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.

[Victor_Herrero]

So the required field function depends on javascript and if it is turned off or doesn't load for whatever reason, people are able to submit with empty required fields?

I'm having a similar issue myself. Leads are being created without email and I believe it has to do with a workaround I set up, to avoid "support" cases to fill out the business development contact us form

It's not a very elegant solution (because of my limited knowledge), but basically it does the following:

1. The form has a boolean field at the start, upon which every other field is dependent: support case? yes / no
2. If set to no, the rest is as usual. If set to yes, all fields get hidden by visibility rules, and only a text area is shown, with a link to our support center
   However, the submit button still shows (I had and still have no skills to use scripts to hide it, so that only the link to support shows)
3. The rest of the fields are required, so I though people wouldn't be able to submit once they selected yes for support case, since required fields get hidden

It seems it can happen that people don't fill out anything, select support case, then hit submit

A lead is created with utm fields complete (because they are hidden and pre-filled), but no name, or email address (especially this one is weird)

Here is the landing page: Contact us: Can we help you? Please, tell us about your enquiry! | Fon

[SanfordWhiteman]

When you use Visibility Rules, you're actually removing the fields from the form, not "hiding" them (despite the name). So fields that aren't shown aren't required. This makes sense, of course: there's no way a form could work otherwise.

To do what you want requires a line of JavaScript to validate that Support Case is not "yes" upon submission.

[Victor_Herrero]

When you use Visibility Rules, you're actually removing the fields from the form, not "hiding" them (despite the name). So fields that aren't shown aren't required.

I didn't know about that, thanks! That would explain everything...

To do what you want requires a line of JavaScript to validate that Support Case is not "yes" upon submission.

Making it impossible for people to submit would help. If it's not too complex I might try to attempt it myself or ask for help with it.

I would rather just hide the submit button though, and leave a link for people to click on that redirects to the support center.

The purpose was to channel that kind of request to the right place automatically, as much as possible.

Thanks for the info and tips!

[SanfordWhiteman]

And the JS is like so:

MktoForms2.whenReady(function(form){
  form.onSubmit(function(form){
    var currentValues = form.getValues();
    form.submittable(currentValues.contactussupport == "no");
  });
});

(Of course you'd need to coordinate this logic with other custom form logic, as applicable.)

[Grant_Booth]

Hi Victor,

If the Email Address is hidden on a Marketo form, it will always create a new lead if the person's browser isn't already cookied. I strongly recommend against ever using a Marketo form without the Email Address field visible.

To be honest, your use case doesn't sound like what Marketo was designed for. I would recommend using a different kind of form for submission of support cases - one that posts to whatever database you use for tracking support cases (SFDC Service Cloud, ZenDesk, etc.), so it creates a case record there.

Grant

[Victor_Herrero]

Hi Grant, thanks for your suggestion.

As Sanford says, that form is not intended for support cases, but you know how angry people are...   They will go great lengths to file their complaint and make everyone aware of how disappointed they are

They will even file it in the "wrong window", as is the case with our business development contact us form

I just wanted to discourage support cases by hiding as much of the form as possible and redirecting to the support center, but since I didn't hide the submit button, I was getting incomplete records on my CRM

[Grant_Booth]

Ahhh my misunderstanding, sorry about that. Good luck!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Victor's not allowing the case submissions, so that's okay (it's like when someone disables the Submit button for partners and suggests another means of contact).

[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

[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...

[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?