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Re: Wordpress + Marketo

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SydneyMulligan
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Wordpress + Marketo

What plugins or integrations are you using and loving for Wordpress and Marketo? My team is hiring a web designer to migrate our website from Squarespace to Wordpress, and with that we are going to build in a lot more opportunities for conversion with gated content, demo request forms, blog subscriptions, etc. I know we don't necessarily NEED a plugin to integrate Wordpress and Marketo, I know we can just drop the Munchkin code in our header file and use the regular embed codes, just trying to assess all options.

PS: if you are a sales person for a company who sells a Wordpress Plugin for Marketo and you respond to this post.....give me details on your product and tell me what makes your solution different from the others.

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SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Wordpress + Marketo

Sydney, not only do you not need a plugin, a plugin can actively hold you back.  I encourage clients to move away from CMS-hosted forms (Drupal, WordPress, et al.) because such plugins are necessarily rate-limited or, perhaps worse, create a DoS attack vector against the underlying Marketo instance.

One client on Drupal broke their other Marketo integrations after a highly successful trade show, since their Drupal plug-in -- otherwise well-thought-out, but in this respect disastrous -- used the rate-limited REST API for every post.  (Their older plug-in used the Marketo forms endpoint, and that would've been just as bad in a different direction, since they would have missed more form submissions!)  Most people are one lazy teenage hacker away from a broken site, without knowing it.  Working in part in the enterprise, where those threats are very real, I can't live with situations like that.

Some look at this as a cosmetic decision, since there are very pretty form themes available for CMSes.  But that's a different question.  You can use the Marketo Forms API (from the browser) to submit data from non-Marketo forms.  You thus get the best of both worlds: the aesthetics you want without the unprofessional rate limits. No CMS plugin necessary.

Another point people make is about form PreFill.  But you actually don't need a plugin for that, either, and the explicit reliance on real-time Marketo API access shared by all (as far as I know) plugins is a poor design decision.

A theoretical plugin that might be attractive, on the other hand, is one that uses the Marketo Asset API to read form definitions (not to post forms, only used when you're in the CMS control panel) and is able to theme up Marketo <FORM> tags natively.  It would still use the Marketo embed code and post directly to Marketo from the client.  I've never seen anything like this in the real world but it would be cool

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SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Wordpress + Marketo

Sydney, not only do you not need a plugin, a plugin can actively hold you back.  I encourage clients to move away from CMS-hosted forms (Drupal, WordPress, et al.) because such plugins are necessarily rate-limited or, perhaps worse, create a DoS attack vector against the underlying Marketo instance.

One client on Drupal broke their other Marketo integrations after a highly successful trade show, since their Drupal plug-in -- otherwise well-thought-out, but in this respect disastrous -- used the rate-limited REST API for every post.  (Their older plug-in used the Marketo forms endpoint, and that would've been just as bad in a different direction, since they would have missed more form submissions!)  Most people are one lazy teenage hacker away from a broken site, without knowing it.  Working in part in the enterprise, where those threats are very real, I can't live with situations like that.

Some look at this as a cosmetic decision, since there are very pretty form themes available for CMSes.  But that's a different question.  You can use the Marketo Forms API (from the browser) to submit data from non-Marketo forms.  You thus get the best of both worlds: the aesthetics you want without the unprofessional rate limits. No CMS plugin necessary.

Another point people make is about form PreFill.  But you actually don't need a plugin for that, either, and the explicit reliance on real-time Marketo API access shared by all (as far as I know) plugins is a poor design decision.

A theoretical plugin that might be attractive, on the other hand, is one that uses the Marketo Asset API to read form definitions (not to post forms, only used when you're in the CMS control panel) and is able to theme up Marketo <FORM> tags natively.  It would still use the Marketo embed code and post directly to Marketo from the client.  I've never seen anything like this in the real world but it would be cool

SydneyMulligan
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Wordpress + Marketo

Thanks, Sanford. I suspected this was the case but wanted to hear if anyone felt differently.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Wordpress + Marketo

Hi:

I would just use Marketo embedded forms in your wordpress site.  They are pre configured to be embeddable and you don;t need any new intergrations or add-ins to use it.