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Setting Acquisition Best Practices

Brian_Law_MKTO
Marketo Employee
Marketo Employee

Setting acquisition is critical for acquisition attribution reporting. The Marketo Program (aka the marketing tactic/activity) which generated the new name in Marketo should be given credit as the acquiring program. Only one program can get credit for acquiring the record.

In many cases, Marketo will automatically set acquisition for you. In other cases you will need to create a smart campaign to set acquisition. In the table below is a summary of when you may need to create a triggered smart campaign to set acquisition.

Type

Triggered Smart Campaign Needed to Set Acquisition

Marketo Form on a Marketo Landing Page inside of a Program

No

iFramed Form with the Marketo Landing Page inside of a Program

No

Embedded Form

Yes

Post to Marketo Form

Yes

List Import to Static List

No

Import as Member of Program

No

CRM Inserted Record

Yes

API Inserted Record

Yes

Manually Create Record

Yes

When importing a static list, if your list has people that belong in different program statuses, you may need to upload the different statuses separately or use smart campaigns to set the status using the email address or another field as the filtering criteria.

Changing acquisition doesn’t remove program membership automatically. If necessary, remove the record as a member from the original acquisition program using the following flow step. You should run use this step after you have changed the acquisition program.

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You can use tokens (e.g. {{lead.Created At}}, {{lead.SFDC Created Date}} or a custom field) when first setting the acquisition date. You can only use a token which includes date and time. When changing acquisition, it is important to remember remove the record from the original acquisition program as noted above and set the correct status in the new acquisition program if necessary.

In the example below I am changing the acquisition program, resetting the acquisition date since it wasn't set correctly the first time (this step often isn't necessary and can be skipped) setting the new status for records in the program and removing records as members from the original acquisition program.

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If you are reviewing records and the acquisition program doesn’t look correct because it doesn’t match the lead source or the registration source type it might be one of the following reasons:

  • Lead source was changed by sales or marketing
  • Acquisition program was changed by a flow step
  • Record merged with another

Information about Marketo behavior when changing an acquisition program.

Link to Checklist for Attribution Reporting.

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10 Comments
Jason_Hamilton1
Level 8 - Champion Alumni

This is great Brian, thanks!

Brian_Law_MKTO
Marketo Employee

Hi Jason, thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Very helpful.

Michael_Langell
Level 4
Changing acquisition doesn’t remove program membership automatically. You need to remember to remove the record as a member from the original acquisition program using the following flow step.

Above is correct, but only thing I will add is that this in many cases should be unnecessary.  The acquisition program may have been assigned incorrectly, but I would assume that the members should be part of the program because they filled out a form or were part of an email campaign that made them a member.  You have very big problems if that is not the case.      

Anonymous
Not applicable

Does anyone know if we can stop the acquisition campaign from automatically assigning a program status? I know in the image above there is a Flow Step to change/add Program Status. However if that is not listed the program will automatically set the Program Status for newly acquired records to the lowest status.

I'd like to have the program status assigned by a different smart campaign in order to maintain a program status duplication system I have in place.

James_Zolinski
Level 4

Regarding the first row in the table above, "Marketo Form on a Marketo Landing Page", does this mean any marketo form on any marketo landing page? Or does the form and/or the landing page have to live within the program? To clarify, will Marketo still automatically set my acquisition program if the form and/or landing page used are in the design studio?

Brian_Law_MKTO
Marketo Employee

Hi Jimmy, the landing page needs to live inside of a program for acquisition to be automatically set. The form can live anywhere. I will update my post. Thanks!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi Brian,

enjoy reading your articles.
iI have noticed in our system that acquisition program is not being set in SFDC when a lead fills out a form that is attached to a program campaign. The lead is being added to the campaign though which is fine.

I wonder why this would be?
Tim

Brian_Law_MKTO
Marketo Employee

Hi Tim,

It sounds like you need to check your field mapping to make sure the acquisition field is mapped in Marketo to the corresponding field in SFDC. Marketo changed how the field is mapped last year.

BTW, acquisition is only automatically set when new records fills out a Marketo form on a Marketo landing page. If the record already exists in Marketo, acquisition won't be set.

Brian

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the reply.
I found the solution. I had a global form which was living outside the campaign folder.