Webinar Registration and Lead Management - Youth Events

[nhabischWings]

Hello all!

My organization has youth education workshops that we run monthly. Typically we use our Kentico CMS, but looking to move to Marketo to automate more aspects of the events and webinars.

The registration form is filled out with the attending STUDENT's information like Name, Address, City, etc and then an email address where the details are sent to. This email is typically a parent - but not always.

Any tips on the best way to avoid new leads or dupe leads being created? Or the best way to isolate these registrations into their own bucket to avoid filtering into main emails?

I know I could do custom fields with the Student information - but looking to see if there's a better way.

Any advice on the best way to handle this is welcome 🙂 Thank you!

[SanfordWhiteman]

You need to provide more detail.

Why would duplicate leads be created by this form (if you define “duplicate” as “leads with the same Email Address”)? By default, a form post will merge into an existing lead, using the system Email Address as the lookup key.

What’s the situation where new leads are created, and what do you want to happen instead of a new lead being created? It would be helpful if you could list each use case, observed behavior, and desired behavior.

[nhabischWings]

Got it, more detail here:

1) Our system uses Email Address and a custom field called "unique customer identifier" to de-dupe because we have cases where multiple people use the same email address in our system. So "bob.smith@gmail.com" might be used by Bob, Susie, and Jim - all of who are different people with different products, ages, etc.

2) In the case of this form - the form asks for the Student's information (who is taking the class) and an email address where the class information will go. So potentially you have the Student's information going into custom fields (to not overwrite parent leads) and then the email potentially tied to a lead.

Where duplicates come into play:

Because the fields are Student's information and not the parent registering, the only field tied to the actual lead would be email address - but it's possible the email address entered may be for the Student themselves.

So possible cases are:

1) Parent fills out student information and then their own email address - because there is no First or Last field, the only data tied to the main lead is Email Address - and without the Customer Unique Identifier it would create a new lead as it sees that as a new lead.

2) Parent or Student fills out the form and then enters the Student's email address - even if the student has an existing lead, again it creates a new lead due to not matching email AND the Customer Unique Identifier.

I guess my desired output and what I should have asked initially is there a way to "bucket" those who fill out the form and isolate the leads so they do not qualify for ANY email sends outside the event? I know I can throw them in a Smart List when the form is filled - but is there a global way to exclude them from emails without unsubscribe/adding exclusion to all email campaigns?

Hopefully this helps! Sorry if it's convoluted. I know our setup needs work 🙂

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

It appears to me that all your duplicate lead creation issues can get sorted if you include the Unique Customer Identifier field on the form as well apart from the Email Address, i.e., whosoever is registering should provide both the email address and the Unique Customer Identifier. Is there a reason that you cannot include the UCI field on the registration form for the existing audience? You can make this field mandatory for people who are already have a valid UCI number. Or is the UCI something that you solely use as the internal field to identify people, and is not provided to them upon registering as a new person?

Following are the ways in which you can restrict people from receiving emails except the ones in the realm of the youth event  - 

• Add people to a list
• Create a SL with apt filters
• Add a custom exclusion field on the person object
• Use program memberships

But all of the above do require you to use the apt. filters in email send campaigns to filter out people .

Marking people as Marketing Suspended/Unsubscribed would only stop them from receiving the marketing emails, other operational emails outside the Youth program can still go out.

[nhabischWings]

Hello!

Yes, the CUI field is an internal field that is automatically generated when a user is added to our internal database.

I figured those were the isolation options and I'll probably end up going with one of those.

Thank you for your help!