Great, you purchased a Marketo License! Now you are on your way toward becoming a Rockstar.
Rockstars, believe it or not, are organized. They leave nothing to chance and they practice disciplined rocking, er, Marketing. Setting up Marketo to function well should be one of your first actions before using the system for your big marketing push.
A few minutes of thought and careful setup will save you hours and days later.
Key Tip: Choose a Consistent Naming Formula
One of the first things Marketo suggests to new users is to devise a naming scheme for your various programs and assets. I agree. I have seen several options over the years and recommend a few systems depending on your need or area of Marketo. Learn more about naming and organizing Marketo with my full guide.
Rule 1: Keep the name clear and memorable so if you ever leave the firm, others can start where you left off.
Rule 2: Number steps in a program so it is easy to see how leads should progress.
Naming is also important because it can help you find assets while you set up filters or triggers. In particular, the creation of Smart List reports and Reports becomes much easier when you can use a filter like
Visited Web Page Web Page CONTAINS “webinar”
instead of finding every single webinar you want to include. While Marketo does allow searching of names of assets, the functionality is limited because it works best on the first few letters or numbers (which is why dates are so important). You can use dates like
YYYY MM DD My Big Event Program
YYYYMMDD My Campaign Name
Warning! Avoid Use of Underscores
I’ve found underscores unnecessary. Underscores also confuse the Marketo search function such that My_Program_Name cannot be found unless you actually type in “My_” at a minimum, instead of “My.”
[…] Activities, Campaigns, Programs, Emails, and Landing Pages. If you followed earlier advice on Naming and Organization, you will find it much easier to build reports in […]