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Re: Can you embed a third party form on a Wordpress landing page WITH a hidden Marketo form that will populate fields based on clicks in the third party form?

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Chris_Morris1
Level 4

Can you embed a third party form on a Wordpress landing page WITH a hidden Marketo form that will populate fields based on clicks in the third party form?

We are looking at engaging with a specific vendor to provide, essentially, a new CRM for one of our three service lines. To utilize this vendor, we would embed their forms on our Wordpress site to create leads in this new CRM. This third party would be a cloud solution, we are not hosting the CRM on our own servers.

Is it possible to have a complimentary, hidden, Marketo form which collects the data being entered into this third party form for the purposes of adding lead detail into Marketo as the lead is created on our Wordpress site? I think I remember hearing about this as a workaround/option in a few of the different Summit sessions I attended this year, but I'm not a developer and have a very tenuous grasp on this concept. Any help is appreciated.

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SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Can you embed a third party form on a Wordpress landing page WITH a hidden Marketo form that will populate fields based on clicks in the third party form?

Hi Chris,

The general answer to "Can I cross-post fields from a non-Marketo form to Marketo as well as to the form's original endpoint, to create/update leads in both places?" is an emphatic "Yes."

And if you're in control of both forms, it's extremely easy to hook a visible form together with a hidden Marketo form, just a few lines of JS.

But it would be reckless to give a thumbs-up to a specific third-party forms library (i.e. an embed which your company does not control) without analyzing it first, because it is possible for that "Yes" to change to "With difficulty" to even "No" depending on how their form logic is implemented.

For example, some forms libraries are very robust in terms of internal features, but they don't distinguish the two events Attempted to validate and submit form and Successfully submitted form (i.e. they know the difference internally, but don't have a robust external event model). As a result, it's impossible, or significantly complex, to figure out when you may cross-post the data to another system (be it Marketo or any other) because the initial form is not conclusively telling you, "OK, I just put/am about to put my data on the wire, now you can mirror the same data if you want." It's only telling you "Someone clicked a submit button"* and it's possible that the internal form validator will reject the form post, but too late, you've already mirrored it.

In sum, I'd say it's most likely going to be possible to do what you describe, but someone will have to look at how their forms fire events.

*This area is, by the way, why a completely code-free integration between Google Analytics and Marketo is impossible, since you need to make sure the GA hit only fires in the Marketo onSuccess, not on-basic-HTML-form-submit.

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4 REPLIES 4
Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Can you embed a third party form on a Wordpress landing page WITH a hidden Marketo form that will populate fields based on clicks in the third party form?

you can double POST if you want. There are threads on this method.

You could also build custom API calls to handle this.

An alternative is to tie the new CRM via API to Marketo.

Chris_Morris1
Level 4

Re: Can you embed a third party form on a Wordpress landing page WITH a hidden Marketo form that will populate fields based on clicks in the third party form?

Thank you! By the way, I'm working through your Lead Lifecycle course, and it's really helping me put some more Marketo pieces together. I've implemented many suggestions based on the lessons and it's definitely making me a better Marketo user. Thanks again!

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Can you embed a third party form on a Wordpress landing page WITH a hidden Marketo form that will populate fields based on clicks in the third party form?

Hi Chris,

The general answer to "Can I cross-post fields from a non-Marketo form to Marketo as well as to the form's original endpoint, to create/update leads in both places?" is an emphatic "Yes."

And if you're in control of both forms, it's extremely easy to hook a visible form together with a hidden Marketo form, just a few lines of JS.

But it would be reckless to give a thumbs-up to a specific third-party forms library (i.e. an embed which your company does not control) without analyzing it first, because it is possible for that "Yes" to change to "With difficulty" to even "No" depending on how their form logic is implemented.

For example, some forms libraries are very robust in terms of internal features, but they don't distinguish the two events Attempted to validate and submit form and Successfully submitted form (i.e. they know the difference internally, but don't have a robust external event model). As a result, it's impossible, or significantly complex, to figure out when you may cross-post the data to another system (be it Marketo or any other) because the initial form is not conclusively telling you, "OK, I just put/am about to put my data on the wire, now you can mirror the same data if you want." It's only telling you "Someone clicked a submit button"* and it's possible that the internal form validator will reject the form post, but too late, you've already mirrored it.

In sum, I'd say it's most likely going to be possible to do what you describe, but someone will have to look at how their forms fire events.

*This area is, by the way, why a completely code-free integration between Google Analytics and Marketo is impossible, since you need to make sure the GA hit only fires in the Marketo onSuccess, not on-basic-HTML-form-submit.

Chris_Morris1
Level 4

Re: Can you embed a third party form on a Wordpress landing page WITH a hidden Marketo form that will populate fields based on clicks in the third party form?

Excellent - thank you, Sanford! I was hoping I would see you respond to this post. Thanks so much, I appreciate your information.