Marketo Archives - Robyn Hatfield

How to Maintain Data Integrity in Your Marketo Database

The Cringe-Worthy Question

Ask any Marketing Ops, Sales Ops, or Biz Ops person: “How clean is your data in your database?” This question often triggers a cringe. We all want clean data, and we set up our systems to achieve it. However, bad data is like bacteria—it’s everywhere.

In this blog, I will share systems and Marketo smart lists to help identify, prevent, and fix data errors. Let’s start by understanding how bad data infiltrates your systems.

Understanding Data Issues

Sources of Bad Data

What’s causing the bad data? That’s one of the first steps you want to identify. As we talk through ways to clean data, one of the most important steps will always be to identify the source.

3 main sources are: data entry, ingegrations, and list imports.

Data Entry: Typos or intentional input of incorrect information to access assets.
Integrations: Different systems might not require the same fields or have the same data validation, leading to discrepancies.
List Imports: Offline activities like events or other in person activities usually results in some type of list (paper, Excel file or Gsheets). List imports, if not thoroughly reviewed and standardized, can wreak havoc in any system.

Striving for Clean Data

Clean data is an ongoing process. You can’t just clean the data once and be done with it. People change jobs, emails, and phone numbers, making data maintenance a continuous effort. Ask any operations person after they clean the database how long it’s good for. They will probably tell you it’s already out of date! This makes monitoring systems essential to maintain data cleanliness.

Using Marketo Smart Lists

Marketo smart lists are invaluable tools for monitoring data integrity. Below are system smart lists that are included in all Marketo instances.

mARKETO System Smart Lists

All People: Everyone in your Marketo database.
Unsubscribed People: Can only receive operational emails, usually controlled by the recipient.
Marketing Suspended: Can only receive operational emails, controlled by the marketer.
Blocklist: Will not receive any emails.
Bounced Email Addresses: Undeliverable or rejected emails.
Possible Duplicates: Potential duplicate entries in the Marketo database.

Tips for Marketo System Smart Lists

These system smart lists are great. But if you don’t use them, they’re useless. So how do you get the most out of each one? Here are a few tips.

Possible Duplicates: Create a special view to show the person source, acquisition program, original source type, created date, and SFDC type (lead/contact). Look for trends and commonalities. Identify if leads can be safely merged or if they should be deleted.
Unsubscribed: Understand the overall unsubscribe numbers and process. Ensure resubscription is possible when people sign up again.
Marketing Suspended: Spot check for any unusual patterns, such as opt-ins not completing double opt-in. Confirm the logic in your operational program.
Blocklist: Periodically review to ensure no potential customers are blocked.
Bounced Emails: Verify the accuracy of bounced email numbers. Check the logic in operational programs marking emails as invalid.

Weekly Monitoring with Custom Smart Lists

While system smart lists provide an overall gauge of database health, custom weekly smart lists are crucial for spotting and fixing issues early. What you set up for your instance is probably going to be different than what I set up based on how data comes in, how data is used, what integrations you have and more. These are a few that I have set up that were helpful for me.

Example Weekly Smart Lists

Here are some lists I’ve created to maintain database cleanliness:

Missing First Name, Last Name, or Company Name: This helps you make sure key information is not missing. If it is, what can you do? For example, maybe you are missing company name on some of your forms. Or maybe an integration isn’t currently requiring a field that it should. Being able to monitor this weekly allows you to fix issues (like forms and field requirements) or put in automations to fix if you can’t prevent the issue (like an API that pulls in data – maybe you automate if the email address contains ‘@abc.com’ then company name is ABC Company). Identify sources and automate backend fixes where possible.
Acquisition Program Check: Ensure acquisition programs are not missing and are aligned with lead sources. Are you consistenly missing an acquisition program for certain campaigns? This allows you to spot check and fix issues right away. You may find that it’s a timing issue for the stamped data. Or maybe a missing flow step. Manually update and retroactively fix discrepancies.
Recent Database Entries: Review entries from the past 7 and 30 days for any irregularities. This check allows you to eyeball anything that you can’t put in a logic statement or maybe you just don’t know what to look for just yet.

Regularly reviewing these lists helps catch issues on the front end and automate fixes on the backend. This proactive approach ensures your Marketo data remains as clean and accurate as possible.

By implementing these practices, you can maintain data integrity and keep your database in top shape. Stay tuned for our next blog, where we’ll discuss using Salesforce dashboards for data monitoring.

Marketo Forms: Customizing Your User’s Experience

Marketo Forms

Marketo forms allow you to customize the journey of your users.

First, you can choose what fields you are going to show.

In the example below, I show how you can use hidden fields.

On the right side you will see that form prefill is enabled for the Is Customer? field. This means if Marketo has the data already, it will fill in.

Once you have the fields set, you will then click on ‘Form Settings’ then click on ‘Settings.’

You can then make changes to the setting. You can also change the Thank You landing page (where the you land when you complete the form).

What’s amazingly flexible about Marketo forms is that you can send people to different thank you pages based on answers on the form.

If you click on ‘Add Choice’ (bottom right under Thank You Page), you can create pathways.

When you click add choice, you get to specify the options. It’s important to note that you have to choose a field on the form (but you can have hidden forms that pull in information from Marketo instead of a question that is asked).

In my example, I created 2 landing pages: one for customers and one for prospects. But you can have multiple pages based on whatever criteria you choose.

This is just ONE way to create a flexible journey for your users.

On each landing page, you can also create dynamic content based on information in Marketo segmentations. So maybe customers go to the customer page but if they are in the energy industry they see one image/content messaging and if they are in consumer products they see another.

And in addition to dynamic content, you can use tokens to further customize.

Oh the fun we can create with all these flexible tools within Marketo!

Your Marketo Nurture Program Isn’t Running: How to Troubleshoot

Ok, so you are creating nurture programs for your company in Marketo. You have created the engagement program. When you go back to check on it, it hasn’t run.

What’s going on?

How do you troubleshoot?

Below are a few quick steps to check to troubleshoot the issue.

Is the program on?

This seems like a silly question, but it can be easy to miss. If you create templates, you often turn the program off in the template. Or when you’re in process of building, you often turn the program off. But it’s easy to forget to turn it back on with so many different moving parts.

Go to the nurture program. Click on Set Up (see screenshot below).

Once in Set Up, you can look to see what the Program Status is. You will want to turn that on and then press save.

Are people in the engagement program (is your entry program working)

You need to add people into the nurture. You do this with a smart campaign. You need to check your smart list. For example, in the screenshot below someone will get added if they either fill out the blog form or visit the pricing page.

You will want to check to see if you have any people in the Results tab.

If you are not seeing anyone in the Results, you need to look to make sure your smart list is correct.

Did you add content to the streams?

Once you create AND approve the emails, you will need to add them into the streams. You will need to click on the Streams tab then click on ADD CONTENT (you can also use the + to add emails). Once you add the emails, you will need to make sure all emails are ACTIVATED.

Did you set a cadence in the stream?

This seems like an obvious one, but it’s easy to miss. You have to make sure you have your cadence set in your streams.

In the example above, only Stream 1A – Cold would send emails. The other streams do not have a stream cadence set. You need to make sure all streams have the cadence set.

How are you moving people from stream to stream?

Are you missing a set of emails (i.e. your contacts received some emails but not others)? You need to confirm that people are moving.

You can move people from stream to stream using either the Transition Rules or using a smart campaign. Below is a screenshot of Transition Rules.

You can also use smart campaigns to move people to different streams (just like you did for the entry). This is my preferred method because you have more options and more control.

Is the content exhausted?

Sometimes, you just run out of content. Each stream has the chance to be exhausted. “Exhausted” just means that for x number of people, there is no new content (so they won’t be getting any more emails in that stream).

In the screenshot below, there are 27 people that are exhausted in stream 1. That means that 27 people will stop getting emails. All you need to do here is to either move them to another stream (push them by using a smart campaign or changing the transition rules) OR add content to the existing stream.

Marketo is one of the best tools. But sometimes troubleshooting can take some time. Just remember, work through your steps. Reference the Marketo forum. Sign up for the MOps Pro Slack Channel.

Are you new to Marketo? We have a newsletter designed for the Marketo newbie! It’s our Newbie News! There are so many great resources out there. But we found that so many newbies didn’t know what to ask (so even though there’s an awesome forum, they didn’t know what they didn’t know).

How Do I Find What Campaigns Are Using a Field in Marketo?

Ok, so you are knee-deep in Marketo. And you have a field, and you’re trying to figure out if what programs or campaigns are using it. How do you find out?

First…you have to have Admin access!

Go to the Admin section.

Then you will click on Field Management

Once you are in Field Management, you will go to the search bar on the right and type in the field name or keyword.

I chose the field EMAIL because I knew it would have many programs associated with it.

As you can see in the screenshot below, it lists out all the programs that use it.

If you click on any of the links, it will bring you to that specific program.

Marketo Filter Function

Marketo has this crazy cool filter function that allows you to quickly filter for types of programs, campaigns, etc. This can save you time and frustration if you want to search for something and you know the type of program or asset it is.

Looking for a list? Click on lists and BAMMM you get all lists.

While the Marketo tree has been criticized in the past for searching, this filter function will make that search so much better!

Happy searching!