A few weeks ago, I asked you what your best marketing automation or Marketo tip was. Nine marketing rockstars responded with several tips and ideas that I was able to learn from as well. Well done and thank you for sharing.
Understand How and What to Sync to the CRM
Before you sync your CRM to Marketo decide what records should be hidden from the Marketo Sync User because you don’t want records with bad, missing emails, or people who are no longer in business to sync to Marketo, otherwise, your Marketo database will have bad records. Also if your CRM is SFDC, get another SFDC seat for the sole purpose of being the Marketo sync user, and never set it to expire. This will save you a big headache.
Take a moment to fully understand how the sync between the CRM and Marketo works. This was a big problem for us in our first year of using Marketo, but it’s been resolved.
From Rockstar Michelle Tiziani
Celebrate Big Deals and Inform Sales Too
Only sell big deals? Email out the a copy of the Opportunity Influence Analyzer sharing the critical moments influencing the deal to all involved celebrating their success. It helps show how many people and campaigns are involved in getting a deal closed in complex sales cycles.
Test Lead Scoring Models
Create a mock version of your scoring in Excel so you can test the different outputs prior to implementing in Marketo. Test multiple scenarios to make sure all lead scores play out as you expect.
Salesforce Campaigns Help Everyone
Many marketers abandon use of SFDC campaigns or simply duplicate their campaigns here so reps can see what’s going on. Instead, we have deployed SFDC campaigns to hold all the tips for campaign follow-up. For example, the marketing team will look at the details of a tradeshow in Marketo, but the sales reps can go to the campaign for this in SFDC and see a follow-up call script, suggested content, ad suggested next steps for leads from this campaign.
Three big tips from the Original Rockstar – Maria Pergolino
Automate Your Inbound Video
I engaged 2000 C-level execs in the European Software industry in building a series of 6 webinars in pure inbound that attracted a total of 16,000 viewers. One of the episodes hit 3500 live attendees.
All of this was run on Youtube backed by Marketo from end to end. This program still attracts dozens of opportunities each month.
From Rockstar Nicolas Woirhaye
Break up big emails to allow errors to be fixed
If you are a one-man band that is responsible for putting together Marketo email content, images and design as well as formatting your templates and programming Marketo flows and triggers, I would suggest always to split batch emails, especially if it’s complex. That way, if there’s a “programming error” which you have overlooked, you can still correct some minor details after the initial email blast.
From Rockstar from Down Under, Paul Guevara
Walk before you try to run!
Whether you’re just getting started or a seasoned pro, don’t try to tackle everything all at once. Plan incremental changes to build your strategy gradually and increase the complexity of your campaigns along the way. The most successful marketing automation strategies grow with business demands, and this takes place over a period of time.
Marketing automation is not just for Christmas.
From the Rockstar across the Pond, Victoria Goodship
Tokens are Your Best Friend
Keep on your toes! Marketing automation is always changing… there are new releases, “best practices”, techniques, and not to mention your audience’s changing preferences and behaviors.
{{lead.First Name:default=marketing rockstar}}
My advice is to use tokens! Tokens on global and local levels can not only lead to more personalized, tailored emails, and landing pages, they can also simplify your life across programs!
From Rockstar Kim Para
Save Your Work
If your laptop is open, and you have a very complex smart list on screen, and your cat happens to run across your keyboard and mess everything up, you have no UNDO.
I always tried to document complex campaigns with screenshots, but that wasn’t ideal because some may run 2 screens high.
So I just discovered that with the campaign summary view visible, if you click “export” in the bottom right corner, it spits out a one-page summary that has all the details (smart list, flow, activation history, etc.).
From Rockstar Ari Echt
Also, use my handy notation for written Marketo programming. – Josh
Use Webhooks for Unique Needs
We have created a webhook, which creates custom object records in SFDC. This way we can create custom objects records such as “custom web activities” or “POPs”. The major added value here is the ability to add custom fields to it, such as UTM parameters, product type/interest, etc.. And later on report on these custom objects and fields in SFDC.
This requires a SFDC webservice and an error handling mechanism.
From rockstar Shay Assor
Reduce Email Complaints
Tip for reducing email unsubscribe complaints like “Why am I still getting XYZ email?”….One very quick hit is to ensure the email recipient token is in the email footer of all your emails. Let’s you easily troubleshoot if there is a duplicate, email alias or other issues. Other proactive tip is to dedupe personal and business emails and to address email aliases (sales@abc.com)
Know Your Lead’s Birthdate
A little Marketo secret: Marketo doesn’t time stamp the date a lead is created. It’s like not knowing your own birthdate. The “Created At” date is actually the date the lead became anonymous which is likely different than the date the lead became known (e.g. Filled out form). Yes, this is very confusing especially when the “Lead was Created” filter has no corresponding Create Date field.
Here’s how to fix that:
Create a mapped date field in Salesforce like “Known Date” on the Lead and Contact Levels. Then create a simple Smart Campaign in Marketo that populates that date with today whenever that lead is created.
Smart List: Lead is Created
Flow: Change Date Value: Known Date = {{system.date}}
Now you can use that Known Date for various filters, reports and campaigns. You can also expose it in alerts and within your Salesforce instance so reps get more intelligence.
From rockstar Jeff Coveney
Great tips everyone! Thanks for participating! If you have more marketing automation tips, please let us know in the comments below.
Learn more about marketing automation strategy at my first big webinar with RingLead on July 17 at 2pm EDT/11am PDT. Register now.
[updated 7/1/14 – removed erroneous line about Lead is Created in RCA]