Trade Show Data Collection

[Anonymous]

Has anyone used an product that integrates with Marketo for trade shows for data collection? Ive used the Marketo event app but its super buggy (unless they've fixed it in the past year).

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Andy,

The event app is only good for welcoming people who are pre-registered.

On a tradeshow, the old way still works: get the excel spreadsheet form the badge reader and import it to a Marketo program dedicated to this tradeshow.

Another thing that we often do is to create an untracked, unindex landing page with a form and have this form displayed on ipads and computed on the booth. People are asked to fill it out and enter the Marketo DB immediately. See this Non-trackable landing page is still identifying me  for more details on untracked LP and also vote here:

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the response! Currently we are doing the old way with the spreadsheet but we feel there is too much delay in contacting. We want to see if we can develop an automated process if we can create higher engagement rates.

We have also tried the landing page idea and the issue we had with that is it took people too long to fill out the form (It was only 3 fields. First Name, Company, Email). We ended up having lines and people leaving because they didn't want to wait.

Thanks!

Andy

[Josh_Hill13]

Generally what Greg said is good. The question is what are you trying to do? Do you want a badge scanner or phone scanner?

[Anonymous]

Hi Josh,

Ideally what I am looking to do is scan their badge and have their information be entered into Marketo. We like to do giveaways at tradeshows and by scanning their badge we would be able to trigger off an email letting them know they have been entered and then we can put them into a nurture campaign, list, etc.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

The badge reader needs to be able to stream data directly to an HTTP (form) endpoint or directly to a connected laptop that could do the same -- i.e. not requiring export to CSV .

iCapture can do the output side and claims compatibility with all badges, but ultimately the tradeshow can throw a wrench into this and require their hardware (since after all that's part of the revenue stream).

c z it should be noted that atEvent is a walking time bomb. That app should not be used professionally, unless they have changed the the requiment of root access to your entire Marketo instance. Leaving aside the Marketo API call limitations (which are also questionable) this means that if the device running atEvent is lost or mishandled, your entire database can be deleted. No app in this area should require this level of permission.

[ChristinaZuniga]

Sanford Whiteman​ I don't think I gave them this level of access since I'm only using the scanning app. This just pushes data to my system, it doesn't access data already within the system. I hadn't heard of this issue with them before, is that with all products or just some???

[Dory_Viscoglio]

I'm curious about this as well. AtEvent has API permission, but that's all. Is this what you're talking about with being a ticking timebomb Sanford Whiteman​?

[SanfordWhiteman]

AFAIK they ask you to provide SOAP credentials for your instance. That's a root account that shouldn't be shared, well really ever, but especially not with something operated via a mobile device.

I agree that they shouldn't need this access to get what Andy wants (you don't need to use the API at all for that, which is why iCapture works without it) and stuff beyond that should be done via limited-permission REST credentials at most.

I suspect they wanted to offer the fullest integration possible when first building out and were not paying attention to the basics of security. My first rule is if an external app asks for SOAP credentials, unless this is for a very limited time under your direct supervision (SOAP can be better than REST for onboarding customers onto outside BI tools, for example) avoid that app like Ebola.

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Interesting, thanks for the insight!