Can you embed a form in an email?

[Tara_Mason]

Hi,

I am looking to embed a form within an email to have some fields updated in Marketo. I am still using the older email platform (not 2.0) and I receive the error message  "Email Message has script tags". Do I have to create a script token?

I am asking a yes or no question and the answer would (ideally) override the current value in Marketo. Is this possible?

Thanks for your help!

Tara

[Casey_Grimes]

Short answer: no. There's spotty support for forms and many clients consider them to be a security risk. Moreover, if you're trying to embed a Marketo Forms 2.0 the way you would embed it on a landing page, you'd need to extract it out into the core HTML of the form itself. What you could do as an alternative in this case is listen for someone clicking on either a yes or no link and then running a Smart Campaign to update the value in Marketo.

[Tara_Mason]

Thank you for the reply Courtney. Are you able to provide a little more detail or a link to a doc that could help me with your alternative suggestion?

Thank you,

Tara

[Casey_Grimes · Accepted solution]

Hi Tara,

Sure--it's one of those things that sounds more complicated than it actually is. If you're asking a Yes/No question for instance, you'd make two links or buttons or whatever and assign each a unique ID (either via id="whatever" in HTML or in the Advanced tab of the Insert Link box.) Have the actual URL go to a plain "Thank you for your response"-type page for both.

From there, you'd set up a Smart Campaign that listens for "Clicks Link in Email" with the yes value ID (or the no value ID) via constraint, and then run a Change Data Value flow step to overwrite whatever field with the value you want.

You can get even more creative with this if you'd like: I have a client who does something like this to determine how to handle an advanced event registration. As long as you're asking a relatively simple question in the email itself, you don't really need a form.

[Tara_Mason]

Thanks Courtney.

This is great information. I never thought about it like that. I will test it out and see how it goes.

Thanks again!

Tara

[Dan_Stevens_]

Have a look at my reply in this thread (where we use this same approach in event invitations that include RSVP buttons (accept/decline):

RSVP Yes or No CheckBox Help

And here's another event workflow for APPROVING someone's request to attend an event.  Specifically, the email alert that gets sent to the marketer to either APPROVE or DENY the request:

Re: Event Registration Cap

[Tara_Mason]

Thanks Dan. I will take a look at your recommendation as well. I may circle back if I require more info or assistance.

Thanks, Tara

[Kim_Gandy1]

Courtney Grimes​, to clarify, you don't recommend serving forms in email because some email clients will block it due to security risk?