Hi Kate,
Here's some ideas based on the way I've seen Marketo customers use Lead Source / Channel:
LEAD SOURCE
- Reflects the “origin” of the record > allows us to identify where our Net New Names are acquired by.
- This field is set in Marketo Admin to “Block Updates” (from all sources) > only the very FIRST non-null value captured will remain as the true source of origin.
- The best tip for good insights from a “Leads by Lead Source” report is to ensure that you have defined a clear and concise list of values (both in Marketo and SFDC). The problem most people have is that their Lead Source picklists are way too long, values aren’t high level enough, or they’re unclear from an attribution / reporting standpoint (e.g. having Web, Website and Online – makes your reporting pretty useless).
- Because we want our Lead Sources values to be high level for grouping purposes e.g. “Event”, but still want to be able to capture the finer detail of the source e.g. “Technology Convention Jan 2013”, our clients create a field “Lead Source Detail” and populate this with the drill down info.
- Not everyone bothers to capture Latest Lead Source info, however if you wanted this you could create two more custom fields, e.g. Latest Lead Source and Latest Lead Source Details > and by not blocking updates on these fields, you can capture the same information with overwrite capability.
- Many clients also create UTM fields in Marketo to track campaigns from different sources that are driving to the one landing page (e.g. an online ad driving to a landing page has hidden info in the destination URL which is captured via a Marketo form in hidden fields). You can then use this information to update your Lead Source data via a Smart Campaign, which is more useful than putting Lead Source as a hidden field on the form with a generic source of say, Web.
PROGRAM CHANNELS
- There’s no hard and fast rules on how to use Program Channels in Marketo, but to me, these are a list of “Campaign Types” - a method for classifying all Campaigns so you can later report on the engagement of individuals with these campaigns by their “channel”.
- Channel isn’t a particularly clear naming convention and we’ve had much debate internally as to whether it is more valuable from a reporting standpoint for these to reflect the Channel of Distribution (e.g. Email) VS the Type of Content being promoted e.g. Whitepaper (sometimes you have multi-channel Programs all driving a single type of Content, so the question becomes – do I want to see successful campaigns by Channel or by Content type). We’ve opted for a combination of the two and customised our Program Channels to have standard values such as Event, Webinar, Direct Mail – and also a number of other content specific Channels which we generally use when we’re promoting a specific type of content e.g. Content – Whitepaper, Content – Offer/Promotion etc.
- Once we’ve defined our Channels - and Tags (Campaign Member Statuses) - we ensure every Program we create has a Channel, is synced to an SFDC Campaign (helps with reporting/dashboards in SFDC) and has a Smart Campaign that will update members in that Program to the Success progression status, when they undertake whatever action represents successful engagement with that campaign (can differ from Program to Program).
- From a reporting standpoint you can view the Program Performance Report in Marketo to see all Programs by Channel (sort by Success %) to identify those Programs that drove the most engagement (and if you’ve added Program level costs in, that will give you even more insight).
- If you’re syncing Programs with Campaigns in SFDC, and you use Opportunities in a traditional sense, you can look into SFDC Campaign Influence reporting to get some good reports on which Campaigns were the most influential in driving sales.
Good luck! : )
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