10 Marketo Hacks to Save You Time in 2019

Michelle_Miles3
Level 9 - Champion Alumni
Level 9 - Champion Alumni

It’s happened to all of us who use Marketo. We’ve gone through the training, we work in the platform and we feel like we have a pretty good grasp on the most effective way to handle campaigns. And then one day, a colleague comes along and says, “Hmmm, why are you doing it that way? You should just do it like this!”

And in that aha moment, we’re working smarter, not harder. That one little tip that seems so common sense to our coworker or colleague can completely transform the way we tackle a task in Marketo. Insights like these can save us valuable time and stress.

So what are some of the best Marketo hacks--the best ways to save time and use Marketo more effectively? Here are some suggestions to get you started, and, I welcome your contributions as well!

  1. If you have a webinar or event with multiple emails in support of them (such as several invite emails), use Email Send channel emails within the program. These can act as nested programs and allow you to have program level tokens (such as event details and description), as well as email program tokens, such as custom tokens that might change within each specific emails, such as tracking links.

  1. Include the form embed code within the form name. If the form embed code is 1590, name the form ‘CONTACT-FORM-1590.’

  1. Here’s a great tip from the Perkuto email editor guide about pasting content that will save a lot of time. When copying and pasting content into your email, simply use [SHIFT+CTRL+V] on a PC or [SHIFT+CMD+V] on a Mac to get perfect results.

  1. One of the most efficient ways to cut down on build time of a program that remains pretty consistent from month-to-month is creating a folder in your Marketing Activities and building a program template for each type of program you build on a frequent basis—whether that’s a newsletter, webinar, or live event. On top of that, and to really increase efficiency, you can add program level My Tokens that can include anything from an email address all the way to email body copy. Editing these at the program level in a My Token allows you to edit everything in one place and never really have to worry about going directly into the asset itself to edit.

  1. Use snippets and tokens in your emails. Snippets make great footers! And remember to always check the text version, too--that goes for both the emails and the snippet.

  1. Include tokens in your scoring campaigns.

  1. Having a master email template with a large range of modules that you can turn into multiple smaller templates saves you time and helps streamline templates.

  1. If you edit an email template or landing page template and you need to update existing emails or landing pages associated with the template, go into Design Studio, click on "emails" or "landing pages," sort the list from A-Z for templates, and find the template you edited. Click to select the email or landing page row, hold shift and click to highlight all the emails or landing pages associated to the template, and click approve to mass approve landing pages or emails.

  1. If you ever need to check the status of the Marketo-SFDC integration, this "backdoor" Marketo link can be a lifesaver! https://app-sjh.marketo.com/supportTools. All you need to do is replace the character(s) after app-sj with characters unique to your instance, for example [http://app-sjxyz.marketo.com/supportTools]

  1. Before building reports in Marketo or Bizible, it’s essential to be crystal clear on your goals, the questions you’re trying to answer or the problems you’re attempting to solve. What story do you want to tell? What decisions will be made as a result? Too often these fundamentals are poorly thought out ending in frustration and incremental time spent on generating new reports.



Is there a Marketo tip or hack that have saved you time (or saved your sanity?) By all means, please share in the comments! And if you’re interested in the Email Editor 2.0 Guide referenced in one of the tips, you may download a free copy on Perkuto’s website.

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28 Comments
Maria_Hirschbe1
Level 2

Hey Sanford,

Which parts of the activity log are not usable without the program ID in the program name?

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Any response payloads that show the Program Name rather than ID. These cannot reliably match back to Programs for obvious reasons...

Christian_Tovar
Level 3

Thank you for sharing! Can you expand on these two:

  1. One of the most efficient ways to cut down on build time of a program that remains pretty consistent from month-to-month is creating a folder in your Marketing Activities and building a program template for each type of program you build on a frequent basis—whether that’s a newsletter, webinar, or live event. On top of that, and to really increase efficiency, you can add program level My Tokens that can include anything from an email address all the way to email body copy. Editing these at the program level in a My Token allows you to edit everything in one place and never really have to worry about going directly into the asset itself to edit. - I've never used the "My Tokens" tab and would like to understand it better.

  1. Use snippets and tokens in your emails. Snippets make great footers! And remember to always check the text version, too--that goes for both the emails and the snippet. - What are snippets?
Michelle_Miles3
Level 9 - Champion Alumni
Nathan_Hunter
Level 1

Thanks for sharing, Michelle Miles

Charles_Sander1
Level 4

A simple, obvious "why didn't I think of that before" for me...

After a year of struggling to find obscure landing pages that a coworker needed me to edit - all they knew was the url, and that wasn't searchable in Marketo.

So, I went to the footer of my master landing page template and added:

<!-- pname: {{program.name}} -->

<!-- pid: {{program.id}} -->

Now, when someone sends me a URL, all I need to do is view source code and scroll to the footer. I can get to the landing page in moments.

Jessica_Meyers_
Level 2

I love #2 - Another great tip regarding forms is that if you have the form ID you can always just type it into the URL into the highlighted portion

pastedImage_1.png

then hit enter - Marketo will take you right to the form in question.

Tara_Dacci
Level 4 - Champion Alumni

Me too! I just had to do a search for all of our active embedded forms and that would have been a huge help.

Tara_Dacci
Level 4 - Champion Alumni

One that I learned very recently from a member of my MUG, is to tokenize all of your email links to avoid tracking spambot clicks. I went ahead and saved tokens for my website navigation urls at the Email folder level so that I only have to create program level tokens for specific product pages since we have such a large catalog. My emails are mostly going direct to consumers but there are some business addresses in there. I went from 123 suspected bot clicks (clicked but didn't open) to 0. Also hide a honeypot link in your email to test this theory.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Using tokens for links has no affect on whether mail scanners will click them. None at all.