Set Acquisition Program = advertising program when form fill implicitly sets it to different program

[Marc_Asmus]

I'm using paid media to drive traffic to a content offer in the form of a Marketo landing page with Marketo form. The form is capturing utm values that allow me to track which ad platform/campaign generated any new people.

Question: How can I set an Acquisition Program value representing the ad platform (e.g. OA-Google Ads) when Marketo is implicitly setting Acquisition Program (e.g. WC-Content Offer) based on the form fill within the offer program? 

I'd like to avoid unblocking field updates to my 'Acquisition Program Name' so I don't accidentally change wanted data. 

It's best practice to block field updates for the acquisition field so you don't accidentally change the value. 

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-blogs/marketo-behavior-when-changing-an-acquisition-program/ba...

Thanks for any help!

[SanfordWhiteman]

This is the nature of the beast when using program-level forms. Using global forms is far more manageable; you'd lose the ability to ever have an automatically assigned AP, but you'd always have control.

(The so-called "best practices" for field blocking are highly negotiable once you consider actual business needs. Plus, sources that should be blocked aren't blocked by default, leaving people open to all manner of changes to custom fields.)

[Marc_Asmus]

Thanks for your reply, @SanfordWhiteman.

In my case, my form lives in the Design Studio (this what I believe you mean when you say global form). What I infer from your response is that given this configuration, I should have to set Acquisition Program via Smart Campaign (this is the behavior I want). However, when I test Acquisition Program Name still seems to be set implicitly by Marketo ☹️

What am I missing? 

[SanfordWhiteman]

There must be some missing element here, like you're adding them to a Program. That won't happen automatically with a global form.

[Marc_Asmus]

Thanks again!

I tested this by turning off all smart campaigns within my program then form filling with a new-to-Marketo test record. I'm still getting the impression that Marketo is implicitly adding the person to the program, thereby setting acquisition program.

From test lead's activity log...

Program status is being changed to "Filled out form" without an associated campaign name. 

My interpretation of this activity's detail is "Marketo set this program status because the lead filled out a form on a Marketo landing page within this program."

I also found a few old threads that support this idea:

If a landing page is local to a program and a lead fills out a form on that landing page, we automatically add the lead to the membership of the program with the first status. 

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/automatic-status-changes-for-webinar-channel-progr... 

This attribute is actually drawn from the landing page, and not the form.  So the form fillout will set the program status for the lead in the parent program of the landing page, not necessarily the form.

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/program-status-being-set-when-fills-out-form/m-p/3...

Based on this Marketo behavior, I'm gathering that if I want to set the acquisition program to something other than the program where the form fill occurred I'll need to unblock field updates to 'Acquisition Program Name' (and figure out how to not negatively impact data that should not be changed). Would you agree, @SanfordWhiteman?