Starting a new Marketing Operations role?
Your tech stack might look shiny. But, if the data or systems are broken, you’re starting in a hole.
Here’s a MOps checklist to run through:
Data Health
How clean is the database? (Deliverability rates, bounce rates, invalid records)
What percentage of the database is actually engaged?
How often is data cleansed or enriched?
How bad is the duplicate problem across Leads, Contacts, and Accounts?
Data Ownership and Governance
Who owns the data — Marketing, Sales, RevOps?
Are there documented rules for field creation, changes, and deletion?
Which system is considered the source of truth: Salesforce or Marketo?
Data Sources and Inputs
How is new data entering the systems? (Forms, uploads, integrations)
Are there legacy lists or bad imports still floating around?
Data Structure
How are fields mapped between Salesforce and Marketo? Can you get a CSV with all the mappings?
Are there critical custom fields that drive campaigns or reports?
Are picklists, multi-selects, and free-text fields standardized?
Segmentation and Targeting Readiness
Is data clean enough to segment by Persona, Industry, Lifecycle Stage?
Are key fields normalized and usable for segmentation?
Lead, Contact, and Account Relationships
How are leads matched to accounts? (Manual or LeanData automation?)
Are Person Accounts in use?
How is lifecycle stage progression tracked and enforced?
Marketo Setup
Is the instance partitioned with Workspaces or Partitions?
Are operational programs like Scoring, Lifecycle, and Nurturing already built?
What platforms are integrated with Marketo? And what is the integration?
For emails and landing pages, is the architecture modular or custom-built on the fly?
How is lead scoring set up — demographic, behavioral, or both? Where is the program? Have they reviewed scoring as it comes to their downstream KPIs (i.e. are the people that turn into pipeline and revenue showing high scores)?
Are Salesforce sync settings clean and optimized? Are you getting sync errors? Any recent piclist updates or restrictions?
Salesforce Setup
What is the data model — Lead to Contact to Account to Opportunity?
What are the core objects used?
Any custom objects that I should know about?
How are leads converted to contacts? What is the full process and who is responsible?
What automation tools and flows are being used?
What is currently integrated with Salesforce?
Are we close to capacity for our contract?
6sense Setup
How are Buying Stages defined and updated?
When was the last data taxonomy audit?
When was the last model refresh?
For the model refresh, what did we use as success? if it’s opportunities closed won in Salesforce, do we need to suppress certain types of opportunities (like renewals or training)?
Does the 6QA line up with what we see as the hottest prospects/accounts?
What do the segments look like? Do we need to archive some segments and clean up others?
What are segments being used for today (ads, workflows, marketing triggered campaigns, etc.)?
How are we using the intent data today (in scoring model, in marketing campaigns, in nurtures, in BDR outreach)?
Who has access to 6sense?
Does everyone have access to the 6sense dashboard in Salesforce?
LeanData Setup
How are routing rules built for Leads and Contacts?
Are you deduping within the program for lead to lead, contact to contact, and lead to contact?
Are you doing any auto-conversion? If so, what is the process?
How complicated is the routing?
SalesLoft or Outreach Setup
How does the platform integrate with Salesforce?
Who owns cadence creation and management?
Are inbound leads pushed into cadences or assigned directly to reps?
Key Internal Insights
Where is the biggest operational bottleneck: inbound, outbound, pipeline progression, or handoffs?
What is Sales’ main complaint about lead quality?
What is Marketing’s main complaint about Sales follow-up?
How clean is the database? (Deliverability rates, bounce rates, invalid records)?
If leadership could fix one thing in the data or systems immediately, what would they pick?
REMEMBER: You’re not just inheriting a tech stack.
You’re inheriting the quality of every deal, every lead, every handoff.