In May 2021 Marketo are deprecating their Forms 1.0 functionality. All customers should have migrated their use of Marketo lead forms to the 2.0 methodology by that date.
What is the impact?
The Marketo Forms 1.0 functionality operates like most Marketing Automation forms. When you create a 1.0 form in Marketo you can embed it into a page using an embed script or you can submit directly into it from your own bespoke HTML form. With 2.0 Forms you can no longer submit directly into Marketo from an external form, you must embed the actual Marketo form using their scripts.
Why are they doing this?
Marketo claim that 1.0 Forms are targets for bot attacks, where remote servers can spam a form endpoint with junk data, leading to non-existent leads or overloaded systems. While there are other methods to support reduction of form spam, Marketo have chosen this restriction as a primary tool in fighting bots.
What action does Marketo suggest customers take?
Marketo suggest moving to one of two methods to deploy lead forms on your website. The first method is to use the default embed functionality from Marketo where you paste the provided JavaScript into your website to generate the form. Any additional styling, dynamic functionality or data manipulation (e.g. capturing query string data) would need to be coded into the page.
The other method is to use Marketo’s server side submission process, this would entail submitting your website forms to your web server and then perform a server to server API call to update or create your contact data in Marketo.
Both of these methods have drawbacks from a scalability and flexibility perspective.
What action do GatedContent.com customers need to take?
GatedContent.com customer using Marketo as their receiving Marketing Automation platform do not need to do anything. GatedContent.com forms will continue to submit leads into your Marketo master forms. All the great functionality of GatedContent.com will continue to work.