When it comes to Adobe Marketo Engage forms, I always recommend a global forms approach.
There’s nothing technically wrong with local forms, but creating a small number of global forms, one for each use case, is the more efficient, best-practice approach.
How do global and local forms differ?
As an example, let’s compare two companies using Marketo Engage. Company A uses global forms, and Company B uses local forms.
Company A: global forms
- One form for all webinar registrations
- One form for all contact requests
- One form for all demo requests
- One form for all gated content downloads
Company B: local forms
- A new form for each webinar
- A new form for each contact request
- A new form for each demo request
- A new form for each gated content download
The benefits of global forms
Company A sees three clear benefits from using global forms.
Fewer errors and less compliance risk
Fewer forms mean fewer chances for mistakes in settings and fields. Global forms keep things uniform, which reduces the risk of data errors. With fewer forms, it’s also easier to stay compliant with laws like GDPR.
Less time spent changing forms
If you need to optimise a form or change the data you capture, you only update a handful of forms. Visibility rules are a good example: instead of updating 15, 20 or more forms, you update a few.
More consistent data capture
You may use hidden Marketo form fields for attribution. With global forms, it’s much easier to make sure those hidden fields are on every form.
When local forms still make sense
There are use cases for local forms, but I’d only use them when the use case is a one-off and the form needs a unique set of fields.
Have a question about your forms? Get in touch, I’m happy to help.