Hey! 👋
Today we’ll be talking about forms and landing page strategy and pro tips — and I’ve added 2 new sections to the newsletter:
Meme of the week 🖼️ (because we could all use a laugh!)
Interesting martech of the week ⚙️ (to get exposure to new tools!)
I’d love any feedback you have!
Btw, this week is a strange one for the newsletter — between work trips, getting sick, etc, my schedule has been thrown off a bit. 😅 You’re getting this edition today, and another next week!
Before we dive into the main content, please check out a quick word from our sponsors, who are kind enough to support the creation of this free-to-you MOPs content 💖:
AMPscript. Velocity. MJML. Liquid. You shouldn’t have to learn programming languages just to send an email. 🫠 And now, you don’t have to…learn how you can unlock the benefits of Velocity scripting and/or AMPscript without having to write any code.
If you’re running ABM ads, you’re wasting money 😭 Why pay to advertise to irrelevant departments, when you could target your ads to your ICP VIPs on the contact-level? And across platforms like LinkedIn, Google, and Reddit, too?! Learn how Vector makes your stack stronger via site deanonymization and contact-level ad targeting.
Okay, now on to my top forms and LP tips, as well as the full guide! 👇
📖 I brain-dumped everything I know (and have learned) about forms and landing pages into this guide.✨
Tl;dr, the key takeaways I want you to focus on:
Keep forms short but intentional. Every required field should tie directly to routing, scoring, or segmentation — anything else belongs in enrichment or progressive profiling.
Build with enrichment-first thinking. Use forms to capture what enrichment can’t reliably provide (like job title), and let enrichment handle firmographics and company data.
Use progressive profiling to grow ICP fit signals. Don’t just rotate random fields — prioritize questions that strengthen qualification and sales readiness.
Govern fields with a Field Menu. Pre-approved fields protect against duplicate data, ensure compliance, and align marketing with CRM and reporting needs.
Treat hidden fields as the lifeline of attribution. UTMs, campaign IDs, and offer metadata are what connect lead submissions back to spend and pipeline.
Standardize encoding with UTF-8. If you don’t encode in UTF-8, you risk losing special characters and having malformed record data. Nothing is worse than seeing a bunch of ���s in your database.
Route ICP-fit leads to sales immediately. Speed-to-lead is a revenue strategy — routing non-ICP traffic to nurture keeps sales focused.
Block free email domains on B2B forms. It’s a small guardrail with big impact on enrichment accuracy and SDR efficiency.
Use schedulers and chatbots as conversion accelerators. Calendly, Chili Piper, LeanData, Default, and modern bots help you meet your prospects where they are, instead of forcing them into an experience they hate.
Embed brand and compliance into every form and page. Consistency in design and data handling builds trust and avoids downstream legal or ops rework.
By the way, as I plan content for the rest of the year….I have a question for you:
Would you like another tech/use case breakdown, like the one I did for Clay?
What I’m up to/what I’m studying 💭
I just spent last week in Vermont for Exit Five Drive…it was a great time! A pro tip for those out there looking to network and progress in their careers: it’s great to not only attend marketing ops/tech conferences, but also marketing conferences….you can rub shoulders with both your stakeholders and potential hiring managers or peers in the future. It also helps me keep up with what my marketers are talking about. 🙂
By the way, I’ll be attending/speaking at these events this fall:
ZapConnect online (September) 🧡
Mopza in Anaheim (October)! ☀️
Please do come up and say “hi” (or say hi in the chat!) if you see me there! 👋😁
Dear Sara ✍️
New to marketing operations? On a team of one at your company? Shy/introverted? Wish you could ask a question to an experienced marketing operations professional, without them knowing who you are? Here’s your chance! Submit an anonymous question to me here and I’ll answer a new question in every issue.
Here’s my answer to a question from last week:
Hi Sara, I’m working as a Marketing Ops Manager and would like to propose a standardized form strategy for all regional teams. The goal is to align on consistent fields, dropdowns, and minimum required inputs — while also defining which fields should be mandatory based on the form type. I’ve already started drafting some templates, for Contact Sales, Events, Webinar pages, and now want to gather feedback from the regions. Currently, we use Drupal to create webpages, landing pages, and forms, which are connected to Pardot Form Handlers. Since we’ll soon be moving to a new CMS platform, this feels like the right moment to establish a fresh, strategic approach with ready-to-use form templates. To do this successfully, I’ll need buy-in from digital team leaders and coordinators who manage the website and landing pages. I’d really appreciate your advice on how best to approach this—whether through recommended steps, a structured plan, or ways to build alignment across teams. Thank you!
This is great (and talk about timely with this newsletter — LOL!)! Here are my tips on rolling out large changes like this:
1. Lead with the why
When you talk to regional teams, don’t just say “standardization” or get too far into the technical weeds. Focus on why they should care:
Faster and more accurate reports
Quicker SLA on campaign builds
Anticipated higher conversion and speed-to-lead
If they ask “how”:
Cleaner data for routing and reporting
Faster form builds (no reinventing the wheel every time)
A smoother, more consistent experience for prospects
That way it’s about outcomes, not enforcing new rules. And their eyes won’t glaze over when you get too technical (I’ve seen that happen a lot 🫠).
2. Package your drafts as templates
Take the drafts you already have and show them as a “form library.” For each one, outline:
Required vs. optional fields
Standard dropdowns (with room for local tweaks if needed)
Any hidden fields/UTMs that should always be there
When/why to use each template
This makes it clear and concrete for them, which means less friction and frustration. Even better if there is a literal template in the platform that they can copy + paste over, vs. rebuilding from scratch.
3. Co-create with the regions:
Rather than just asking for feedback, invite them into the process — maybe a quick workshop or async doc where they can call out what’s critical locally. That way they feel like it’s built with them, not handed down to them. This is mission critical for non-AMER geos, if you are an AMER-based MOPs professional…too often, international teams get too little love from AMER MOPs, so extra trust and inclusion needs to be fostered for changes like this to really be successful.
4. Set some light governance:
Once you align, make sure there’s:
A clear owner for keeping templates updated
A simple process for adding new fields (so people don’t sneak them in)
A “default first” rule: use a template unless there’s a strong reason not to
5. Loop in your digital team early
Since they’ll be building/managing these forms in the new CMS, position this as a win for them: fewer random requests, clear standards, reusable components. In a perfect world, get early buy-in and include them in this process — if that isn’t possible, at least check in with them periodically and show them your evolving plans so they can have that trust and flag any potential issues early.
6. Show, don’t just tell, the before/after
People hate rules, but they get excited about results and stories. Show how messy/slow it is today vs. how clean/easy it will be once everyone’s on templates. Visuals and stats/goals can really help here.
7. Find a “change champion” or two
FOMO (fear of missing out) works really well on marketers. They are very competitive and want to stay ahead of peers. SO, use that to your advantage — if a marketer is always complaining about something related to the current state (that will be resolved with your new solution/templates), recruit them to be a change champion. Have them present the change in a marketing all hands meeting or campaigns meeting, expressing how excited they are or showing how they are already using the new capabilities and getting ahead. If you need a “carrot at the end of the stick” to recruit them into this volunteer role, offer to give them access or input on the new process early, so they can feel special and feel that excitement.
Meme of the week 🖼️
Interesting martech of the week ⚙️
Not every tool has to be AI-driven, and not every tool has to be a platform — to me, the most important part is just that they DO what they say they do! I had to clean up a really messy client HubSpot recently, too large for me to do manually…so I looked for a relatively cheap tool that I could use to help me. I didn’t need something as sophisticated as what DemandTools was to Salesforce, but I did need something as intuitive to use. I landed on Koalify, especially since I love supporting small businesses…and the tool is awesome! Super easy to learn and use, and saved me hours.
In the meantime, I discovered that Ryan Gunn made an amazing comparison chart of the different data cleansing tools for HubSpot…check it out, thanks Ryan! 🧡
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Thanks for reading,
❤️ Sara