+ All Categories
Home > Documents > The Marketer's Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations · The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo...

The Marketer's Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations · The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo...

Date post: 20-Jun-2018
Category:
Upload: doanthuan
View: 224 times
Download: 0 times
Share this document with a friend
38
The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations i The Marketer's Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations How to get more from marketing automation by connecting your sales & marketing systems
Transcript

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations i

The Marketer's Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations

How to get more from marketing automation by connecting your sales & marketing systems

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 1

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations

Introduction: The Marketer’s Dilemma 2

Chapter 1: Unleash Marketo Across Any CRM 3

NetSuite, Zoho, Pipedrive, PipelineDeals, Insightly, Base CRM, ConnectWise and more...

• Interview with Clemence Fredenucci of Alphalyr (Marketo + Pipedrive)

• Marketo Integration Spotlight: D-Tools (Marketo + Zoho)

• Key Integration Use Cases

• Integration Tips

• Marketo Integration Spotlight: MaxSold (Marketo + PipelineDeals)

Chapter 2: Marketo and Microsoft Dynamics 13

Featuring Marketo Microsoft Dynamics User Group Leader, Paul Wilson

• Native Connector: Pains, Hacks & Wishlist

• The Advantages of a Third Party Integration Platform for Marketo-Dynamics

Chapter 3: Marketo and SugarCRM 19 • Pitfalls of a Free CRM Connector

• Five Ways Bedrock Data Provides a Better Marketo-SugarCRM Connector

Chapter 4: Marketo and Eventbrite, connecting your event marketing & marketing automation 25

• Why Marketo Users Love & Need Programs

• Marketo-Eventbrite Integration

Bonus Section! 20 Ideas from Marketo Power Users to Power Up your B2B Marketing Automation 32

Originally published on Marketo.com

About Bedrock Data 37 • Integration Platform for Marketers

• Pre-Built Marketo Connectors

About Bedrock Data 37

Zak PinesVP of MarketingBedrock Data@MoneyballMktr

Gabi AntunesSenior Marketing SpecialistBedrock Data@gabcorant

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 2

The Marketer’s DilemmaThe average marketer touches 12 diff erent tools. So you fi nd yourself in one or many of the following scenarios:

• Uploading spreadsheets between systems

• The marketing and sales teams at your company are not on the same page about data

• Marketing creates leads but sales doesn’t have the right visibility or context about why they received them or what to do

with them

• You want to use Marketo to generate closed loop reporting, but don’t have the right data from your CRM

• If you want to run a marketing campaign through a CRM database, it takes you days or even weeks to get the right data and

segment it

• Your sales team is upset because marketing reached out to SQLs with wrong message

• Your marketing team is upset because lead attribution is lost when sales enters leads into CRM

This is why we created this guide for Marketo users.

To give you a set of best practices so you can get more out of Marketo and marketing automation activities across diff erent channels. To give you the tools to align sales activities to marketing, create closed-looped reporting, analyze data accurately, and make your life easier.

We’ll open up your thinking about the possibilities of leveraging Marketo well beyond Salesforce - across any CRM ecosystem. We’ll get into the nitty gritty of how to best leverage Marketo with Microsoft Dynamics or SugarCRM.

We have insights throughout the guide from Marketo power users, and a bonus section at the end with tips and tricks from 20 top Marketo power users on how to get the most out of Marketo - integrations and beyond - in driving revenue.

“When we were running Marketo and Pipedrive without an integration, we ran into issues all the time where marketing and sales communications were in confl ict. Marketing didn’t know the latest status of a lead. We were engaging clients with the wrong messages. That was very unprofessional and it was a big issue.”

- Clemence Fredenucci, Alphalyr

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 3

Chapter 1: Unleash Marketo Across any CRMMarketo was built with a focus on Salesforce CRM users and to this day the majority of Marketo B2B customers come from the Salesforce user base.

Bedrock Data is helping users across any CRM take advantage of Marketo’s capabilities, without the pain or complexity of a typical CRM integration.

If you are using a CRM such as Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, SugarCRM, Pipedrive, PipelineDeals, ConnectWise, Insightly, Base CRM or Zoho along with Marketo, some of these scenarios likely resonate with you:

• What happens when your Marketo instance isn’t talking to other systems?

• Is your marketing team sending emails with the wrong message to leads already engaged with sales?

• Can marketing track the impact of leads passed along to sales?

• Is marketing missing out tracking leads that sales enters to CRM directly?

• Are you spending hours uploading and downloading data between systems?

• Are marketing and sales at each other’s throats because they are working with inconsistent data?

• Are you missing out on opportunities because it takes too long to get leads to sales for follow up?

That’s a real drag.

To be an eff ective marketer, marketing automation systems really do need to talk to other key sales and marketing systems.

“We needed a turnkey Marketo-Zoho integration to align our sales and marketing. I have a room full of software developers here, but they are working on other important projects. I didn’t want to pull my CTO off of what he’s doing and say “Go learn this, build this, troubleshoot this.” There would be no value in that.”

- Adam Stone D-Tools

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 4

Why connect Marketo to a CRM?

We invited a Marketo power user, Clemence Fredenucci, from Alphalyr to sit down with us and discuss how she supercharged sales and marketing alignment by integrating Marketo and their CRM.

There’re lots of reasons to integrate your HubSpot portal with your CRM, but the focus here is on the four main benefi ts that help sales & marketing teams increase their eff ectiveness (translation: revenue) and effi ciency. That’s what it’s all about.

Zak:For companies using Salesforce, a Marketo-CRM integration is a no-brainer. But not everyone is on Salesforce. Some marketing teams need to start by building the case for connecting Marketo to their existing CRM. It’s a challenge that I know some time ago you were facing.

Clemence:Our company launched a few years ago and our CRM has always been Pipedrive. There are several pros to Pipedrive as a CRM including usability for our sales reps and aff ordability. One year ago, we added Marketo to drive our marketing programs. Why? Because Marketo is a powerful tool to optimize our marketing and to align sales and marketing.

But there’s no native integration between Marketo and Pipedrive so this leads to some challenges and issues.

Disconnected marketing automation & CRMs

Clemence: When we were running Marketo and Pipedrive without an integration, we ran into issues all the time where marketing and sales communications were in confl ict. Marketing didn’t know the latest status of a lead.

We were engaging clients with the wrong messages. That was very unprofessional and it was a big issue.

Also, the sales leads entered in Pipedrive by the sales team were not getting added to the Marketo database so those leads were not in marketing programs and it was very hard to nurture them.

To do that, we had to do everything manually, which was very painful. There were way too many spreadsheets going back and forth. It was very diffi cult to maintain the Marketo database properly. It’s also an issue for reporting.

That’s why we decided to fi nd a connector between the two systems. We decided to go with Bedrock Data because, it was the best solution to connect Marketo and Pipedrive. Why? It was very easy to implement and the onboarding was also very easy and fast. And also it allows us to map what we wanted and what we needed. We could keep all key data in sync between Marketo and Pipedrive: leads, contacts, accounts, organizations, opportunities and deals.

Multi-directional sync

As we investigated our options, we knew that it was important for us to have a multi-directional sync. That means that every time a leads is added to Marketo, it’s added to Pipedrive. And every time a lead is added to Pipedrive, it’s added to Marketo. Key updates are made between the two systems as well, while keeping data de-duplicated in both directions.

Syncing Marketo and Pipedrive has made the sales and marketing team was much more aligned.

We can now act much more as a single team, because we have consistent data based on the activities and interactions from each team with a prospect.

Clemence Fredenucci

Zak Pines

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 5

We work with consistent data between Marketo and Pipedrive because now it’s automated and up-to-date. We can use segmentation based on lead status. We can now build both automated and batch campaigns targeting the right leads based on the latest CRM data. That has helped our campaign results.

And one other point it’s a big time saver which is very valuable. Our team loves that they don’t have to deal with spreadsheet uploads anymore.

Everything is updated real time. So it’s a huge time saver.

“Now we can work hand in hand with both the marketing team and the sales team so it has helped us connect to the two teams.” - Clemence

Zak: To recap, what has your Marketo - CRM integration done for your sales & marketing teams?

Clemence: The integration has made a massive impact on our sales & marketing alignment. As marketing, we can now communicate correctly to our database and we know who is engaged with sales as an active opportunity. Our sales team loves that.

Our sales team also loves getting key marketing information directly in the CRM, without having to learn a new interface. Our marketing team uses Marketo, but our sales team wants to just use their CRM and get visibility to the little bit of information that is going to help them have more effective conversations with prospects and customers.

Automated lead delivery

Zak: Clemence’s situation is a common one. You want to take advantage of Marketo, but you’re business is using a non Salesforce CRM. That’s where Bedrock Data comes in.

Bedrock Data has built its integrations around use cases that enable the key functionality in Marketo - the things that Marketo users are trying to do to maximize their results with Marketo. The first use case is automating lead delivery from marketing to sales.

By lead delivery, you’re getting leads that qualify for marketing over to the CRM. But, as Clemence reminds us, that’s not enough. You also need to cater for sales entering leads too. This is why having a multi-directional sync is important. And having one that is de-duplicated by email addresses so that no records are connected between systems is key to success.

Sales visibility

We also find the key to success is providing visibility in your CRM to those key Marketo fields so that sales reps get the right context for why they’re getting leads.

One of the nice innovations from Bedrock Data is taking the interesting moment concept that Marketo has defined to those using non-Salesforce for CRMs. You can push those interesting moments into CRMs in fields that your sales team is already using like completed tasks or activities.

The combination of key marketing data in custom fields as well as interesting moments are a great way to give your sales team context to why they’re receiving leads and empowering them to have informed conversations with those leads. Sales reps appreciate getting that information in summary format, without having to learn a new interface or make any extra clicks away from the CRM they’re using every day.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 6

Targeting your CRM Database

Clemence also spoke about targeting your CRM database most effectively in Marketo. You want to have the latest status updates from your CRM. You want to be talking to prospects differently to existing customers, differently to opportunities that are active with sales.

Having that ability to do that in real time and using some of the great functionality of Marketo like smartlists very empowering to marketers. Doing all that without spreadsheet uploads.

I’ve been there. Painful.

You don’t want to be doing spreadsheet uploads every time you need to run a marketing campaign. You’d like to have your marketing campaign always running behind the scenes and triggered by key data updates in your CRM. Lead moves into nurture status, pushes over to Marketo, which puts them into the right campaign.

Deeper segmentation & closed loop reporting

Then getting into some of the really powerful use cases and exciting ones are syncing opportunity data back to Marketo that allows further segmentation. Using things like, is this person a contact on the opportunity as well as unlocking some of the RCA reporting potential.

Marketo’s RCA is what allows you to report on how leads from specific programs are turning into opportunities, pipeline and ultimately, revenue. Bedrock Data’s opportunity sync back to Marketo populates the opportunity data in Marketo to make this happen.

How an integration between Marketo & a CRM works

HOW THE INTEGRATION WORKS

MQLs (once quali�ed)

Lead created by sales

Opportunities syncto enable full funnel

analytics

Populated in Marketo(used in Smartlists)

Populated in Marketo(used for RCA reporting & Smartlists)

OPPORTUNITIES

CONTACTS/LEADS

ACCOUNTS/COMPANIES

Bedrock Data connects and aligns key objects between Marketo and the CRM system.

For example, the contact/lead record in Marketo will be synced bi-directionally with that field with that object in the CRMs. Bedrock Data also allows you to control triggers for when data syncs.

For example, one of the best practices we see is you’re going to have your whole marketing database in Marketo and once marketing has qualified a lead as MQL, that’s when that lead will push over to sales and the CRM. It keeps your masses of the marketing database out of your CRM. Your CRM administrator will be very happy as your CRM data will remain much cleaner. And you don’t have to worry about building complex workflow for routing leads to all different areas of your CRM that you would if you had a full Marketo sync to CRM.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 7

In addition, leads brought into your CRM directly will sync, and de-duplicate, back to Marketo. The de-duplicate piece is above and beyond what Marketo’s native Salesforce connector offers.

I know for me in past roles, there’d be a lot of inbound phone calls that would go directly to sales reps. They’d be entered directly into the CRM. With a bi-directional sync like Bedrock Data, that’s okay. That lead goes into the CRM. Bedrock Data will reach into Marketo. If it finds that lead already exists in Marketo, even if it’s in an early stage of marketing status not yet synced over, it’ll connect to that marketing record.

That’s a key feature because what that means is two things. One is you have de-duplicated data.

No duplicates.

It’s connecting those two records. And, very exciting for marketers, any of that marketing activity that’s taken place to that lead is now gonna be connected to the resulting sales conversations. All your marketing programs will now be properly connected to that outcome to that record because there’s a direct connection between the two and they’re seen as one record, not two records.

As for the rest of the objects, accounts, and companies come over and become data that you can leverage as part of your smart list to do automated segmentation. Then the opportunity data also is typically sent back from your CRM to Marketo.

Three Tips for your Marketo IntegrationSales enters leads too!We’ve beaten this to death a bit, but it’s important to embrace this with your processes. The reality is sales sometimes needs to enter leads directly into CRM, so it’s key for. your integration to handle this without creating duplicates. Remember the power of the bidirectional sync is sales is entering leads too into the CRM. Embrace that. Don’t push back on that. That’s okay. That’s a good business process. A bidirectional sync can pull those records back into Marketo, create them as new records if they’re new, or map them up to existing marketing leads. .

Get key Marketo intel to salesGive key Marketo intelligence to sales in the interface they’re used to.

Sales doesn’t want this through a plug in or a module.

Sales wants to see this directly on the CRM records they work with every day. You can accomplish this by mapping custom fields in your CRM to those key fields in Marketo which capture important marketing summary information, such as lead source.

I recommend not too many fields. Three to five fields is the right number to not overload or confuse the sales reps and give them the intelligence they need. They also have the option to leverage interesting moments to bring over key activities to supplement that data.

Sync opportunity data back to MarketoThen syncing opportunities back to Marketo is gonna enable a number of key Marketo features, including getting that closed loop reporting that s at least part of the reason why customers have chosen to invest in Marketo in the first place.

ll see a multi-directional sync of contacts and leads.

1

2

3

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 8

We spoke to Adam Stone about how his sales & marketing teams connected Marketo and Zoho CRM to create an integrated demand generation process. Adam is President/Founder of D-Tools, headquartered outside of San Francisco.

Background on D-Tools

Can you start by giving us background on D-Tools?

D-Tools provides business management software for audio and video integration professionals. Our software facilitates comprehensive system design, documentation and project management for their installations. We were recently featured in a CIO Review cover story.

I founded D-Tools in 1998 and today I’m the President. As part of that role I work closely with our sales and marketing teams and systems, which is why I was closely involved in this project.

Can you tell us about your sales and marketing teams?

Our marketing team is run by Tim Bigoness, our CMO. Our two key lead generation channels are our free trials from our website, and many industry trade shows in which we participate.

Our sales model is primarily direct sales. We’ve tied our sales team into three sub-teams. We have prospectors who make the fi rst touch with a lead, sales associates who manage leads, and account executives who manage and close deals. These specialized roles have allowed us to scale the team with diff erent skills and areas of focus for each group.

Sales & Marketing Systems: Zoho CRM and Marketo

Can you take us through your key sales and marketing systems? I understand you’ve been using Zoho CRM for many years, so let’s start there.

Adam: Back in 2008, we were looking to move CRMs, and we found Zoho was a great blend of the functionality we needed at the right price. And coincidentally it turned out our CFO had previously worked for Zoho’s parent company, AdventNet.

So we’ve gone on using Zoho for many years. Our process became dumping leads into Zoho, and we had over 40,000 leads in there. It had become overwhelming for the sales team to manage, and we had no structure around it.

What happened next?

Adam: We knew we needed a separate system to manage our marketing database outside our CRM. We knew we needed to incorporate automated nurture campaigns for us to better develop the leads, score them, and then have our sales team focus on the most qualifi ed leads. Instead of dealing with the overwhelming number of 40,000 leads in Zoho.

Tim Bigoness had worked with Marketo at a previous company, so we turned to Marketo as the marketing automation system to go along with Zoho as our CRM.

CONTINUES

INTEGRATION SPOTLIGHT

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 9

A Unified Sales & Marketing Process Through Marketo and ZohoAs you started with Marketo, how’d you look at approaching the integration of Marketo and Zoho?

I got directly involved because I’m an automation guy at heart, and automation is a fundamental premise of our business. I absolutely hate double entry of data. That just leads to errors, slow and ineffective processes, and frustration from our teams.

I knew we needed to integrate Marketo and Zoho CRM to get the most out of both systems.

Ok, so how did you approach integrating Marketo and Zoho?

First we looked at Workato. That was more of an integration toolkit approach, so it wasn’t the right fit for us. We would have had to spend a lot of time learning tools, and then building our own integration. It was way too much for us to deal with.

We needed a turnkey integration. I have a room full of software developers here, but they are working on other important projects. I didn’t want to pull my CTO off of what he’s doing and say “Go learn this, build this, troubleshoot this.” There would be no value in that, because we’re not going to retain that knowledge, and we’re not going to want to apply the resources to managing it ongoing.

OK, so what happened next?

I started searching for “Marketo Zoho integrations” and Bedrock Data came right up. As I read about your Marketo Zoho integration, it was exactly what we wanted. We then engaged with our sales team, and it was very easy. The team walked us through the key use cases for the integration, and it was exactly what we were looking for.

The sales process was straightforward, easy to engage, nice and clean. We made a decision to move forward quickly as it was what we needed, both in terms of functionality and business engagement.

Integrating Marketo and Zoho CRMHow did the process work for integrating Marketo and Zoho?

Bedrock provided us both the integration platform and expertise around integrating Marketo and Zoho. That was the right combination for us.

The step we needed to take, which the Bedrock Data team guided us through, was to ensure we had consistent custom fields between Marketo and Zoho. The field types and picklist values needed to match, and then we could map and sync them using Bedrock Data.

It took just two or three hours of meetings time together to get it done. Bedrock Data made me look good in front of my team, because we got it done so quickly and easily, and then it just worked.

Can you walk us through what data objects specifically you have integrated between Marketo and Zoho?

We are mapping Marketo leads which are now called people, to Zoho leads and contacts; Marketo companies to Zoho accounts; Marketo opportunities to Zoho potentials; and Marketo interesting moments to Zoho tasks.

On the lead records, we are mapping key lead data that we capture in Marketo to Zoho, and those fields are visible right there on the Zoho lead records for our sales team. That includes lead source, a sub-lead source, size of company, territory and sub-territory.

CONTINUES

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 10

We also have some account data that maps over to Marketo for our customer segmentation. This includes a field called account type that tells us if a customer is outright or using our subscription model, as we communicate very differently to those two segments. And that includes updates to that field - as it changes - and when it does that information syncs seamlessly from Zoho to Marketo so that we are communicating correctly to our customers.

Can you walk us through the process for lead management you’ve setup between Marketo and Zoho?

Before we had the 40,000 mass of lead records in Zoho. Now we have that data in Marketo and we are running campaigns against that database. We are scoring these leads based on their demographics and behavior, and once they reach a certain lead score, we stamp them as a marketing qualified lead. Bedrock Data then automatically pushes that lead to our sales team in Zoho.

The sales team gets all of the context for the history of that lead and why they are getting it right there on the Zoho lead record. The sales team loves that because it’s all right there for them, with no extra clicks or plug ins.

You mentioned interesting moments, how do those work?

First off, I love the name – interesting moments. I now use that term in my personal life – my goal in life is to have more interesting moments.

Classic! That is a great use of the phrase. Let’s keep it to interesting moments in Marketo.

Ok, so in Marketo we can define interesting moments that we want to notify sales of a key prospect activity. They are visiting our website. Now they get notified right there when it’s happening.

It’s a hot lead. That’s gold for the sales team. So let’s say the customer is in a meeting talking about us and they go on our website - it tells our sales team that you should be calling this person right now. What a great time for a salesperson to call.

Very neat. Marketo has had interesting moments for a long time, but what’s key here is that you are using Bedrock Data to feed that into Zoho for your sales team. Very impactful. OK, last thing then on the integration: how does opportunity data factor in?

The opportunity data syncs back from Zoho Potential to Marketo Opportunities. That helps ensure we know if a given person is part of an opportunity. It allows us to communicate correctly to people. A big part of our marketing is sending the right message to the right people. We don’t want to be sending a promotional email to someone who’s already part of an active opportunity, and getting that data from Zoho to Marketo is key for this

How does Bedrock Data work ongoing for the Marketo-Zoho integration?

It’s automatic. We don’t need to think about it. It just runs and keeps our critical systems in sync every five minutes.

I can look at our dashboard and see which leads are coming over, and that it’s all working. There is some good error reporting. It’s nice to have visibility into that stuff, as I can see it easily without having to dive into either system.

Can you recap what Bedrock Data is doing for you for the Marketo Zoho integration?

Bedrock Data helps us get the most out of Zoho and Marketo. The power is in having the two systems connected. We couldn’t have done it this quickly if the Bedrock Data team didn’t know not only their own system, but both Zoho and Marketo so well.

Our on boarding manager guided us through the process, so we got it done cleanly. We took what could have potentially been a very complex project, and got it done quickly and easily and easy. It was a real pleasure.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 11

INTEGRATION SPOTLIGHT

We interviewed Sushee Perumal of MaxSold to discuss how he’s leveraging Marketo & Bedrock Data to power his sales & marketing engine

Can you start by telling us what MaxSold does?

We are a high growth e-commerce business that manages online estate sales for our customers. For those downsizing, relocating or clearing an estate, we provide the local expert help and combine that with the online auction services to sell everything in two weeks. We’ve found a solid niche in the market, and we’ve been growing around 100% each year. Today we do about 200 auctions per month in 35 metros in North America.

How do you approach generating new demand for the business?

We’ve segmented our audience into a bunch of different personas, and as we capture new leads we have automated email campaigns to appropriately follow up, in parallel to follow up calls from our sales team.

One of our personas we call “grandma”, this is someone who is downsizing to a new house. This is someone who is going to make a decision quickly, so we share a lot of social proof, information to build authority and to educate.

Another segment for us is real estate agents, who want to be more educated on how to refer a client to us, and what’s in it for them. For those we educate around our service, so they in turn can refer a customer. We let them know “what’s in it for you,” and how they benefit.

What systems do you have powering that sales and marketing process?

For CRM, we didn’t need a lot of bells and whistles. PipelineDeals has a nice suite of functionality to help us manage sales tasks and workflows. It’s our third CRM over the past five years, and I think we’ll be sticking with it.

We wanted a smart marketing automation product, something that was smarter than MailChimp that could manage personas and our lead nurturing flows, and for this we chose Marketo.

We use Bedrock Data to keep our CRM and Marketo synchronized. We didn’t want to ever have to touch a CSV file, and we wanted to ensure data was flowing cleanly between both systems given how tightly aligned our process is between marketing and sales.

Bedrock Data keeps our data aligned between the two systems, which ensures our marketing follow-up is completely relevant based on the latest sales interaction. We have a tight sales and marketing process, powered by data.

What are the main things you are trying to get out of your marketing automation and Marketo?

We are very focused on increasing conversion rates and conversion velocity, so having our marketing automation and CRM tightly aligned is crucial. This gives us the visibility to have our pulse on the business and make the right decisions to drive growth. We are in two countries right now and have ambitions to be in more countries. Having a tightly integrated system would be a key enabler for MaxSold’s fast international growth without the need for a massive back office.

What was it like working with the Bedrock Data team?

Bedrock Data are truly the integration experts. I think of them as the data integration company. Right from my first contact with the company I could tell they truly understood data.

CONTINUES

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 12

The nice thing about working together is there is a standard process to bring on board a customer like us so we were up and running in a matter of days. The team had a very practical approach to connecting Marketo with our CRM, which was very beneficial to us especially because we weren’t in a situation to bring on our own IT resources to setup or manage the project.

What tips would you give to other Marketo users?

Even if a piece of functionality isn’t out of the box don’t give up. There are a number of things you can do to make it behave the way you want. Our team is constantly applying Marketo’s functionality and new product features to drive business growth.

My other tip is to be diligent with reviewing your performance data. If you are only getting 2-3% click through on email, you may as well not be sending those emails. So really look at what’s working and do more of that, and look at what’s not working and change it up.

The last tip is leverage Marketo and the underlying data to keep your communications as relevant as possible. We are seeing 60-70% open rates on most of our emails because they are well timed, persona relevant emails on topics of interest to our audience. Send them from salespeople so they have a personal touch; no one wants to receive a message from [email protected].

We have moved away from batch and blast to really targeted, timely and relevant messages.

For more on connecting Marketo to any CRM, check outhttps://www.bedrockdata.com/marketo

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 13

Chapter 2: Marketo and Microsoft Dynamics

Paul Wilson, Marketo certifi ed consultant and solution architect at Perkuto, runs the Marketo-Microsoft Dynamics user group. Paul shared with us an overview of the challenges he faces with the free, native Marketo-Microsoft Dynamics CRM connector and opportunities he sees to leverage third party integrations to improve your performance.

Challenges of the Marketo-Microsoft Dynamics free connector

Pain #1There is no data de-duplication if a lead exists in Marketo (not synced to Dynamics) and then that lead gets created on the Dynamics side

This scenario would apply for teams who upload or input leads directly into the CRM system, which is often the case for sales managed campaigns, referrals, or inbound phone leads directly to reps. Because this scenario is prone to duplicates, customers will often opt to do a full database sync from Marketo to Dynamics – but this can introduce other challenges such as how to manage an entire marketing database with Dynamics, and making downstream lead routing unnecessarily complex.

Pain #2No workfl ow management

Paul shared the below screenshot which is a side-by-side comparison of the Marketo connectors for Salesforce and Dynamics. So with Dynamics, marketers lack the ability to create tasks, convert leads, change lead owners or add leads/contacts to campaigns.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 14

Pain #3GUIDs are a pain

For any Dynamics lookup fi elds, this data transfers into Marketo using a long form unique ID GUID, which makes the data nearly impossible to use in Marketo. See the screenshot example below.

Paul’s Top Hacks for Marketo & Microsoft DynamicsPaul recommends two hacks with workarounds to get the systems working more cohesively together.

Hack #1Trigger Dynamics Workfl ows based on a synced fi eld

Paul recommends a hack to set up a Dynamics workfl ow for changing a lead owner based on using a value in fi eld synced between the two systems. So workfl ow will use that sync fi eld as a trigger to reassign the lead. The drawback to this approach is it requires confi guration on the Dynamics side.

Hack #2Pass in fi eld values for task assignment

Along a similar line, a hack for pushing tasks from Marketo to Dynamics could be to setup multiple fi elds – which get re-used solely for this purpose – to pass through values for tasks. A Dynamics workfl ow can take those fi elds, use them to create a task, and then

Cut the hacks. Rather than require the involvement of a Dynamics administrator to update complex workfl ows, it would be easiest if there was no need for the Dynamics workfl ow in the fi rst place. Marketers love CRM administrations, after all, but we’d rather manage those rules ourselves! That applies to reassigning lead owners, creating tasks and converting leads.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 15

Paul’s Wish List for Marketo & Microsoft Dynamics

Wish #1– No dupes

Paul calls for logic to look for first for matching records before Dynamics creates dupes in Marketo. Dupes in Marketo are – at best – an administration headache, and at worst can wreck havoc by mistargeting customers in future communications and mishandling their communications or opt-out preferences.

Wish #2 – Cut the hacks

Cut the hacks. Rather than require the involvement of a Dynamics administrator to update complex workflows, it would be easiest if there was no need for the Dynamics workflow in the first place. Marketers love CRM administrations, after all, but we’d rather manage those rules ourselves! That applies to reassigning lead owners, creating tasks and converting leads.

Wish #3 – Campaigns & marketing lists

Campaigns are important for closing the loop on campaign analytics, not to mention a useful way to communicate clearly with sales – e.g. these are the leads who registered for, or attended, a recent webinar sales or BDRs are now following up.

Wish #4 – Custom entities & custom objects

Paul’s on a roll, a man can dream, right!

Wish #5 – Interesting moments as activities within the CRM

Sales reps like to keep their CRM usage straightforward. Getting interesting moments to show up directly on the lead records they are working with every day, makes it clean and simple for those reps to have visibility into key marketing engagements from the clear out the values so those same fields can be re-used in the future.

Why a Third Party Integration Platform Gives You a Better Marketo-Dynamics IntegrationA third party Marketo-Dynamics integration is a win-win. These are the top seven reasons why a third party integration like Bedrock Data gives you a better integration than the free native connector.

Reason #1 Microsoft uses a third party integration for their Marketo-Dynamics connection

The native connector isn’t good enough for Microsoft, should it be good enough for you?

This is ripe for a punchline, but the reality is Microsoft spent tens of thousands of dollars (or more) in time and resources to connect Dynamics and Marketo. You don’t have the resources to do that, but you do want a connector that won’t cause you daily headaches.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 16

Reason #2Avoid duplicates! With a multi-directional sync to handle new records in both directions

The Marketo-Microsoft Dynamics connector is optimized for pushing leads from Marketo to Dynamics. But sales teams are creating leads every single day – for sales prospecting, inbound calls, referrals, or new contacts on accounts.

What happens when a lead is on your website and fi lls out a form, and then calls up your sales line?

That lead ends up in Dynamics, and then as a duplicate in Marketo. Even worse, you’ve lost the marketing attribution for that lead.

A multi-directional sync is optimized for creating and updating records in all directions. When sales creates their leads in Dynamics, those leads are updated to the original Marketo record -- no duplicates!

This allows you to architect your marketing automation and CRM system lead fl ow correctly, with your marketing data in Marketo, and only brought into the CRM once marketing qualifi ed.

The impact?

Cleaner data, and a much happier Dynamics administrator. �

Reason #3Push interesting moments as closed tasks to Dynamics

We’ve found that sales people appreciate staying in the CRM views they are used to working with everyday. For them, it’s the simplest way to get key lead intelligence.

So rather than have to introduce a new interface or plugin for sales, an integration platform can push Marketo’s interesting moments (key prospect milestones) directly into Dynamics as a note.

Also, now is the data can be used for reporting and analytics in the CRM system.

Reason #4Work with lookup fi eld values in Dynamics

Paul expressed the pain point of Marketo admins being forced to work with 36-digit codes for lookup fi elds such as user and business unit. This can be very frustrating and time consuming. And the worst case, lead to errors if you are trying to build smart lists using this data. With an integration platform, you get the actual lookup values to appear in Marketo. Saving you time and risk for error when working with your Dynamics data in Marketo.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 17

Reason #5Manage workfl ows without a CRM admin

The interplay between marketing and sales workfl ows makes this new ability to make changes in CRM systems vital for Marketo administrators. Especially for aligned marketing and sales teams who work closely on lead follow-up.

Converting leads, assigning tasks, and adding to lists or campaigns are some workfl ows a marketing operations person wants to manage in a CRM without opening a ticket with a CRM admin.

As we note below, Bedrock Data is continually evolving our connector and platform capabilities. And these are some of the exciting areas currently under development including add to lists and converting leads in Dynamics.

Native Marketo-Dynamics connector presents ‘Modifi ed By’, ‘Owning Business Unit’ and ‘Owning User’ as 36 digit codes.

Use an integration platform for the lookup values to appear correctly in Marketo.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 18

Reason #6 Managing multiple or mixed instances

Multiple instances requiring alignment between lead/contact, company/account, and opportunity data is the classic use case for Marketo - Dynamics integration. A third system pairing with Marketo and Dynamics is also a natural use case for an integration.

• This could be triggered by:

• Multi geographies or business units

• Acquisitions whereby acquired companies have different marketing automation or CRM systems

• Specialized CRMs for BDRs & Sales teams – we are seeing use cases where marketing is using Marketo coupled with a CRM

optimized for usability (like Pipedrive, PipelineDeals, Base CRM or Close.io) and then sales and back office processes are

managed in a CRM like Dynamics

Paul also made the point during the webinar that another possible system pairing is support systems – looking to connect support activities and coordinate with both sales in the CRM and marketing communications and programs.

Reason #7 Full-time dedicated resources around your data integration

Deciding to work with a third party integration platform is a statement that the quality of your data connection, and how it’s supported, is important to you.

When you use a native connector, it’s going to be one of many, many items from both a development and support perspective. As issues come up, and you have new requests – expect them to be prioritized accordingly. This is why marketing automation community message boards are littered with complaints around native connectors and lack of evolution.

With a third party integration platform like Bedrock Data, you are investing in continued enhancements to your integration, as well as dedicated and focused support teams. That makes a huge difference for something as important as the flow of data between your critical systems driving your go to market activities.

For Dynamics Admins• Avoid marketing data clutter forced by a full sync

(excess leads in CRM)

• Interesting moments as closed tasks opens up CRM

reporting/analytics

• Manage multiple instance or mixed environments

Key TakeawaysA third party integration platform is a win-win for Marketo and Dynamics administrators.

For Marketo Admins

• Work with lookup field values (e.g. business unit),

not long ID values

• Stronger confidence in no dupes

• Manage workflows without needing CRM admin

• Manage multiple instance or mixed environments

• Focussed support & development around integration

For more on Bedrock Data’s Marketo-Microsoft Dynamics Connector, check out https://www.bedrockdata.com/marketo/marketo-and-dynamics-integrations

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 19

Chapter 3: Marketo and SugarCRM

Pitfalls of a Free CRM ConnectorFor anyone who has ever worked with free software, there are pros and cons.

Pros are…. well it’s free.

But there are lots of cons, some of which take time to surface. Typical challenges of free software included:

• Lacking in features relative to paid competitors.

• Poor usability relative to paid competitors.

• Lack of support from the software vendor (as they focus on other paid products)

The free SugarCRM connector is no different.

Ask yourself for something as important as a marketing automation-CRM integration, is it worth it to get stuck with a free, vendor-supplied connector that doesn’t deliver for your sales and marketing teams?

Five Ways Bedrock Data Provides a Better Marketo-SugarCRM ConnectorWhen customers turn to Bedrock Data to connect Marketo and SugarCRM, we hear over and over again: “We wish we knew about this option before we started down the path with a sub-par connector that caused us a lot of headaches and delays.”

Here’s a compilation of what our customers have told us - five ways Bedrock Data provides a better Marketo-SugarCRM connector.

#1 Don’t let the inevitable duplicate records break your integration

Duplicate records are a reality of most CRM and marketing automation instances. By duplicate record, we mean the same individual – most commonly with the same email address – appearing in multiple lead or contact records within Sugar, or across Sugar and Marketo.

Let’s start with the situation of duplicate lead/contact records in Sugar for the the initial sync of Sugar to Marketo. Bedrock Data gracefully handles this situation, while free connectors will choke on this scenario - putting your integration to a standstill and forcing you into a many weeks or many months project before you can move forward.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 20

Bedrock Data’s approach to handling duplicates is:

• For the initial sync from Sugar to Marketo, if there are duplicate lead/contact records, ignore those duplicate records so that

our customers can review/clean those records while allowing the rest of their databases to sync properly.

• Provide a report to our customer of these duplicate records, so they can be reviewed/merged in Sugar

• Then, on an ongoing basis, the Bedrock Data sync de-duplicates in both directions, for leads pushed from Marketo to Sugar,

and leads pushed from Sugar to Marketo. This is key for customers who have sales reps adding leads or contacts directly

into Sugar.

• If leads already exist in Marketo, when Bedrock Data syncs a record from Sugar to Marketo, the Sugar and Marketo versions

of those records will connect such that there is aligned data across the two records. Our customers control a system of

record setting on a per field basis, to determine which system should ‘win’ to resolve any data conflicts.

The impact of this is ensuring duplicate records don’t slow down or break your integration. It also give you flexibility for how your sales team uses SugarCRM, while ensuring your databases avoids the plague of duplicate records.

#2 Your sync needs to perform at the speed you need

Customers appreciate Bedrock Data’s robust connector which synchronizes in both directions, every five minutes.

This speed and reliability is critical to support processes delivering marketing qualified leads to sales. In a world where 80% of business buyers expect real-time communications, immediate integration between marketing automation and CRM is critical to maximize lead conversion rates and serve the expectations of prospects and customers.

Bedrock Data takes many steps to ensure your data sync is optimized for performance including:

• Ignoring (not choking on) duplicate Sugar records

• Giving customers flexibility to determine which fields are mapped - any non critical fields can be ignored and don’t need to

sync

• User-controlled sync triggers - customers determine what triggers should push a marketing lead to Sugar, usually a

Marketing Qualified Lead revenue stage in Marketo. Customers have the confidence to manage the marketing database

separate in Marketo without the fear of duplicates, based on the bi-directional de-duplication approach from #1 above.

#3 Integration is more than moving data, it’s creating compatibility across the connecting systems

When dealing with CRM-marketing automation integrations, it’s about more than just moving data from one system to another, it’s about ensuring that the data flow into the system is compatible with what customers are expecting that system to do for them.

This is particularly important when are you looking to leverage Marketo for automated marketing campaigns based on your CRM data, and using your CRM data for closed loop opportunity reporting on marketing effectiveness in Marketo.

One example of this is ensuring that not only do opportunities sync back from SugarCRM to Marketo (which it does, via Bedrock Data), but that the primary contact relationship on the opportunity also syncs into Marketo – as this is key for building smart lists and for Marketo’s Revenue Cycle Analytics reporting. Marketo needs that opportunity: contact relationship in order to work properly.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 21

A second of many examples is supporting the mapping of multiselect SugarCRM fi elds to Marketo to enable targeting via Marketo smart lists and smart campaigns.

A Marketo oddity is that multiselect fi elds aren’t really multiselect fi elds. They are string fi elds, and the multiselect option is actually set on form picklists within Marketo forms. Fortunately, Bedrock Data handles this seamlessly by pairing SugarCRM multi-select fi elds, fl owing the data values semicolon delimited into the Marketo fi eld value, and then allowing the Marketo user to use smart lists and smart campaigns to segment on that data.

Here’s how it works:

Marketo’s Revenue Cycle Analytics relies on the opportunity:contact relationship to connect opportunity results back to the originating lead/contact in Marketo

Multi-select fi eld setup in SugarCRM

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 22

String fi eld setup in Marketo, and mapped to that SugarCRM multi-select fi eld using Bedrock Data’s fi eld mapping

SugarCRM multi-select fi eld values fl ow into Marketo (semi colon delimited)

Use Marketo smart lists and “contains” select to build segmented lists

#4Your sales team should love the integration (or what it’s doing for them)

Your sales team shouldn’t need to worry about your Marketing Automation-CRM integration, as it should be behind the scenes and just work.

But you do want them to love what it’s doing for them.

Bedrock Data’s approach to sales interacting with marketing data via integrations is for them to not have to get bogged down with plugins or new interfaces. These are extra clicks that they won’t take during their busy day.

Instead - get the key marketing insights they need, right there in SugarCRM. Through Bedrock Data, you can map custom fi elds in Marketo to custom fi elds in Sugar, to provide insight on the lead record to key marketing information from Marketo. In addition, interesting moments from Marketo can be pushed to Sugar tasks to give reps visibility to key marketing interactions such as specifi c web page visits or attending a webinar, driven from Marketo.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 23

#5You need fl exibility in your integration, now and forever

An integration is not a one-time event. It needs to be continuously managed, and evolved - as business demands change.

Bedrock Data allows marketing and ops teams to add a new mapped fi eld to your integration, through the click of a button, at any time. This means if there is a new fi eld you need to push from Marketo to Sugar to give visibility for your sales team, you can do that without the hassle of an IT or systems integration project.

Another example of fl exibility is easily adjusting business rules. Some of our customers don’t use leads in Sugar, so their process calls for them to create contacts, not leads. No problem.

Bedrock Data allows for the Marketo-SugarCRM connector confi guration to be adjusted to create contacts, instead of leads.

Giving sales visibility to key marketing information directly on the lead record makes it quick for sales reps to get the info they need

Bedrock Data’s object gating allows for the bypass of lead records to create contacts in Sugar

This is one of many things you can confi gure using Bedrock Data around your CRM-marketing automation integration - helping to demystify the integration. All fi eld mappings and data workfl ow rules between the systems are also confi gurable, controlling which data is mapped and when it syncs.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 24

When integration issues arise, they need to be swiftly rectifi ed There are inevitably issues between the fl ow of data between systems. Most often it has to do with how the data is being handled in the connected systems, in this case Sugar and Marketo. There are often data dependencies that you don’t anticipate, and issues result.

When this happens, a trusted third party system and support team dedicated to your integration like Bedrock Data, helps you solve issues swiftly -- without cross-vendor fi nger pointing.

When you are reliant on a systems-specifi c connector, lacking expertise in the connecting system, issues will take longer to troubleshoot as back-and-forth ensues between systems and companies.

The Bedrock Data account management and support teams live, breathe and eat data connectors every day, and play an important role in ensuring customers are successful with their Marketo-SugarCRM integration -- both in that initial setup and the ongoing management.

For more on Bedrock Data’s Marketo-SugarCRM Connector, check out https://www.bedrockdata.com/marketo/marketo-and-sugarcrm-integration

“Bedrock Data made me look good in front of my team, because we got it done so quickly and easily, and then it just worked.”

- Adam Stone D-Tools

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 25

Chapter 4: Marketo + Eventbrite, connecting your event marketing & marketing automation

Background: Why Marketo Users Love & Need ProgramsFor Marketo users, the “Program” is the centerpiece of marketing operations and activities.

Here’s why.

With Marketo Programs, a Marketo user can set up a set of assets to be used as part of a repeatable activity such as a webinar or an event. These assets include:

• Invitation emails

• Confi rmation emails

• Reminder emails

• Post-event follow up emails

• Registration page

• Thank you page

All of these assets may be tailored to diff erent audiences, e.g.:

• Customers

• Partners

• Opportunities engaged with sales reps

• Top of funnel prospects

Along with the assets, Marketo Programs should also include the smart campaigns that trigger these communications, and any targeting criteria. Here are some examples:

• Email invitation – with diff erent invites by audience type

• Trigger email for event confi rmation

• Scheduled emails for event reminders

• Event follow up emails – with diff erent invites by audience type

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 26

And lastly, within each of these assets, tokens behave as data-driven elements that are used throughout the assets. Examples of tokens include:

• Event Name

• Event Date

• Event Time

• Event Headline

• “Why Attend” Point 1

• “Why Attend” Point 2

• “Why Attend” Point 3

• Registration URL

• Speaker 1 - Name

• Speaker 1 – Company

• Speaker 1 – Photo

• Speaker 2 – Name

• Speaker 2 – Company

• Speaker 2 – Photo

Here’s a screenshot of what a token list for a Program looks like:

This setup gives a Marketo user a complete set of assets ready to go, when creating a new Program such as an event.

So with that as background, why do Marketo users love and need Marketo Programs?

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 27

#1Programs save Marketo users a ton of time

Saving time falls under the “love” category.

Instead of customizing individual assets and creating new workfl ows for an event, there is just one step: populate tokens. This reduces the process down from many hours to minutes.

It also removes the need for Quality Assurance and testing to make sure everything is set up correctly.

It’s still advised to test emails and landing pages, but with the confi dence to know there won’t be the little errors that may be present for Programs set up from scratch.

#2Programs allow you to establish and repeat best practices

This approach lets Marketo users focus on best practices, and not have to discount doing things because they would be too time consuming.

Everything is pre-built, like this smart campaign below which triggers a confi rmation email.

This means Marketo users can implement best practices into Program templates and then automatically have them as part of their assets for every event.

Some examples of best practices typically overlooked because of time constraints are:

• Tailoring communications based on type of audience – customers, partners, opportunities, top of funnel prospects

• Including “why attend” points in confi rmation and reminder emails to maximize attendance rate

• Including “forward to colleague’ calls to action in confi rmation and reminder emails to encourage attendees to share with

others

• With Marketo Programs, these can now be built into Program templates once and leveraged for every event.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 28

#3Programs are the ‘unit of measurement’ in Marketo

This is the “need” part of Programs.

Marketo users need Programs because they are the unit of measurement within Marketo. By being part of a Program, a lead/person becomes part of Marketo’s framework for reporting on a Program’s success.

Here’s how this works:

• Marketo Programs have members, and a given lead/person can be a member of one or more Programs

• For each Program type, the Marketo administrator defi nes Program statuses (e.g. registered, attended, cancelled) and tags

which of these statuses are considered a ‘success’. See this screenshot here for where this is managed:

Marketo’s Revenue Cycle Analytics / Advanced Report Builder credits and reports on any Marketo Programs whereby success has been reached. This is then connected to the resulting opportunities, based on the contact roles on the opportunity, for revenue attribution

• Other smartlists based on Program membership or Program status give visibility into who has done what with those events

– e.g. an attendee list, a registrant list, a no-show list (registered, did not attend)

Bedrock Data’s Integration with Marketo ProgramsFor additional marketing systems such as events or webinars, Bedrock Data allows Marketo users to connect those activities to Marketo programs – so you can leverage all the benefi ts of Marketo programs along with these third party systems.

For example, with an Eventbrite integration, Marketo & Eventbrite users can now connect Eventbrite events to Marketo Programs, and Eventbrite activities such as registration and cancellation to Marketo Program statuses. And managing the continuous sync is easily done through a web interface to manage the mappings, without a single line of code.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 29

Connecting Marketo & Eventbrite

Nothing delays marketing automation like downloading data from one system and uploading it into another system.

Take the upcoming event you’re managing through Marketo.

Every morning, you download the registration list from Eventbrite and upload it into Marketo. Then, you spend time figuring out which of the registrants are new leads vs existing leads, run an update to set the program status to “registered,” and manually sift through the cancellations.

You do all this extra work because Marketo and Eventbrite don’t talk to each other.

Your frequent data downloads are motivated by the fact that you want to:

• Catch new registrants

• Have accurate reporting

• Get Ned off your back about the updated headcount

We’ve been there too.

And that’s exactly why we built an Eventbrite - Marketo Integration. So you can focus on sending tailored emails, building smartlists, and other Marketo Program activities.

Just set up an event in Eventbrite, a Program in Marketo, connect the two systems in Bedrock Data, and you’re all set to go (you just need a Bedrock Data account).

Here’s what you can do with it.

Automate registration data

Using Bedrock Data, you can automatically feed Eventbrite registered data into Marketo. If leads already exist, they will be updated. If leads don’t exist, they will be created.

That sounds simple, but the basic event connectors usually get that wrong where they don’t do a good job of managing updates to existing records. For those with experience with Zapier, it’s not good at updating the existing records.

With Bedrock Data, that’s all very clean and simple. And that’s just the start of it.

No more spreadsheet uploads

As marketers, we’re very happy to remove spreadsheet uploads and spreadsheet clean up and CSV files from my vocabulary. Bedrock Data also allows you to map Marketo programs to Eventbrite events and the Marketo program statuses to key Eventbrite activities like registration and cancellation. Automatically. No spreadsheets.

For example, you have a road show and that road show has a smart list of registrants and that registrant data in the Marketo program is getting fed directly from an Eventbrite event.

Eventbrite registrants automatically sync to Marketo. You can map each Eventbrite event to an individual Marketo program and you can map your Eventbrite statuses to Marketo program statuses.

One of the common scenarios we see is once someone’s registered, they get updated to registration status, but we also can have a cancellation status. Some of our customers using this connector have or wanted to ensure that they track cancellations into Marketo. That is very easy to do by mapping a cancellation activity to that cancellation program status.

Behind the scenes, in your Marketo program setup, you’ve defined that a registration is a success, and a cancellation is not.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 30

Auto-update Marketo Programs

This is all managed through the Bedrock Data interface so that you don’t require any coding or custom work.

All that you’re doing is when you set up a new Eventbrite event, you’re going into Eventbrite, you’re creating your event. You’re going into Marketo, you’re creating a program, like you’re doing today. The one extra step through the Bedrock Data interface, is to say for this event in Eventbrite when someone registers for it I want to push them into this Marketo program with a registration status. You create that mapping through the Bedrock Data interface; it works very similar to Marketo smart list in terms of defi ning that rule. The diff erence is have direct access to your Eventbrite event list and your Marketo programs through an interface where you control that mapping.

To a marketer, this saves a lot of time and headache. No more CSV fi les, no more spreadsheets.

Expanded Marketo Program functionality

Now that the data is coming automatically from Eventbrite, you can leverage all your Marketo email templates and functionality, and set up triggers for automated event reminders.

For example, you’re running an event. You can set up your confi rmation emails in Market, which are tailored based on the audience from your Marketo data. Your event may have participation with a mix of customers, prospects, partners and opportunities. You shouldn’t be messaging to those people identically. By doing your follow up communications in Marketo, you can tailor your emails based on what you know about that person using smart lists and/or dynamic content.

That’s part of the power of connecting Marketo and your event system.

Lastly, by getting your Eventbrite Data into Marketo, you can leverage Marketo for program reporting such as how many people registered, and how many people are considered successes from that event.

Create Marketo Program templates

Automatically connecting Eventbrite to Marketo programs means you can fully leverage Marketo programs and tokens to manage that event. This will save you more time and give you more capabilities around marketing that event.

For example, if you want to have an automated Marketo email after someone has registered for an event. Then in Marketo you can set up a “program status has changed” trigger to send follow up emails. Once you have that setup once, then you can use program tokens to populate event-specifi c information so you can use this same template every time. That’s a bi-product of managing your events through Marketo.

HOW IT WORKS

CONTACT

EVENT

EVENT STATUS

Attendee (Read)

Event (Read)

Order (Read)

Person (Read, Create, Update)

Program (Add to)

Program Status (Update)

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 31

How does an integration between Marketo & Eventbrite work?It’s a three-step process to connect Marketo & Eventbrite using Bedrock Data.

Step One: Select Connectors

Bedrock Data has over 50 connectors available. To connect Eventbrite and Marketo, select them from the drop-down and hit “install.”

Step Two: Select Fields to Map between Eventbrite & Marketo

The mapping function carries over any information asked on a registration form like title, company, email, and even attendee status changes. Our onboarding team works one-on-one with each of our customers to confirm that all the correct fields are mapped.

Step Three: Set Up Workflows

This is where we tell Bedrock Data what specific info to sync. Because we want attendees from an Eventbrite event to be listed as members of a specific Marketo Program, we’ve selected the fields that will enable that.

This workflow adds event specific Eventbrite registrants to a Marketo Program so we can set up smartlists in Marketo, send targeted email content, or set lead scoring based on that program.

This second workflow is setup to update the status of a Marketo Program member when their status changes in Eventbrite. In this case, the status we’re asking Bedrock Data to update is for canceled registrants.

This workflow updates a Marketo Program member’s status triggered by an Eventbrite status change so cancellations are tracked in Marketo.

For more on Bedrock Data’s Marketo-Eventbrite Connector, check out https://www.bedrockdata.com/marketo/marketo-eventbrite-integrations

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 32

Bonus Section! 20 Ideas from Marketo Power Users to Power Up your B2B Marketing Automation Originally published on Marketo.com

We’re at an exciting point in the evolution of marketing automation.

There is a growing range of specialized approaches and technologies available to help marketing and sales teams drive real results–starting with the core of lead lifecycle management, lead nurturing, and lead scoring, and expanding out to cross-channel nurturing, website personalization, account-based marketing, and predictive lead scoring, to name a few.

Perhaps more importantly, as the industry matures, leading-edge marketing automation practitioners now have many years, or even a full decade, of experience under their belt. The insights from these power users can help any marketing automation user, beginner or novice, see rapid returns on their efforts.

At Bedrock Data, we launched a Marketo Power User Series featuring 20+ Marketo Power Users and their backstories about how they got started in marketing automation and their best practices, tips, and tricks for getting the most out of a marketing automation platform. This group has collectively earned over 20 Marketo Champion awards, which honor the most advanced and active Marketo advocates, with over a century of Marketo day-to-day operational experience amongst them.

Here we share 20 insights from power users that you can apply to your own marketing automation practices:

Marketing Strategy

The first marketing automation win is to save your marketing team time.

Gregoire Michel, Founder and Managing Partner at Inficiences Partners, explains that implementing a marketing automation system should first and foremost pay itself back by taking time out of your marketing program implementation. It’s also something that your marketing team can, by in large, do

on its own without cross-departmental dependencies. By focusing on that first, you can establish a quick win and gain organizational momentum, after which you can focus on other wins such as driving revenue growth and aligning sales and marketing.

Without strategy, people, and process, Marketo is just another email tool.

Jason Long, Senior Solution Engineer at The Pedowitz Group, speaks about the importance of using an overall programmatic approach to drive improvements in your revenue engine. His quote is meant to be provocative–of course, Marketo offers many more features than an email tool, but Jason’s point is that if

you don’t have a plan with a defined process that’s backed by the right resources, you will not be set up to get the most out of your marketing automation system.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 33

Avoid the shiny object syndrome.

Jeff Canada, Manager of Global Marketing Operations at Quantcast, cautions about focusing on the tool du jour and losing focus on the things that matter. The core fundamentals are lead stages, lead scoring, and lead nurturing–and ensuring you have basic versions of these three program types in place for you to benchmark, learn from, and iterate. Make sure you get this done first to set yourself up for success.

Program Optimization

Leverage tags to structure your programs to enable the reporting you’ll want.

Dan Radu, Principal MarTech Consultant at Macromator, describes the importance of setting up a range of tags to allow you to categorize your programs. Dan recommends a tagging system that includes geography, product/solution area, offer type (blog, case study, data sheet, etc.), and objective (acquisition, awareness, cross-sell, etc.).

Try a webinar series to get more impact from your webinars.

Many B2B marketers are trying to break through the webinar clutter. Bethany Tomich, Demand Generation and Marketing Operations Manager at Rapid7, suggests packaging up a series of webinars on common themes and leveraging Marketo programs to set up a scalable, repeatable webinar process and make it easy for your audience to subscribe to the series or a single event.

Tokens are powerful for scalable, data-driven marketing program setup.

Mike White, Marketing Automation Specialist at Ipswitch, advises that you should leverage tokens when setting up your program structure to make your marketing operations process much more scalable and reduce errors. Tokens allow you to set-up programs with many different elements that are data-driven and quick and easy to update.

Test, test, test your automated flows.

Flora Felisberto, Senior Manager of Global Marketing Programs and Operations at Perfecto Mobile, speaks about the importance of testing your automated flows and not discounting the likelihood for human error. You need to be very robust with testing your automated programs, particularly around list logic, and always go back and check the actual results after putting a new automation live to see how it performs in the ‘real world.’

Lead Scoring and Nurturing

Score your customers for better upsell and service performance.

Paul Wilson, Solution Architect at Perkuto, describes the opportunity around leveraging your marketing automation system to collect and share customer data across marketing, sales, and support by using one or more dedicated customer lead scores. Paul recommends using customer data to identify better

upsell candidates for sales and feeding valuable information about customer engagement to support teams to improve customer success and support. Customer lead scores should be tailored to specific cross-sell/upsell offerings and should score customer demographics and engagement–including content consumption or specific sales and support activities–to rank customer fit.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 34

Connect your lead nurturing into your SaaS Product.

Ed Masson, Head of Sales and Marketing Operations at Searchmetrics, reveals that there’s an opportunity to tie in intelligence from how a prospect interacts with your free trial (for SaaS businesses) into your lead nurturing programs. Tailoring your communications based on what users have done in the product,

and how far they have advanced in their trial, will help you improve your conversion rates to the next phase of trial consumption or sales qualification.

Tailor your lead nurturing by persona.

Sushee Perumal, CEO at MaxSold, reveals that this is their approach to tailoring their lead nurturing. They use different message streams based on their core audience segmentations and the information they gather about their prospects.

Data Quality

Use a three-tier framework to manage your lead sources.

Edward Unthank, Founder at Etumos, believes that figuring out the right approach to lead sources is a key underlying element to marketing automation tracking. Edward recommends using a thorough approach in which you should track three levels of information: lead source category (e.g. inbound vs.

outbound), lead source (e.g. direct, referral, social media), and lead source details for the specific source (e.g. Facebook). For the depth of reporting you’ll need to optimize your programs and prove ROI, do it for both first-touch and last-touch conversions as well as the touchpoints in between.

Unify your data around the customer.

Paul Green, Director of Global Demand Center at Extreme Networks, works in an environment with dozens of MarTech tools powering his team and encourages a customer-centric view to data management. Paul emphasizes the value you’ll get from ensuring a common customer view across

marketing, sales, and support and how that will lead to higher quality customer interactions across all departments and, as the ultimate outcome, greater customer satisfaction and revenue growth. This customer-centric data approach requires having a strategy whereby all of your systems that manage customer data are aligned with a unique identifier, usually email addresses for individuals and account identifiers for accounts.

Identify the data points that matter to you, and be diligent about managing data quality.

Elizabeth Downing, Manager of Marketing Operations at Pantheon Platform, speaks about the importance of identifying key data points that matter to you, which could include demographic data such

as geography and intelligence data such as lead source–and being diligent in ensuring you are effectively capturing that data throughout your lead process. By focusing on the fields that matter to you and applying full attention to that process, you will ensure you have the right quality of data to drive your reporting.

Data hygiene is key.

Bobby Burns, Marketing Automation Consultant at Marvel Marketers, stresses the importance of data hygiene and using automated trigger campaigns to help keep your data clean–which includes handling unsubscribes and invalid, blacklisted, or inactive emails. If you don’t have a process for handling these leads,

you could overestimate your addressable marketing database, which will lead to significant inaccuracies in your analytics. Data normalization is also part of this–keep your data field values consistent to ensure your targeting is precise.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 35

Marketo is a very effective data management tool.

Jeff Coveney, President at RevEngine Marketing, reveals that smart campaigns can be used to normalize data across different fields, such as ensuring a country’s values like US, USA, and United States are unified to a single value. Clean marketing automation data means clean CRM data downstream and greatly increases the effectiveness of your targeting and the accuracy of your reports.

Be selective around syncing data to your CRM.

Jame Ervin, Marketing Operations Manager at Optimizely, works in a cross-functional operations team and encourages taking a close look at the rules for data synchronization between your marketing automation and CRM systems. This will allow for a more effective and efficient synchronization process–impacting delivery times on leads to sales.

Revenue Funnel & Reporting

Define your revenue stages so you can improve your performance.

Justin Norris, Solution Architect at Perkuto, articulates the massive value of defining and tracking your revenue stages. Setting up these metrics allows marketing to frame their objectives as pipeline improvements (e.g. “We are looking to improve the conversion rate between two lead stages by X%,

and based on our baseline metrics, this will have a forecasted pipeline impact of Y.”) and describe all the programs and activities that are being put in place to meet those objectives. It provides the bedrock for marketing to have a leadership seat at the revenue table.

Simplify your processes around your lead marketing funnel.

Following the Datto-Backupify acquisition, Chris Rudnick, Senior Marketing Manager at Datto, had a real driving force for simplifying their lead stages, which meant consolidating their two Marketo and two Salesforce instances into one of each. Chris believes it’s important to simplify the process, especially since the sales team can benefit as well from a simpler, clearer process that’s not over-engineered.

Make sure you have the right setup for full funnel reporting and focus on what delivers the most value.

Eddie Morales, Director of Demand Generation at Revel Systems, reinforces Justin Norris’ recommendation to ensure that you define your revenue stages. He advises that it’s also critical to have

the right methodology in place to measure it across your marketing automation and CRM systems. Then, as you make decisions on where to spend your time, choose areas that are going to make improvements along the funnel.

Take a phased approach to closed-loop reporting.

Pierce Ujjainwalla, Founder at Revenue Pulse, recommends starting with program structure and tags, and then using a three-phased approach to get the insights you need. The first phase is making sure you have good data. The second phase is to track metrics from your marketing automation platform and/or CRM.

The third phase is to leverage a data visualization tool for deeper drill-downs and a dashboard tool to get more real-time visibility.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 36

About the featured contributors

Zak Pines

Zak is the VP of Marketing for Bedrock Data and also a long time Marketo power user. He’s on a mission to make it easy for ALL Marketo users to take advantage of Marketo functionality. From Marketo users not using Salesforce for CRM to those looking to connect Marketo to systems where native connectors are either not available or not getting the job done. Learn more about Bedrock Data’s Marketo Integrations.

Clemence Fredenucci

Clemence is a Digital Marketer at Alphalyr, a virtual business analytics and AI company based in Paris, France.

Adam Stone

Adam is President and Founder of D-Tools, a business management software for audio and video integration professionals.

Sushee Perumal

Sushee Perumal is the CEO of MaxSold, an e-commerce business that manages online estate sales for customers.

Paul Wilson

Paul Wilson is a Solutions Architect for Perkuto, a Marketo services consultancy. Paul is the leader of the Marketo – Microsoft Dynamics user group.

Ready to maximize Marketo across your business in less than 30 days?

Let’s get started on your integration.

The Marketer’s Mega Guide to Marketo Integrations 37

About Bedrock Data Bedrock Data connects, cleans, and synchronizes your data so you can focus on driving business growth. We created over 50 connectors so you don’t have to worry about manually integrating your SaaS systems to do your job.

We are the company that has these prebuilt Marketo connectors. That’s something that is onboarded over a period of 30 days to get these no code confi gured Marketo integrations like we’re talking about today.

Bedrock Data has a library of over 50 diff erent connectors. Through the same methods that we’re talking about today, you can actually connect three, four, fi ve, six systems. Our customers connect Marketo to a CRM system like a NetSuite plus a webinar system or event system.

To see Bedrock Data’s library of Marketo connectors, visit www.BedrockData.com/Marketo.

“Bedrock Data helps us get the most out of Zoho and Marketo. We couldn’t have done it this quickly if the Bedrock Data team didn’t know not only their own system, but both Zoho and Marketo so well.”

- Adam Stone D-Tools


Recommended