Marketo to Marketo Webhook

[Chris_Turille]

Hi all. We are in the process of creating new instances based on region. However, we would like to be able to share leads that may find themselves in the wrong instance. Say if someone in America fills out an APAC form and vice versa. It seems like would be able to set up a webhook and push the the correct instance based on country or region. Or even a custom API. 

I would love to hear the best way to do this. I did see an article referencing form fills for this reason, which is great. I just was not sure the correct url (soap API), etc.

Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Are you specifically talking about form fills as the method of lead creation? Because you don’t need server-side work to detect that they should’ve filled in another form based on country (and post that form in the background instead). That can be done on the client side which is far better..

[Chris_Turille]

Mainly, yes. Basically we will as a company now have more than one instance. One instance will host our North America and Asia database. We will be standing up another instance just for Europe. Sometimes Someone in Europe fills out a Form hosted in the Amer/APAC instance. The idea is to get that lead over to the Europe instance into their database for their use. All the same company though. Just 2 Marketo instances. If that helps.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I would definitely handle this on the browser (JS) side — submit the form to the other instance if someone’s data means they should’ve been on the other instance. This is far, far easier than building & managing a service to forward the leads to the other instance (and delete the originals).

On the other hand, if you must cover other cases beyond form fills, you will need that service, so you would standardize on that (and not build the client JS) if so.

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Chris_Turille ,

I'm really curious as to why you are using two instances in this way.

What is the core use case driving the approach?

Cheers

Jo

[Chris_Turille]

@Jo_Pitts1  it ultimately was a business decision to split groups off into their own Salesforce account... which led us to their own Marketo as well. So I am struggling to find a way to automate how to move those records to the new instance that make it to our America instance... that should be in the Europe one... so that they can ultimately get to the new Salesforce. 

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Chris_Turille,

When you say 'move those records' are you talking existing, or new records?

To @SanfordWhiteman's point, if it is NEW records, I'd create a non-Marketo form (use whatever form tool you want within reason, or just hand roll the form).  When it gets submitted, check (using Javascript) what region the lead is from, and then submit the appropriate Marketo form.

I've not checked, but there may be an interesting challenge here around having two Marketo forms on a page for different instances.  If that is the case, I can see ways around that problem as well.

Cheers

[SanfordWhiteman]

---

I've not checked, but there may be an interesting challenge here around having two Marketo forms on a page for different instances.  If that is the case, I can see ways around that problem as well.

---

You’re right, there is a mild challenge there, but it’s easy to solve.

You can still use all Marketo forms, no specific need for a generic-form-to-hidden-Marketo-form bridge.

You show the form that’s appropriate for the current region. If it turns out you should’ve used the other form, delete the whole forms library from window, load the other instance’s library & form, and submit that one in the background.

Or, easier but a little less seamless, forward the person to the other site‘s form, with the form values in the URL so they’re all automatically filled in. Give them a little message that you’re about to do that (“Hi, we detected you’re an EU customer, so you’ll be redirected to our EU form in a moment.“).

[Jo_Pitts1]

That almost seems less clear than a independent form that then uses the right Marketo form, but splitting hairs at this point.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Most people don’t know how to build a form that‘s both styled correctly and correctly formats its data to be submitted using a hidden Marketo form. It’s way more work overall — this is like 5 lines and no CSS.