Landing page/form allowing empty required field submissions

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I have a content download form that appears to be allowing submissions with no email address or other visible field values, despite the fact that fields like the email address are required. The form is shared across multiple landing pages, but is currently only being used for one, for a paid search campaign in AdWords. The form is capturing hidden field values like UTM parameters correctly, but the visible fields are not getting posted to the new lead/person in Marketo. When I test the LP/form, it seems to be working correctly.

I did not build the form - I inherited it from a previous Marketo admin - but I did add some hidden fields a few weeks ago, and that is when the problem seems to have started.

Any suggestions on the steps to troubleshoot and fix this issue? I'm a little stumped at the moment.

Thanks!

Colin

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Colin,

Without a URL of the page with the form, hard to help you here. May be, you could add the form to another test LP and send that test LP URL ?

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Gregoire,

Here's a test LP using the form in question:

Test

[SanfordWhiteman]

So Colin, this is a Forms 1.0 form, which has pretty basic functionality (and is harder to customize if there's indeed a bug, since it doesn't have a JS API).

But when you say "appears to be allowing" submissions without an Email Address (the only required field) what are you basing this on?  If someone turns off JavaScript, or if that "someone" is a spam bot, they don't have to abide by the required fields.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanford,

By "appears to be allowing" I mean it is creating new records in Marketo with line items in the activity log for visiting the LP, submitting the form, creating a lead, visiting the TY page, etc., and the hidden fields are populated with UTM parameters from the paid search campaign. Are you saying there's a high likelihood it's a spam bot?

I realize it's a 1.0 form, there's a plan to re-do them in forms 2.0 but I was hoping to get by with the old one for a bit.

Thx,

Colin

[SanfordWhiteman]

Are you saying there's a high likelihood it's a spam bot?

I am indeed.

Since you don't appear to have added any custom validation JS  (which can bypass validation if the JS itself is broken) this is just using the basic "email" type of validation, which AFAICS works fine... if it's a human-driven browser.

[lorie_witmer4]

Hi Sanford, I'm doing some troubleshooting where leads are being created from Marketo forms without company name and failing to sync to SFDC because they are missing Company info.  I'm looking into the form and Company is a progressive profiling field and should show up, it did when I tested it.  For some reason a very  small % of those form submits are missing Company (we label it church name).  You mention in this thread that some  can turn off java script... any other suggestions to try to help troubleshoot.  It appears to be intermittent.  Landing page here.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Are the leads without Company getting every other field, and is the Email Address valid?

[Grant_Booth]

Yep, sounds like a spam bot. I suppose it could be someone disabliing javascript in their browser and trolling you, but it seems pretty unlikely.
I would recommend:
1. Replace it with a new form. Forms 1.0 is an old product which (I think) is no longer officially supported. It's only even an option in old instances. Get ahead of it before it breaks entirely.

2. Build a smart campaign which deletes the lead if a person fills out a form and their Email Address is empty. [Of course, make sure you don't have any weird custom process in your instance which is *supposed* to have no email address on a form. I can't imagine why anyone would want that, but I would still think about it].

[Anonymous]

OK, thanks gents. I'm actually relieved it's probably a spambot rather than 'real' leads that the form was not capturing correctly.

Time to accelerate the move to Forms 2.0...