Form question, checking membership upon submit

[Michael_McGowa1]

I am setting up a Marketo landing page with a form for a contest that is for our existing members. However, if someone comes to this form (i.e. they are emailed the link to the landing page) and they are not an existing member, then I would like this person to register to become a member.

Therefore, If someone fills out the contest form, when they click the submit button, I would like Marketo to confirm that the person is a member (by checking the email address), and if they are, let them know they are entered. If not, I would like them to go to a different page that would tell them that this is only for members but become a member by clicking here (then link to our signup form).

Is this functionality possible?

I would rather do it this way rather than use progressive profiling or the custom HTML form for known users since the functionality used there does not fit our needs.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[SanfordWhiteman]

A member of what?

Not a trick question, I mean literally how is an email in your Marketo database flagged as being part of this contest or not?

[Michael_McGowa1]

Hi Sanford

People are submitting an essay and to get the people who entered the contest, I would create a smart list of where the essay field is not empty. So another flow would be:

· Person comes to a landing page with a form where a person enters their email address

· If person is found then they are taken to another page where they can enter their information plus essay and enter the contest

· If person is not found, take them to the rules page with a link to a membership registration form

Hope that helps.

[SanfordWhiteman]

OK, then the answer I was looking for is "If a field on the lead is non-empty."   

As opposed to program or list membership, presence of a custom object etc.

This is a good answer, and indeed it is possible, provided you're using a Marketo LP, to create a Lead Lookup Form -- ultimately the same question asked here: Is it possible to judge by entering a form whether it is a mail magazine member?​

[Jay_Jiang]

You can use dynamic content to only allow a segment that meet a smart list criteria to see the landing page. The smart list, as you have suggested could be "essay field is not empty"...

[SanfordWhiteman]

True, but the segmentation ends up having the same requirements as using the field directly: you must poll for the session to be associated with the segment on the back end, you can't expect it to be associated on the next pageview.

So in the end, the segmentation is just another thing to maintain.

[Michael_McGowa1]

Thanks for the reply Sanford, but here is a question that has come up. If someone has cleared their cache, cookies or visit the landing page with their browser in private mode, the email address box would be empty. If they were to enter an email not found in our database then they are still going to the enter essay form (the second bullet in my previous reply) when I would like to take them to a member registration form. Is there a work around to this?

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can detect anything about them via the lead lookup form. If their looked-up record doesn't have other essential fields populated besides Email, you can take them to a registration form.