How can I sync a custom form on my website using WordPress, with Marketo?

I think you need to define exactly what "sync" means.  If it means, "Post form data to my local database and also  to Marketo," then a server-side form post will do you fine, independent of CMS.  We have a bespoke site so I can't speak to WordPress integrations, but if you have some coding experience and access to modify PHP scripts on the box, it's pretty simple.

What does "sync" mean in your case?

By "syncing", I would like to accomplish the following :

1. Keep my current form and custom fields that are on my website
2. Whenever a prospect fills out a form they are entered in the lead database, and tracked in Marketo
3. Instead of WordPress sending an email notifcation that a form was filled out, have Marketo send an email notification. 

 

Well, you can't "keep" your custom fields only on the form, they have to be known to Marketo if you want the lead fields to be updated accordingly.

Other than that, a server-side form post, and then a Marketo trigger on the Filled Out Form activity would do the trick.

Honestly though, if you don't need to copy the form data locally (to your own server's database) I would strongly consider moving to embedded Marketo forms on your website.  You can restyle them with custom CSS (admittedly, I don't know what your current forms look like so I can't say how easy it'll be to reproduce) and the payoff is that you have way less to maintain.  Simply by creating a form in Marketo it's ready to accept data, as opposed to always creating an echo of the same form on both sides just to make sure your activity logs show the right form name and the fields are in sync.

Hi Tyler,

We use a WordPress website and host Marketo forms on there and all of our data syncs through to our CRM (Salesforce) & into Marketo flawlessly.

We use Global Forms 2.0 in WordPress. Here is a good blog post about it.

We create all the custom fields we want on the form in the Design Studio, approve them, and use the form ID and paste it into our WordPress form field. This did take some development from our web team, but not much. Once it was set up, our marketing team is completely autonomous on it now.

Hope this helps!

@Sanford's suggestion of a server-side form post is a good idea, especially as it also activates the "Filled out Form" trigger in Marketo which other API methods do not. Note you are rate limited with a server side form post to 30 submissions per minute -- most likely not a problem but just something to keep in mind. 

You can also check out the Marketo/Wordpress integration by Hoosh, which I have never tried, but it looks interesting and I would like to play with it at some point: https://launchpoint.marketo.com/hoosh-marketing/1181-wordpress-integration-for-marketo/

Using native Marketo forms embedded on your site is the easiest option as Sanford says and will fulfill all your requirements; however there is one drawback I've noticed with embedded forms. 

As the page is loading there is a noticeable "flash" as the embedded form loads up slightly later than the rest of the page. I find this jarring from a user experience perspective, although I have nothing to prove it impacts conversion. But it bugs me :) 

@Justin I agree about the sudden appearance thing.  You can mitigate it a bit by hiding the form container (opacity: 0) and then fading it in.  But ultimately it always has to "appear" by itself unless you hold off rendering the entire content container of your page until the last bit is rendered.  

Of course you could make your own widget that you hook up to the Marketo form submit.

But yeah...

@Sanford, interesting idea to fade it in. It wouldn't be so jarring that way. 

Thank you all for your suggestions, this is all very helpful. I will write a follow-up on which option we deicde to go with...

Kind Regards,

TS

@Justin Yeah, somethin' like this maybe.

@Sanford, yeah not bad! Makes it seem more like one of those "lazy load" effects that some sites do on images.