Demystifying the "Person is Pushed to Marketo" Trigger

Tyron_Pretorius

This blog post aims to demystify the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger and clear up what it is, why you might want to use it, and show you how to use this trigger.

Explanation

A lot of people incorrectly assume that the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger will fire when a lead syncs from your CRM to Marketo. This is NOT the case. The “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger and “Person was Pushed to Marketo” filter will ONLY run when the Push Lead to Marketo API call is made.

As shown in the API docs the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request can be used to upsert a lead i.e. create a new lead or update an existing lead, with field values specified in the body of the request. This API request can be used for lead capture events e.g. when you have a non-Marketo form you can send the lead information to Marketo using this request.

*Body of the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request*

The “programName” and “input” parameters must be specified in the body of the request while the “lookupField”, “source”, and “reason” parameters are optional.

The “input” parameter is an array containing all the field values that will be upserted to each lead.
The “programName” will determine what program the person will become a member of when the request is made.
The”lookupField” can be any field that you want to use to identity a lead e.g. email address, phone number, lead ID.

The “source” and “reason” parameters can be populated if you want to use these as constraints on the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger and “Person was Pushed to Marketo” filter. So if you have multiple lead capture events making “Push Lead to Marketo” API requests and you want each request for each event to go through a different smart campaign within the same program then you can use the “source” and “reason” constraints to do this (see video above).

*Constraints on the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” Trigger and “Person was Pushed to Marketo” filter*

Lead Association

You can track a person’s web behavior e.g. webpage visits and clicks, in Marketo by installing Marketo Munchkin JavaScript on your site, which places a Marketo cookie in the user’s browser so that all of this web behavior can be associated with this cookie.

If the person is anonymous and one of the following happens:

They click on a link within a tracked Marketo email which contains a “mkt_tok” parameter in the querystring and leads to a webpage with Marketo Munchkin installed
They fill out a Marketo form
A REST Associate Lead API call is made to associate the person’s cookie with their lead id

Then all of the person’s web behavior while anonymous will be associated with that person’s lead id. You can see the Marketo lead tracking docs for more information.

If you have a non-Marketo lead capture event where you want to use the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request to get this information into Marketo, where you also capture a person’s cookie (see these docs for lead tracking), and where you want to associate this cookie with the person then there are 2 ways to do this depending on what you want to achieve:

If you want to associate prior anonymous activity with the newly created lead then DO NOT specify the cookie i.e. mktToken, attribute in the “input” parameter. Instead, make the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request first to create the lead and then call the Associate Lead API request to associate the captured cookie with the new lead id returned in the response of the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request.
If you want to create a new lead with no activity history then specify the cookie i.e. mktToken, attribute in the “input” parameter as shown below.

Making the API Request from Postman

The free API testing tool Postman is a great way for you to test the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request with an easy-to-use graphic interface. If this is your first time using Postman or your first time making Marketo API requests then you should check out the API Quick Start Guide.

*Making the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request in Postman*

*Activity log showing the change in data values and program status*

*Activity detail for a “Push Lead to Marketo” activity*

Making the API Request from Code

Once you have tested out the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request in Postman and you are ready to embed this API request in code then click the code icon on the right-hand side and Postman will automatically generate the code for a number of different programming languages.

*Getting code for the API request from Postman*

What’s Next?

Since you are looking into this advanced feature in Marketo I am guessing you are interested in learning more about the Marketo API so you should check out the following resources to upskill in this area:

FAQs

Will the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger run when leads sync from a CRM?

No, the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger will only run when the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request is made.

Will the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger affect new and existing leads?

Yes, the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request will upsert leads i.e. create new leads or update existing leads, causing the associated “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger to run for both new and existing leads.