Creating a Cancel Registration-form

[Laura_Håkansson]

Hello,

I'm still quite new with Marketo and was wondering if you can create a "cancel registration" form for an event that would help keep the Registered-list updated without having to manually set the registered people to cancelled when receiving cancellation emails. I couldn't find any information nor guides to do this, so I was wondering if it's even possible.

Any advice or help is very much appreciated.

Thank you!

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Laura,

Of course, this is possible and will take a form, a landing page and a workflow. It would also be better if the channel has a "cancelled" status.

But the key, IMHO, is : will people really fill out that form when they decide not to come to your event ? Will they even remember where to find that landing page ? Best case, they will send an email, I am afraid.

So I personally would not spend too much time on this. But it also might be a cultural thing and depending the country in which you are operating, that might be different.

-Greg

[Josh_Hill13]

Agree. Unless it's some large paid event there's no reason to do this. And if you had a giant tradeshow where people pay more than $100/seat, you wouldn't do most of that in Marketo.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Totally agree that you can't force people to click "I'm not coming," on a reminder email, but even if the form exists for Sales to use that's better than having to do a manual status change.

If you're capping registrations it's important to know about cancellations, because each cancellation is another slot somebody else can take.

If it's all after the fact, the difference between "responsibly cancelled" and just "registered but did not attend" is probably negligible (though the first group did take an action that might be worth nurturing on).

[Trevor_Parsell]

Hey Laura,

What is the current process people go through to cancel registration? Are they sending you an email and you manually remove them from the program?

You could create a landing page with a simple form or button and set up a smart campaign to remove people from the program when the "Cancel Registration" button is clicked.

Thanks!

[Laura_Håkansson]

Thanks!

Yeah, in our confirmation and "see you tomorrow" emails we ask people to let us know if they can't make it. Now we are manually changing their statuses after receiving cancellation emails. A "Cancel registration" button would save time for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Hi Laura,

I agree with others that a cancel form is a lot of effort by you and also not likely to be utilized by participants (forget the URL, ignore it in emails etc).

My suggestion is to send out a registration reminder email - 1 week and 1 day prior to your event and include a link that goes to a confirmation cancellation landing page. Trigger smart campaign for cancellation by clicking on link.

Here is an example I received just today from Marketo -

Example email -

Example Landing Page -

[SanfordWhiteman]

My suggestion is to send out a registration reminder email... and include a link that goes to a confirmation cancellation landing page.

Hmm, I definitely don't like that approach. Everyone whose emails are processed by a mail scanner will then magically cancel. One-click anything is a bad idea.

I think we're getting distracted by the idea of "How do people get to the cancellation form?" (and I totally like your communications on this btw) when the general question is "Will anyone make use of a cancellation form if offered?"

I'm not convinced making the form is difficult, nor am I convinced that asking people to confirm their cancellation with a button click is an encumbrance.

As I noted, when capping registrations, it's not just a nice-to-have but essential that people can take themselves out of the count. One no-show out of 50 that can be replaced by someone else is worth it.

[Laura_Håkansson]

Thank you for the examples!

We are already sending out reminders, so now we would also just like to add a "cancel registration" link to them

[SanfordWhiteman]

So you need a form that's linked to a back-end un-registration Flow. What's the challenge exactly?