Hi Taylor,
I hope you find these responses helpful. Please keep in mind that I haven't used Marketo's ABM tool in 8 months so there might have been some updates that I am unaware of.
1. Does the ABM object in Marketo sync to the account object in SFDC, similar to how people in Marketo sync to a SFDC lead/Contact object?
-No, the ABM object is only in Marketo. However you can set up the logic to create the Named Account off a field in SFDC, for example: a boolean account field Named Account true/false, picklist account field Named Account - Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3. When the Named Account gets created in Marketo using this field it can use company name and domain to match records against the Named Account (automatically or as potential people depending on the match strength). This is especially helpful for leads since not always easy to match with a SFDC account field depending on how you've set up the lead field. Additionally, you can set up smart campaigns to ensure that named account info matches between Marketo and SFDC.
2.What is the purpose behind an account list versus the named accounts?
-Named accounts help you identify what are the companies that you want to target and will roll up data in the ABM dashboards along with adding some filters and triggers to use through out your Marketo instance. Represents your total universe of target accounts that you want to go after.
-You can consider account lists as the way that you segment your total universe of target accounts and you can an unlimited number of account lists that you can create in your ABM tool. For example: you may have 3 account lists to represent each of your Account Tiers. You can also use for industry account lists, new versus existing accounts, Install base account lists, account owners, etc. These account lists can be used as a filter in account insights and also have triggers & filters associated to them that you can leverage in the rest of your Marketo instance (eg: nurture, scoring, sales campaigns, lifecycle, etc.)
3. Will new people added to Marketo also get added to a named account if they come into Marketo using an email address or domain associated with the account? Example, if someone comes into the database with an @apple.com email address or signs up from an apple.com domain/IP will that person get automatically added to the named account? Or do we need to set up operational programs looking for specific info and using the "Add to named account" flow step?
-Strong matches automatically get added to to the Named Account for example: company name and company domain match that with what has been setup for the Named Account.
-Weak matches will show up as potential people on the account which you have to manually go through or setup some smart campaign logic for example: company name matches, but email is a generic gmail email. If you are generating a high volume of potential people for your named accounts, you probably will want to do some digging and put in place systems/flows to make sure your data input is as clean as possible for example: domain blocking on your forms.
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