Private Event with Restricted Guest List

[Michael_Fuller]

I want to create a program for a private event with a restricted guest list. It's obviously pretty easy to just forward an invite email to someone else, but I'm wondering if there's a way that only the original invited person can register through the form. I was thinking it would have to be something like a form validation or tokenized/cookied invitation link, but I'm not sure if those things, or other things like that, are possible.

[Josh_Hill13]

You would need special code.

I'd suggest use a Wait Listed Status and making it clear that the invitation and reg page are for specific people. You can also set the page to no index, no follow. It's pretty rare to get gate crashers and you can just reject them in the Program Member panel.

[Dan_Stevens_]

We built a custom program template/workflows that we use when audiences are restricted/invite-only.  Have a look at this thread: Re: Event Registration Cap

[Jay_Jiang]

A few ways people do this. I use webhooks + API written in php for strictly invite only events (only emails added to the program as Members can successfully register) and also capped registration events.

[Mark_Price]

Hi Michael,

As others have said there are a few ways to get this done, most using custom code.  To allow the registration on-page you would need code.

If you are ok confirming / denying registration via email, you can do this with just a Marketo campaign and 2 emails.

Setup:

- Add your 'allowed' segment to a static list or smart list

- Build 2 emails, one for allowed registrations and one for denied registrations

- Setup your confirmation campaign so that there is a choice:

  - If member of 'Allowed' list send Registration Complete email

  - If not member of 'Allowed' list send Registration Denied email

This might be an ok setup in the interim until moving on to a fancier one.

hope it helps!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yep, knowing whether someone is already a member of a program while they're looking at the page is the underlying need.

It's actually the same core need that Shari has expressed hide form field for program members​. Even if someone is a member of a program and the LP is program-specific, unless you waste one of your precious segmentations on this, they're going to see the same page as anybody else.

In order to surface program memberships on the page itself, you need to maintain a flat (should be Textarea) field on the lead that holds a list of all their current program IDs. Once you have that, it's trivial to output the corresponding {{lead.token}} into a <script> tag the page, and also output the current {{program.ID}} and look it up in the list using JS.  We're talking a < 10 lines of JS.

Maintaining that field, though, is not as easy as it seems. If you only care about people who have been added to a program in the past -- but who may have since been removed -- then you can maintain that field using a Smart List Change Data Value alone.  You trigger on Added to Program and append a semicolon, then the ID, and just keep adding. However: managing/pruning the field correctly as they potentially move in and out of programs can't be done using Change Data Value. Unfortunately, for that you need a webhook, because Marketo alone can't pluck individual values out of a delimited string.