Restricting a competitor to attend our webinar

[PascaleC]

It looks like a competitor has registered to attend a webinar we're running in a week. He already has received the confirmation email with the link to attend the webinar on the day. Is there a way that I can restrict him from attending the webinar? 

I will probably not send the reminder email 1 hour before the webinar but is there anything else I can do? 

Thanks! 

[Jo_Pitts1]

@PascaleC ,

that's probably more a question for the Webinar vendor.

That being said, what's to stop them registering with a personal email account and a fake name?  You'll never really block them.

Cheers

Jo

[SanfordWhiteman]

Like Jo says, Marketo itself can't invalidate a webinar registration. It depends on the webinar provider.

With any provider, you can create an entirely different webinar ID and register everybody for that one, or perhaps just change the password for the existing one. Of course, you’ll need to send a new link to everyone who is allowed to attend.

Some providers will let you block a registrant and then close registration entirely so they can’t get back in... to this particular webinar, at least.

[Zoe_Forman]

Not for this webinar but in future you could set up a segmentation for competitors and use this to filter competitors out of receiving emails with joining links. You can set up using company name and @domain, plus individuals emails if you have that detail.

Like mentioned above this doesn't stop them using personal email addresses or even partners addresses.

[PascaleC]

Thank you for all for your answers! I am using Marketo webinars actually so that's why I was hoping they would have that option... 

@Zoe_Forman  I am not sure I know how this works? Can you explain more? 

[Zoe_Forman]

Hi @PascaleC In your database if you set up a segmentation for Competitors - add in all Company names, email domains in the Smart list that you want to exclude. You may need Admin access for this.

We have Marketable Leads as the Segmentation then child lists such as Competitors, Marketable leads, Marketable Partners, Agencies and staff.

Then when you set up  your trigger emails for registration confirmation with joining links, then you can exclude anyone in the Competitor Segment.
Marketable Leads > Not in COMPETITORS in the email program Smart List.

The segmentation is only as good as the data included and how often you keep it updated.

We have a global Competitor Segmentation containing worldwide and local competitors in one place.

Here is the documentation on Creating a Segmentation: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/personalization/segmentation-a...

[Katja_Keesom · Accepted solution]

A more broad way of excluding competitors is to actually blocklist them. By checking this box for any email address on certain domains you ensure they will never receive any emails, not even operational autoresponders.

Again, it will never stop them from registering with a personal email address.

[SanfordWhiteman]

You could even tweak my method above to set Block Listed=true when the form submits (which I prefer because you don’t have to worry about the race condition of other stuff happening to people while you’re still classifying them on the server).

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

If you’re using a Marketo form to register people, why not scan for domains you don’t want and discard that data before it even enters Marketo? (While the person still thinks they registered.)

Observe MktoForms2 :: FormsPlus-EmailPattern [advanced demo: discard] which uses the FormsPlus::EmailPattern library to check the person’s domain against a list of hashes.* In the demo the hashes are MD5 hashes of example.com and example.net; if you enter an address @ one of those domains, the form seems to submit and shows the Thank You message, but the lead never hits Marketo.

* Using hashes means a curious person can’t see which domains you reject.