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January 23, 2017
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Trade Show Data Collection

  • January 23, 2017
  • 5 replies
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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).

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Best answer by SanfordWhiteman

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.

5 replies

April 11, 2017

Hi, this is Paula from atEvent. I want to clear up some of the questions I’ve seen in this forum.

Faryal Ali​ @Christina Zuniga​ are correct. The atEvent mobile app does not have root access to Marketo.

There is no direct API connection between our mobile app and Marketo. Rather, the atEvent mobile app uses a REST API (not SOAP) to connect to the atEvent Services platform. The platform then passes vetted requests to Marketo, either via the soon-to-be-defunct SOAP API, or the newer REST API.

Because the mobile app is never directly accessing Marketo records, there is no way to accidentally or maliciously delete your Marketo database from the mobile app.

When signed into the mobile app, you may work with data you’ve entered into the app itself; you cannot retrieve or delete pre-existing Marketo records.

I hope this clears up any confusion.

Paula G.

Customer Success, atEvent

New Participant
February 7, 2017

We started using iCapture last year and I have setup programs to automate everything in near realtime. As soon as a lead is scanned/entered the lead is put into a Marketo Program/Salesforce Campaign, follow up items marked in iCapture create related tasks to the lead owner and even automatic registration for our next webinar through the Citrix integration.

In Marketo you setup a Smart Campaign that can be requested and setup the flows the way you want. iCapture requests the campaign through the API in near realtime when the device is connected to the internet or they can by synced later. After the initial setup you are simply cloning shows in iCapture and cloning programs in Marketo for each new show.

The barcode scanning is going to be hit or miss with any third party lead retrieval app since the barcode itself data might not include email or contact info. For the larger shows where we know the barcode won't work we still purchase the lead retrieval and load spreadsheets the manual way. For smaller shows we have the rep manually enter leads into iCapture unless we know barcodes will work.

PRO TIP: I often creep on trade show Facebook/Twitter photos from previous years to look for badges and their barcode to see if it might work with iCapture. Ha.

The iCapture app itself needs a design refresh but overall it works and small quirks aside we still like it.

February 7, 2017

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the response. What would be your definition of a "larger show"?

Andy

New Participant
February 7, 2017

You're welcome.

We tend to have polar opposites, some smaller shows might only bring us 5 leads with one rep attending, other shows may bring us 200 leads with 8 reps attending.

I don't want iCapture to hold them back in the booth so I'd say if I expect more than 8-10 leads per rep attending then iCapture might slow them down without being able to use the barcode.

Hope that helps!

Dory_Viscoglio
New Participant
January 24, 2017

We've used AtEvent successfully. You can find more info here

ChristinaZuniga
New Participant
January 24, 2017

I also use atEvent and they work really well except one thing - they use comma as a delimiter (when it should be semi-colon). That's only an issue with multi-select fields and there's a workaround in Marketo to work it out, but it's a pain for me.

Josh_Hill13
New Participant
January 23, 2017

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

January 24, 2017

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
SanfordWhitemanAccepted solution
New Participant
January 24, 2017

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.

Grégoire_Miche2
New Participant
January 23, 2017

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

January 24, 2017

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