Marketing attribution is a frequently discussed topic among marketing automation professionals and vendors. Yet, few firms have achieved an attribution system that takes into account touches, offers, and sources. In this post, we will provide a roadmap of best practices to help you get closer to your goal of understanding the how and why of your marketing and sales funnel.

Keep in mind this is a checklist. Getting to a closed loop attribution system takes time, so do not expect to get through all 12 steps in one day, or even in one month.

Step 1: What do you want to report on?

In this crucial first step, you will work with your leadership to mockup reports. What are the strategic metrics for your funnel, and what are the tactical metrics?

While a tool like Marketo can collect a ton of data on lead behavior, reporting on all of that may be pointless, leading to vanity metrics and reports with no decision insights.

Strategic Metrics are what is important to the business.

• Revenue
• Subscribers
• Churn Rate
• Conversion rates in the funnel

Tactical Metrics are sometimes “vanity metrics” but often serve to show you how well your marketing activities work. The key is to tie back tactics to the strategy. If your content program is generating 25% CTR and a 12% on page conversion, that’s great, but how many are signing up for a trial? What’s the churn on that Offer or Channel?

The nice thing is Marketo (and other tools) can provide all of this data if setup correctly.

Once you have report mockups, then you can work backward to understand how to build the reports and what data you need to collect.

Step 2: Setup the Offer-Channel Attribution Lists

I highly recommend this framework for the type of data to collect from each lead.

• Offer – the content or event that the lead was interested in. This would be viewed as:
  • Whitepapers
    • 2014-Holiday-Whitepaper
• Channel – where and how the lead found out about the content. This would be viewed as:
  • Telemarketing
    • Agency A

When you consider your list of Offers and Channels, it is a good idea to think of all the possibilities, including voice and offline

This entire system can be operated using the next steps. But for now, all you want to do is identify all of the Offers you make and all of the Channels you plan to use. Then create a spreadsheet that lists all the values you can have.

An example would be:

Channel Type	Channel name (free text	Offer Type	Offer Name (free text)
PPC	Adwords	Whitepaper	definitive-guide-to-nurturing
Newsletter	Tech-target	ebook	20-steps-to-marketing-guru
Banner-Ad	Yahoo	Webinar	anne-handley-webinar-Jan-30-2014
Social-Ad	Linkedin	Video	anne-handley-video-Jan-30-2014
List-rental	the-economist-011	Demo	free-demo-offer
		Blog	blog-post-title

Your Type fields will be picklists while your Names, or campaigns, should use dashes so they can be used in URL parameters. (It is possible to map a code to a name later if you want).

Step 3: Choose an Attribution Model for B2B Marketing

There are three major attribution systems, each with pros and cons.

First Touch is the easiest method to implement. In fact, you probably already have this out of the box with your CRM. First Touch says that the most important touch is the original acquisition of the Lead. All of your costs and revenue will be attributed to the first program the lead responds to. Sometimes First Touch is called “Original.” While easy, First Touch over represents the acquiring program instead of all of the other efforts you make.

A first touch system (FT), however, places all credit with the acquiring program. It is simple and easy to report on, yet ignores all of the nurturing efforts you make. If you are focused on acquisition for any reason – choice, e-commerce, one-off transactions – then this works well for you.

Last Touch is the opposite of First Touch. This system says to give all of the cost and revenue credit to the most recent, or last, campaign the lead responded to. Similar to First Touch (FT), Last Touch (LT) over represents the latest campaign to touch the Lead.

And LT has similar pros and cons to FT. Your system will be unable to tell you much about the acquisition method, but a lot about that last moment before the win. While that is helpful information, it is likely a lot of effort went into that lead before the last touch.

Multi-touch attribution (MT) is the marketer’s goal. In this system, all touches are counted for cost and revenue. Multi-touch, however, requires further setup because you can weight the LT or FT differently than other touches. Marketo’s Revenue Cycle Explorer, for instance, automatically distributes revenue equally across the Programs that touch the Opportunity. Other reporting tools allow you to weight touches equally or placing emphasis on the First or Last touch, giving less weight to the middle touches. Each weighting option has challenges and I don’t necessarily recommend one or another. In most situations, equal weighting or a FT weighting provides appropriate insight into ROI.

As your understanding of attribution modeling improves, you will start to ask questions that can be resolved with more detailed modeling.

I can’t tell you which one to use for your situation, just that you will have to weigh the pros and cons and your ability to interpret the reports.

Step 4: Setting up Paired Fields

In Step 2, you created a framework for the fields and picklist values required. Each attribution model requires a minimum of fields, just like this:

• FT: just need
  • First Channel Type
  • First Channel Platform
  • First Offer Type
  • First Offer Name
• LT will use Most Recent instead of Original
• MT will use both, pairing the fields:
  • First Channel Type
  • Last Channel Type
  • First Channel Platform
  • Last Channel Platform

Step 5: Hidden fields on your forms

There are plenty of ways to do this, but here’s how it might look in Marketo.

Step 6: Setup URL Parameters

I wrote a brief URL Parameter tutorial last year.

Step 7: Have a spreadsheet to manage the URL parameters

Here’s the spreadsheet I use, feel free to adapt it.

Step 8: Setup a Program in Marketo

This is a Marketo centric issue. And it may be hard for you to manage if you have existing reports based on Programs.

It is possible to use Marketo Programs to collect Offer-Channel data. The most obvious way is to have a program for each Offer-Channel pair. You will end up with dozens of programs this way. I do not recommend this, however, it does work for some people. You might end up with:

We usually recommend a single Offer Program, with Tags to help identify the Offer content. Inside this Program is a registration flow that listens for the URL channel parameters, then assigns the Lead to a specific Channel SFDC Campaign.

Inside SFDC, you will have a Campaign Hierarchy:

• Offer Campaign
  • Child Channel 1
  • Child Channel 2

This system requires SFDC Campaign Influence to work. Reporting will be done in SFDC or another analytics tool. Download our resource: Report to Marketo Lead Source Setup. We can discuss Marketo RCE or other options, but this is a great starting point.

Step 9: Marketo Campaign to Process Leads to SFDC Campaigns

For the single Program method, you will need a campaign to listen for the Last Touch data and then assign the lead to an appropriate SFDC Campaign. This is just an example of how you might set it up.

Step 10: Marketo system to manage Last Touch to First Touch data.

You will need a workflow to update the First Touch field in case it is empty. While you could just try to overwrite it from the hidden field (and use Field Blocking), this is less risky in our opinion.

Step 11: SFDC Campaign Member Objects

In Step 8, we added records to SFC Campaigns, creating Campaign Member Objects. In a basic system, we can now start to report on this cross-object to study campaign influence. In a more complex system, we could add data to the Campaign Member Object to further study attribution and sales funnel. 

Step 12: Reporting with Campaign Member Objects

It can seem hard to do proper reporting, but if you have a great SFDC Admin or data analyst, they can use the Campaign Member Object effectively. In addition, there are solutions that can provide this information if your budget allows.

This is just a checklist of steps. The work to do this in your system is very detailed.

The Quick Checklist for Attribution

Here’s a quick checklist of items you need to put together to build a proper attribution system.

1. Mockups of reports you want to display.
2. Setup Offer-Channel Attribution Lists.
3. Choose the Attribution Model to start with.
4. Setup Paired Fields in Marketo and the CRM.
5. Setup hidden fields on the forms to work with URL parameters.
6. Setup URL Parameters to collect data on forms.
7. Spreadsheet to manage the URLs for each offer-channel combination.
8. Marketo Program for the Offer.
9. Marketo Campaign to manage adding leads to the right offer-channel campaign.
10. Marketo system to manage LT to FT data.
11. Take it one step further with SFDC Campaign Member Objects.
12. Reporting tool that brings in SFDC Campaign Member and Influence.

Download Our Free Resource

Report to Marketo Lead Source Setup – Our guide will walk you through the necessary pieces of using a Lead Source Framework.

I thought I would expand on this concept with a more detailed post.

Let’s say you have three reps who work in shifts: US East Coast, Tokyo, and London so that there is always someone available 24 hours a day. Each rep should receive leads immediately during their shift.

• East Coast: 9am-5pm EST
• Tokyo: 5pm – 1am EST
• London: 1am – 9am EST

Since Marketo doesn’t have a time zone concept built in, we need to tell Marketo what to do when a lead is created at a certain time. In this example, I assume your System Time is EST, so remember to do the time zone math before you begin.

Step 1: Create a New Field

Create a String field in Marketo called “Time of Day”

Step 2: New Trigger: Time Stamp New Leads

You can add this step to your regular lead processing system too.

Anytime someone comes in as a new lead, we stamp the lead with a time in a text field.

Use {{system.time}} to stamp the lead. The {{system.time}} token looks like

9:00 AM (-500 GMT)

Step 3: Build Smart Lists for each time range

Each smart list needs to cover each hour and AM/PM in order to work properly.

Step 4: Create a Routing Trigger

Now you have to run the Routing system. In this example, I am calling another campaign, however, it is easy to use any flow action here, including Sync to SFDC.

Step 5: Test the System

You should test this by verifying the following:

• Smart lists contain the right people
• Triggers are working
• Routing is correct

Step 6: Turn it on!

A basic system will look like this:

What other unique business rules do you have? Share them here. And remember to Sign Up for more free tips.

 

As marketers become more sophisticated in their use of marketing automation, they invariably ask, “How do I track video viewing behavior?” My experience in this area goes back a couple of years when this question started to emerge with YouTube video embedding and Eric Hollebone’s original suggestion.

Until recently, there were limitations on understanding video behavior. With a standard implementation of Marketo, you can understand if a lead Clicked on Web Page Link or Visited Web Page. Thus, you could setup a trigger to run a Score or other flow based on a Video page view.

But visiting a web page with a video is not the same as watching the video; we can only assume a lead watched the video. Most marketers want to go beyond that to say how much of the video did a lead watch? And if they watched 50% of the video, what can we do to follow up? You could Score higher for more video watched; trigger a Sales Alert; or move a lead into an email program.

Naturally, Vidyard is a major proponent of the power of “progressive tracking” to better gauge a lead’s interest.

“This type of progressive lead scoring allows you to dynamically score leads based on actual consumption of the content, rather than binary transaction like “clicked on a link” or “downloaded a whitepaper.” This is important because a lead that actually watches 3 minutes of a product video is likely a much hotter prospect than someone that downloads a white paper and never reads it.” – Tyler Lessard

All content offers should have a purpose and a goal for lead generation. With a tool like Vidyard, it becomes possible for a video to offer more detail than a typical text page or PDF whitepaper. A video can have all of the standard actions and metrics, and more:

• Call to Action
• ROI based on consumption
• Collect leads
• Ungated SEO
• Influence on Opportunities
• Views
• Content actually consumed by seconds or percentage

Video is the only medium that permits a complete understanding of the consumption of the content.

Great! But how do you do that exactly?

You can do it all with Vidyard!

Step 1: Setup Vidyard Account

Vidyard will provide a username and login information. Login and look for Account > Integrations. 

Step 2: Connect Marketo and Vidyard

To connect the systems requires an API connection, so Spark users won’t be able to use Vidyard. Everyone else can do this very easily with the following key items from Marketo.

• Marketo user ID
• Marketo encryption key
• Marketo Munchkin ID
• Marketo API key

Each of these can be found within Marketo > Admin. Since the naming of these API keys is a little confusing, here are the screenshots and where to copy and paste.

Once you have the correct codes, Vidyard will verify the connection with your instance of Marketo.

You should then connect your YouTube Channel to Vidyard so more data can be pulled into Vidyard. You cannot use other video platforms at this time, so you will need the original video file to upload if you aren’t using YouTube.

Step 3: Setup a Player

Vidyard can pull in videos from just about anywhere, but it needs to collect each video into a Player. The easiest option is to use a video already on YouTube. The Player can contain one or more videos. In this example, I am only pulling in a single video.

The Player has quite a few settings in two groups.

• Attributes – this is how your video appears in Vidyard’s SEO and system.
• Tags – optional tags if you build a library of videos.
• Thumbnails – you can use the automatic one from YouTube or upload a custom shot. You can go further and edit the Splashscreens and do AB Testing.

Then you can choose the actual Player Options, which is how your player will appear to the lead.

• Permit Viral Sharing an customize the social message nad links
• Allow re-embedding on other sites
• Player skin settings
• Size of embedded video
• Player color
• Advanced, including “Require Email to Watch Video” which creates a new lead in Marketo via API.

Step 4: Create a Marketo Landing Page

Before you can record any data, you will need to setup a Marketo Program, which might look like this. At a minimum, you need a Marketo Page to embed the video on. You can also embed the Vidyard Player on your main website page, but remember to have the munchkin code on there, otherwise Marketo won’t see the video data.

The components might include:

• Landing Page for the Player
• iFrame Page and Form if you want to use a Marketo Form as a CTA at the end of the video.
• Triggered Campaign to add scores or Interesting Moments. (Of course, you can run scoring elsewhere).

Step 5: Embed Player on Page

Once you are ready to embed the Player in a Marketo Page, go to Embed Details and choose the embed code suited to your needs.

Now approve this page to use the embedded player just like a lead would.

Step 6: Track Views in Vidyard

Now this is what you’ve been waiting for. It can take up to 3 minutes to show up on the lead record, according to Vidyard. During this test in my Marketo Sandbox, there was approximately a 40-minute delay between the lead created and the delivery of viewing history. Vidyard assured me this is unusually long and that the first lead to go through does take more than 3 minutes.

When I used the iframe form CTA, the lead I used for the test in this section was instantly sent to Marketo and all of its consumption data was in the system within seconds.

The next part is to use this tracking data in your Smart Lists, Campaigns, and Reports. Vidyard delivers the data as a Visits Web Page activity. The system does not display the name of the Marketo page viewed, rather it shows

Vidyard.com/Watched How to Connect Digesto to Marketo: 50%

Where it pulls in the Player Name and the closest amount of consumption for 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%.

In this example, we can trigger a flow based on the amount of consumption. Vidyard is a big fan of scoring by video consumption. Here is the flow setup:

And here are the results in our Activity Log. Now I have a very Interesting Moment that shows my lead viewed 25% of the video. Of course, my trigger did not take into account 75% or 100% and it actually moved too fast this time, thus I would not use the Choice Step like this again. Instead, I recommend focusing on a single video consumption target to avoid the trigger activating at a lower consumption value. This is also a problem if you use the Visited Web Page filter because it will bring in the first value it has, which in this case was 25%.

NOTE: If your lead fast forwards over the video, Vidyard tends to not count that as a percentage of the video consumed. It will say the lead viewed the video, but not how much.

Other Settings in Vidyard

Vidyard is a powerful video platform, so there are quite a few things you can do with Players. Here are a few of the neat things you can do with both Vidyard and Marketo. I’ll let you try out Analytics and AB testing on your own since they do not directly involve Marketo.

Associate a Lead with Video Views

It is possible that even if you have someone’s email address, you haven’t cookied them, or they have cleared cookies somehow. Vidyard provides an option to associate an email with the view data using a special URL. This may be more important for you if you use a third party platform to send the email, or if you are not using Marketo.

1. Go to the Embed page

2. Select the first Sharing Page (Sharing must be enabled) and get this link:

http://embed.vidyard.com/share/[UNIQUE PLAYER ID]

3. Then append the code below and use the resulting link in your email. This particular code snippet: ?vyemail={{lead.Email Address}} is for Marketo only. Other systems will have a different code to append to the Embed Share URL.

http://embed.vidyard.com/share/[UNIQUE PLAYER ID]?vyemail={{lead.Email Address}}

Email Gating the Video

If you prefer to collect lead email addresses up front – before the video view – you can do this by changing the setting on Player Settings to Require Email. I don’t always recommend this, but this could be idea for late stage content or an extended demo video, prior to Sales receiving the lead.

Embed a Marketo Form as a CTA

Instead of a simple CTA link or button, you can also embed a Marketo Form using the iFrame technique. Usually this form CTA should be at the end of the video, not as the pop out CTA.

To have a Marketo Form as a CTA at the end of the video, have a form in an iFrame that you want to use. The best way is to create a blank landing page and then place the form either in the center of the page or near the outlined upper left border. If you have not done this before, it make take you a few tries to get the placement right so the form is visible at the end of the player.

Second, use this code:

 <iframe frameborder="0" width=<<width>> height=<<height>> src="PAGE URL"></iframe>

Third, take this code and place it in the CTA section of your Player. Click on the HTML Code button to replace all of the HTML with the iframe code.

When the video is done, your CTA form will pop up and request more information.

AB Testing with Vidyard and Marketo

Vidyard allows you to AB test Splashscreens. The data is collected in Vidyard and analyzed statistically. If you plan to build individual landing pages for Players or create a video resource page, AB testing will help you determine which screens are most compelling to your audience.

Since this post is about the setup of Vidyard and tracking video, I won’t go into this area of Vidyard.

Analytics

Vidyard also has an Analytics Center where you can view data about all players or each player. There are several filters available. If you select a Player, you can view specific data on views and engagement, including the viewing history of individual leads, Anonymous or Known.

And there you have it! You can now embed video into Marketo Pages and your website and monitor the consumption of each video, enabling Marketo to take action based on video viewing behaviors.

Remember to sign up for more Marketo tips.

Additional Video and Marketing Automation Tips

• Optimizing Marketing with Video
• Embedding Flash Video in Marketo
• YouTube in iFrame
• Detailed Flash and javascript
• Embed Vimeo Videos into Marketo
• Capturing Video Metrics in other ways
• Video and Email – essentially take a screen shot with the play icon and link it back to the landing page with the video. Email clients do not support video plays.

Disclosure: Vidyard provided a free trial account for this how to.

Quite a few firms have a recurring webinar, demo, or roadshow program. Most of the time, there is a single page for registration and a list of dates the lead can sign up to. In the past, this form spit out a list to you and you registered the people with the right events.

Marketo can do all of this work for you! Of course, it does take a bit of setup to make this operational. As you might know, Marketo does not support recurring webinars or events with the various Webinar providers. What Marketo does do is give you the tools to support a recurring webinar yourself.

In this How To, I assume you know the following concepts and how to use them:

• Program
• Event Partner Setup: Admin > Launchpoint
• Webinar Setup
• Connecting Event Program to Webinar and SFDC
• Standard webinar or event registration flows
• Forms 2.0

Use Case: Register for Standing or Recurring Webinars or Events

The standard way of handling webinars in Marketo is to create a single Webinar Program, then build or clone the related assets, and put up a single registration page – one for each webinar. But some firms want to keep their recurring webinar system from WebEx or GoToWebinar because of a longstanding process history. This situation arises from having live webinars each day or week dedicated to demos or training. Usually the lead or customer is asked to choose one of several dates to join.

While I usually try to avoid a multiple webinar situation, it is possible to build a single webinar registration page that maps to several Webinar Programs. Yes, you still need a 1-1 match between a webinar and a Webinar Program.

This can be done for Roadshows and Webinars with the same process. In this example, we will use a Webinar. Here is the basic workflow we will build:

Create a Custom Field: Event Date Code

The recurring webinar system first requires you to create a custom field in Marketo. Go to Admin > Field Management > Custom Field.

Since this field is only required in Marketo, we don’t need to worry about mapping it to SFDC.

Using the Event Date Code

In the system, we need to tell Marketo which event was selected. In the previous step, we created Event Date Code as a custom String field in Marketo. Now we can choose a code system. I like something simple like this:

Now, if we want to display the date on the thank you page, we will have to use the natural language as the code, e.g.: January 5, 2014. This is fine, but there could be some limitations if we try to do fancier things later on.

Central Program Setup

The next step is to setup an Operational Program to manage the central registration system. This Program will not take credit for the attribution or registration; it is just a place where the Lead can sign up. It is a central place for you to manage the recurring webinar or event.

The Lead will then be passed to the correct Program Status based on the date in the field we created.

There are two approaches:

• Change Program Status for the target Program.
• Request Campaign – request the target’s registration campaign flow.

Both systems work just fine and require the same amount of work to update for new events. I will show you both systems.

Option 1: Change Program Status

In this system, we are listening for the Form Fill Out on the main page. We must also make sure the Event Date Code IS NOT EMPTY, or our plans will fail.

The Flow is simple:

• Change Program Status in the target Program based on the Event Date Code.
• Wait 10 Minutes (for the emails to go out)
• Reset the Event Date Code field so that if the lead shows up next time, prefill won’t mess up their next request).

Option 1: Target Webinar Program System

The next step is within each Target Program: the Confirmation Trigger will listen for the Program Status is Changed in this Program to “Registered.” If we want, we can ensure the right Event Date Code is used. This brake isn’t necessary, but it might prevent errors if someone accidentally changed the status.

The flow is simply to Send the Email because we’ve already set the webinar Status to Registered.

Option 2: Request Campaign

Again, in this system, we are listening for the Form Fill Out on the main page. We must also make sure the Event Date Code IS NOT EMPTY.

In the main registration processor, the difference is just that we use Request Campaign to call the target Program’s registration flow.

Option 2: Requested Webinar Registration

In the target Program, the Confirmation flow listens for the Campaign is Requested and Event Date Code. The flow then does Change Program Status and Send Email.

If you are used to having the Change Program Status within the target Webinar, then I recommend just keeping this the same in your Program Template.

Either system will work!

Form Setup

Now that we have a Program, we can create a Form. Add the fields you wish to have filled in, but also add the Event Date Field.

Landing Pages

There are two pages to create:

1. Registration Page
2. Thank You/Confirmation Pag

For the Thank You Page, we might want to display the Lead’s choice on the page. The only way to do that is if you chose to keep the standard Date format instead of using the date code system.

Approvals and Activation

Now you can approve the pages and turn on the target Confirmation flows, then the Webinar Registration Processor.

 

Go ahead and give a whirl.

How to Update the System Each Month

Let’s say you had four recurring webinars each month. You would use these steps to update the Form and central flows.

1. Setup the recurring webinars in GotoWebinar. These must be separate webinars.
2. Setup the Marketo Webinar Programs and connect them to GTW. Use a Program Template here.
3. Decide on the Event Date Code.
4. Make sure your target Programs’ registration flows are activated.
5. Central System: Update the Form with the new codes and dates.
6. Central System: Approve the Page Draft
7. Central System: Update the Webinar Registration Processor to point to the correct Programs
8. Give it a test 🙂

That should do it! Now you have a recurring webinar system that is mostly automated.

For more recurring event ideas and webinar tips, see these helpful articles:

Ideas on Multiple Events

[updated September 12 – removed bad links]

• Vote – Recurring Webinar Support
• Webinar Setup Instructions for Marketo (GTW)

Webinar Tips and Data

• Webinar Invitations [Tips]
• Avoiding Webinar Invitation Mistakes
• The Science of Webinars [Slides]

This is a somewhat inadvertent follow up to this week’s Six Principles of Data Cleanliness.

I was working with a client and for some reason we decided to setup an “Unqualified Auto Delete” flow. At the time, it seemed like a good idea because they did not want to keep disqualified leads anymore. It looked something like this:

Member of Smart List IS "Unqualified"

Delete Lead, From CRM IS TRUE

Bonus points if you can tell me why this is bad before we continue. The campaign was set to run nightly, on a daily basis.

Here’s what it should look like (and I don’t recommend this most of the time):

In the meantime, I went in and built a lead lifecycle system, with the brilliant idea of an Auto Disqualify flow. This would take all of the early stage leads that they never wanted and just set Lead Status=Disqualified. Naturally, the Unqualified Auto Delete would handle the rest. How many leads would this affect? Not too many, right?

Wrong.

A bit of a logic error led to a whole ton of leads being pushed to Disqualified and into the waiting jaws of the Unqualified Auto Delete campaign.

<unmentionable words>

Except we were saved by a weird Marketo error and my own foresight. First, I had noticed the Auto Delete did not have a Wait Step. I set that for 30 days before I completed the lead lifecycle. Second, the Queue names had changed in SFDC, but somehow Marketo never updated them in the Change Owner step that predated the name change. So when the Lead was Disqualified, it was never moved from its current owner. (phew!)

But the Scores were changed and that was not as pretty. So now I had 4000 Leads waiting to be deleted from both systems, all without Scores, in the wrong Lifecycle Stage, and with the wrong Status.

How did I roll this back? These lessons will be important if you want to correct the inevitable data error.

Step 1: Who was affected?

This part was fairly easy. It turned out that the Auto Disqualifier was the culprit, so anyone who was a Member of Campaign IS “Auto Disqualifier” is our target. You can also look at Campaign Members at the top of each flow.

Turn that off immediately.

Step 2: Remove from Flow – Save the Leads!

Much like the liver, we better go save those leads from Auto Deletion. In this case, we probably only needed to turn off the Schedule Recurrence until we cleared up the mess. Just in case, however, I ran a Remove from Flow on all the Leads. This is a useful flow step that has been much neglected since the demise of the traffic cop.

It’s a good idea to turn off any flows that may affect these leads or other leads.

Step 3: Reset Data Values

I looked at the Lead Statuses and set everyone who was “Disqualified” to “Open”. It’s not easy to go back unless you had been tracking field history on Lead Status in SFDC. Most firms do run history on this field, so make sure you start to do this.

Then we have to move everyone back from Stage=Disqualifed to Stage = ??. In this case, the Auto Disqualifier was only set to listen for Engaged Leads. Unsurprisingly, as soon as the remaining leads were pushed to Engaged, the Auto Disqualifier did its work. So I just set everyone back to Engaged.

Step 4: Restore Scores with a List Import Overwrite

In Marketo, as you might know, it is really difficult to roll back a data change unless you happened to know precisely what occurred. Thus, Step 3 was easy because we knew all the Leads were Engaged or Disqualified. With Scores, however, we have no idea what it used to be.

Fortunately, another quirk of this system is that all the Score fields were being tracked by SFDC history. I was given a spreadsheet of Old and New Values and worked to get the sheet ready for an import. Once I had the fields:

Lead Score | Behavior Score | Email Address

I could proceed with an import. Marketo will match the records and overwrite the existing scores. Keep in mind that some scores will be above the MQL threshold, thus the Data Value Change will trigger the MQL stage. That is ok, but be prepared for hundreds of leads being pushed to Sales. Warn someone!

If you are field blocking one of the fields you are trying to overwrite on import, Marketo will let you know. Check Admin > Field Management and temporarily remove the restriction.

Step 5: Ask Why This Happened

By this step, I already knew. I had failed to do enough quality checking and testing due to time constraints on the project. Always give yourself enough time to include full testing on a system as complex as Lead Lifecycle (LLC).

Of course, correct any flows that you can.

Step 6: Switch it Back On

After the cleanup was done, we turned the corrected flows back on. The exception was the Auto Disqualifier. I did not trust it to do its job even though I fixed much of the logic. It was too risky.

Remember these key steps to correcting your data errors:

1. Who is affected?
2. Turn off campaigns and remove from flows
3. Reset the data values
4. Use a List Import to reset data values (optional)
5. Ask why this happened
6. Switch corrected flows back on
7. Call Marketo Support (if you can’t figure it out).

And here are a few tips on setting up your system to help you repair errors:

• Never automate deletion of leads without at least a 30 day wait step. (I don’t recommend this at all actually, you should do this as part of your Marketo housekeeping).
• Turn on field history in Salesforce for key fields like Score, Lead Status, Lifecycle, etc.
• Test all of your flows.
• Make sure SFDC is backed up.

Have you had any mini disasters with Marketo? How did you solve them?