Marketo Landing Page vs Unbounce vs WordPress

[Veronica_Flore2]

Hi! My company's in the middle of doing a website redesign, therefore updating the look and feel of our landing pages is a must. We're working with an outside web development team for the overall website but we have a decision to make in terms of what is best to host our landing pages.

These are the options:

• WordPress landing pages with a Marketo embedded form (created by the web dev team)
• Unbounce (managed and created by the marketing team)
• Marketo Landing Pages (created by the web dev team, updated based on case by the marketing team)

Based on everyone's expertise, what would be the best?

I would appreciate the feedback.

Thanks!

Veronica

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Veronica,

attention, the Unbounce / Marketo integration is dangerous for the security of your data. Do not use it. Read more on this here: I want to know is it worth spending on Unbounce when you already have Marketo?

Also, Unbounce will not allow you to get prefil on the pages, while Marketo LP do. So, unless you have a very serious case to use unbounced, it's probably a better choice to put some money in the development of some really nice looking Marketo LP templates.

-Greg

[Veronica_Flore2]

Hi Greg,

Thank you for your input. I've used Unbounce before but did not had the important piece of information regarding the security of our data. So Unbounce is out of the picture.

What can you say about building the landing pages in our Wordpress CMS instead of Marketo. Our developer had a conversations with us regarding maintaining the look and field of the new website by using WordPress with a Marketo embedded form. Not entirely sure what are the pros and cons regarding this, especially around the reporting capabilities (Google Analytics vs Marketo landing page report).

I would appreciate more feedback on this.

Thanks,

Veronica

[SanfordWhiteman]

As long as you don't use Unbounce's "official" Marketo integration (it's not just security-risky but fundamentally broken) and instead integrate with the Marketo forms endpoint directly (this is easy to do) then you don't need to worry about your data.

But the point about PreFill stands strong! (Unless you use custom development and ensure that dev doesn't introduce exactly the same risk described above.)

Similarly, a Marketo form's Progressive Profiling won't work (obviously) on Unbounce. I happen to think Unbounce is a great platform that makes beautiful pages. Just know what you are/aren't getting.

As for using WP with a Marketo embedded form, in addition to the same PreFill question as above, you're right to flag the reporting question. WP-hosted LPs can't be reported on (at the LP level) in Mkto, though there are lots of ways to get, frankly, better info from another analytics platform. (Although having it all within Marketo has benefits of its own.)

[Anonymous]

Hey there, this came on our radar (I work at Unbounce as a software developer). I'd love to answer your questions regarding our Unbounce + Marketo integration.

The topic of security-risky came on our radar. We are GDPR compliant and want our customers to feel at ease to trust our ability to safely & securely handle your lead data. We'd love to answer questions/concerns if there's uncertainty about the level of security we provide to our customers!

As a starting point, please check out our GDPR page: https://unbounce.com/gdpr/

[SanfordWhiteman]

Since you don't regulate your use of the Marketo API, you introduce a Denial of Service vector against all the client's Marketo integrations. That's really what is meant by "security," not data compromise/exfiltration but a DoS shutdown.

But more important, you're using the API incorrectly, since web analytics sessions are not associated as expected by Marketo users. FIxing this would require you to use even more API calls, however. You should toss out your REST API-based integration and do it the simpler and smarter way, using the Marketo Forms JS API.

[Anonymous]

Hey Sanford, thanks for responding. I'm not quite following how our use of the API introduces a Denial of Service vector. Our lead-based integration are designed to provide near realtime push of leads generated on Unbounce Landing Pages to Marketo accounts. We make a best effort attempt at retrying delivery when a customer's portal is not responding. I don't see how the Unbounce integration would be any different from other integrations such that Unbounce would be treated exceptionally as a DoS. From skimming the Forms JS API docs, a browser still needs to talk to Marketo's API, but now potentially it's a distributed attack from all the different browser sessions.

On the topic of security, the response by Gregiore is slightly different from your answer "dangerous for the security of your data", which is different from your point on Denial of Service. We'd love to clarify this PoV as well.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Our lead-based integration are designed to provide near realtime push of leads generated on Unbounce Landing Pages to Marketo accounts. We make a best effort attempt at retrying delivery when a customer's portal is not responding. I don't see how the Unbounce integration would be any different from other integrations such that Unbounce would be treated exceptionally as a DoS.

Because you will use one API call in response to an anonymous user activity.  Marketo instances share their API calls across all connected integrations.

Retrying is in fact even worse because it means someone can hit Unbounce faster than Marketo can accept requests, and you'll continue to flood Marketo afterward.

I don't see how the Unbounce integration would be any different from other integrations such that Unbounce would be treated exceptionally as a DoS.

A responsibly written integration does not allow unlimited use of the Marketo API by a single set of client credentials.

It's of course true that many other integrations are similarly dangerous, but that doesn't make any of them okay!

From skimming the Forms JS API docs, a browser still needs to talk to Marketo's API, but now potentially it's a distributed attack from all the different browser sessions.

Not in the slightest. Skimming is not sufficient to understand this technology.

The Marketo Forms API endpoint allows 43,200 requests per source IP per day. There's no DoS against the instance if one IP exceeds daily limits.

The typical Marketo instance shares 50,000-100,000 API calls total across all integrations per day, and any uncooperative consumer can use all of these.

[Casey_Grimes]

Hi Veronica,

While there are positives and negatives to Marketo LPs vs. WordPress, can I put in another vote for "not Unbounce"? Setting aside Greg's concern about the integration itself (which is a valid enough excuse on its own!), Unbounce's landing page designs are... bad. I've had to convert several Unbounce landing pages over to proper Marketo landing pages, and they basically involved rebuilding the design from scratch. They're not responsive (rather, they just have two bad breakpoints), do odd things due to a lot of absolute positioning and z-indexing, and can actually make you look far less professional.

If I were in your situation, I would get your web dev team to make a couple of generic guided landing page templates that would allow you to customize things on a page-by-page basis. This will allow you to keep everything clean and inside Marketo while looking sharp.

[Veronica_Flore2]

Hi Courtney,

Thanks for your input! Looking as Unbounce might not be the perfect solution here and we have the budget and the team who can build Marketo landing pages, what would be the significant pros and cons between Marketo Landing pages and Wordpress? Other than the Munchkin code, the reporting capabilities (granularity or being able to combine Google Analytics and Marketo reports) and the preform (which is huge!).

Thanks,

Veronica