Email sign up

[Malcolm_Price1]

We wish to have a simple email sign up form on our home page, which passes the data to Marketo form so that the subscriber can then provide more details and preferences. The home page form is built inside our custom CMS so I am wondering what method or string would be used to pass the field data across? Thanks in advance for any help.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Use a background form post. This means an invisible Marketo form that you pass values to using the Forms 2.0 JS methods.

Lots of discussion in past posts... start with this one: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Product-Discussions/How-to-Make-Truly-Custom-Forms-via-API/m-p/88751/h...

[Harish_Gupta6]

The link provided by Sandford has good explanation. Here is the few articles on the same which explains the pros and cons:

https://jennamolby.com/marketo-form-techniques-5-ways-to-implement-marketo-forms-on-your-website/

Also, as you are building the form in your CMS then better to use the rest API and submit the user data to Marketo. You can initiate the further campaign in Marketo by calling the campaign using the Rest API.
https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/

[SanfordWhiteman]

That link has flatly wrong information, Harish (it always has).

Using the REST API spells a Denial of Service attack unless you develop it properly (and almost nobody does). The background form post is superior at every level, from scale to functionality to familiarity. 

[Harish_Gupta6]

Hi Sandford,

Agreed with you. But if they build their component at CMS side then it's safer. 

Thanks

[SanfordWhiteman]

Safer in what way?

You want forms to remain operational so they can't be brought down by the merest script kiddie. That means you don't use tightly metered API calls in response to individual, untrusted user actions.

I've been saying this part for years: the Marketo forms endpoint can accept 43,200 form posts per day, per source IP.  That's tuned for real-world NAT and amounts to immense scale. In sharp contrast, the REST API is going to accept a maximum of 33,333 not-actually-form-posts per day, in total, period. (You need 3 API calls to even sort-of simulate the functionality of a Marketo form.) The 2 aren't even comparable. Show me a REST API-based form, you've shown me a DoS vulnerability. That's just the way it is.

[Malcolm_Price1]

The process we would like to implement would include a form created by our Custom CMS which asks for an email address and on completion takes you to a Marketo form which pulls the email address value so that they can complete the registration by adding in more details and completing the opt-in process. 

So @SanfordWhiteman this would work using Forms 2.0 JS? regarding pulling the form data to our Marketo form?

[SanfordWhiteman]

The process we would like to implement would include a form created by our Custom CMS which asks for an email address and on completion takes you to a Marketo form which pulls the email address value so that they can complete the registration by adding in more details and completing the opt-in process. 

So @SanfordWhiteman this would work using Forms 2.0 JS? regarding pulling the form data to our Marketo form?

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Of course! Same notion as in this other thread in fact: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Product-Discussions/Autofill-form-fields-based-on-button-click/td-p/29...