically is "unsubscribed" in Marketo.

[Pavel_Plachky]

Good point about the unsubscribe, Dan. It means that if the forwarding feature is to be used in the anticipated manner, the confirmation email would have to be set up as operational.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I would strongly advise against this - especially if you are dealing with strict anti-spam laws (CASL, GDPR (next May), etc.).  Never mark an email as operational that includes a marketing/promotional message.

I wasn't referring specifically to "unsubscribe", but depending on how you have your unsubscribe confirmation page setup, that will come into play as well.  I was referring to any of links.  For example, our CMO will often forward relevant event/webinar emails to her leadership team.  When we click on those links to go to the registration page, sometimes they're pre-filled with her name (another reason that we never use form pre-fill - especially since we do business in countries where data privacy/security laws are very strict - like Germany).

[Anonymous]

Very good point. GDPR is going to have legal implications for any form of

data sharing, even if it is by a customer accidentally. (The onus of

responsibility will fall on the team setting the system up to work that

way.)

This is something I came across in Eloqua as well and generally, would set

up a secondary link 'If you are not XXXXX, then click here to register'But

that didn't work too well as customers just never read it and we would

get messed up results on the form submissions.

Pre-filled forms to have a higher conversion rate though. So what if the

form is set to only prefill non-confidential information i,e. first and

last name, the company name but not a phone number or email address?

Regards,

Cliff Pereira

Head – Marketing Automation

Meritgroup

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 7:04 PM, Dan Stevens <marketingnation@marketo.com>

[Dan_Stevens_]

It depends on what your definition is of non-confidential information.  In our company, any PII (personally identifiable information) is considered confidential.  And I agree, pre-fill does result in higher conversion rates.  It's important to evaluate/weigh the risks vs. benefits for your specific situation.

[Pavel_Plachky]

If the email is in response to clicking the button "Yes, please register me" then I do not see much problem sending the email even to somebody who did not explicitly opt in. Clicking on that button is good enough reason for getting an email, probably under any data privacy law.

Cliff Pereira​, only the person who was on the receiving end of the forward to friend action will be unsubscribed, and most likely only if they were a new person. I think it is Marketo protecting you from sending unsolicited email to somebody about whom you do not have any other information than name, email and the fact that specific person wanted to share with them this specific email.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Sorry, I was referring to the email that was being forwarded, to promote whatever it is that you're promoting.

[Anonymous]

A naive question as I am still new to the platform, if what I understand is

correct, if the original recipient forwards the email, that person gets

auto unsubscribed?

Is that correct and if yes, is there a logic for why that is set to work in

that manner?

Regards,

Cliff Pereira

Head – Marketing Automation

Meritgroup

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 6:58 PM, Pavel Plachky <marketingnation@marketo.com>

[Dan_Stevens_]

Here's some more information on FtF functionality:

Forward to Friend Deep Dive

'Forward to a Friend Link' in Emails - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

[Anonymous]

Thanks Pavel!

This was super helpful!

One last question on forms:

How do I prepopulate a form that is not on my company web page? (assume the

customer receives an email with a link to that page with the form embedded,

not a iframe)

I know how to it for a Marketo landing page, just can't seem to figure out

how to do it for a non-Marketo page.

Regards,

Cliff Pereira

Head – Marketing Automation

Meritgroup

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 6:26 PM, Pavel Plachky <marketingnation@marketo.com>

[Pavel_Plachky]

You can't prefill forms on non-Marketo landing pages unless you use iframes or jump through some rather complicated JavaScript hoops. Definitely not out of the box. I suggest you contact Sanford Whiteman​ in case you want to explore the required customizations.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Pavel!

Just a question, in Eloqua, we used a form submission as the marketing

activities that would trigger the creation of a lead in a campaign in

Salesforce.

In Marketo too, The form submission would trigger the lead creation in

Salesforce hence the thought behind having the hidden form.

Is there away that the button click too can be used to create a lead?

(specific to that email. I would not want every customer who clicks on an

email to be considered as a lead for the sales to follow up.)

Regards,

Cliff Pereira

Head – Marketing Automation

Meritgroup

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 6:08 PM, Pavel Plachky <marketingnation@marketo.com>