Using Marketo to Input a Lead's Time Zome

[Anonymous]

I'd like to send webinar invite emails with the webinar shown in the local time of the lead. However, most of our records have a Time Zone Segment of "default."

I know I can run a program that looks at a lead's state and assigns the appropriate time zone, but some states have multiple time zones.

I know I can't be the first to ask, so I'm wondering if Marketo has created a sample program that has the zip codes for those multi-time zone states, so I can assign time zone more accurately?

[Anonymous]

No, I haven't heard of anyone doing a great job of this.

What I typically do out of laziness is just say 9am PST / 12pm EST and the ones in the middle can figure it out.

If it were me I'd look to a service provider that integrates into Marketo to do this. They could most likely provide an automated service for determining time zone based on zip code. 

I had a meeting earlier in the week with the guys at LeanData. I think they'd be interested in this example use case, I'll pass this along. 

If anyone does this well now I'd be interested to know. I'd never considered using a segment for this, super interesting, I'll send it on to some people from my former company. Very interesting use case for segments.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the feedback. We're in PST and I also list times in PST, but our VP of Strategy said that best practice is to use the recipient's local time zone, and if you don't have it, use Eastern, since most of the country is in EST.

It seems as though if someone could take the time to make the campaign once, it would be easy to duplicate. I'm not aware of time zones changing very often, 🙂

[Anonymous]

Then be a trail blazer.

Here's a list of zipcode ranges. Create campaigns, if zip code starts with 996, 997, 998, then EST. 

Post a review of how it worked and what you'd do differently next time.