Marketo Custom Objects for Business Units?

chanjay
Level 1

Marketo Custom Objects for Business Units?

Hi, I work in banking industry that has few business units (residential lending, community banking, etc.). It is common for our business to have multiple accounts attached to a single email address. Also the same email address may have different names in other accounts.  Do you think creating Custom Objects for the business units fits this use case? Thanks.

 

hc.

3 REPLIES 3
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Marketo Custom Objects for Business Units?

There's nothing in your description so far that suggests Custom Objects are a bad fit.

 

But you haven't provided enough information to be sure either way.

 

What are the intended uses of this account-lead relationship within Marketo? How exactly will accounts be used in Smart Lists? In Segmentations? How will they be displayed (in emails and/or in LPs)? Reported on? All of these dictate the best data model.

chanjay
Level 1

Re: Marketo Custom Objects for Business Units?

Hi Sanford, thanks for the reply. We intend to use this mostly for marketing/operational emails, newsletters, nurture campaigns, social media, & possibly mobile app/sms marketing as well in the future. Our leads will come from Marketo forms, CRM, & social media integration. For reporting, we would like to have visibility on each department marketing campaign performances. I hope I answered your questions thoroughly 🙂 Thanks again.

 

hc. 

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Marketo Custom Objects for Business Units?

Sorry, I'm afraid that really isn't enough information.  I was looking for the specific Marketo platform action features: where the objects are output (emails and web pages), Segmentations,  trigger and batch Smart Campaigns, how you expect to incorporate COs into canned Reports and into Smart List pseudo-reports.

 

Still, the partial info you've provided already makes COs seem like a worse fit. For one example, a Marketo form cannot create Custom Objects on its own (a webhook-triggered integration can do so, but that isn't native). You have to think very deeply and technically about how the account-lead relationship will be created and maintained at each entry point into the system.

 

Remember: you're taking the fate of your business in your hands with every martech stack/feature decision... a few sentences just can't suffice to figure out which way to go on million-dollar decisions!  Do you have a complete requirements document? Have you considered working with a consultant/agency who knows the ins and outs of such stuff to create that doc and steer you the right way? I'm concerned that you're not coming in with enough familiarity to make these decisions internally.