Peer Perspective: How to Train Internal Users on Marketo Engage

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Last Updated Date: July 14th, 2023 

You’ve completed your implementation, the previous system has been checked for any delta opt-out requests, all of the relevant programs and data have been migrated over and you’ve kicked off the process to begin sunsetting your old platform. So now you’re probably thinking to yourself, “What’s next?” This is where we left @Naomi_Liu, Director of Marketing Operations at Electronics for Imaging (EFI), in our last blog post covering her strategy to organize a global, cross-functional Marketo Engage implementation. 

Naomi’s team successfully launched their new Marketo Engage instance on July 1st, 2019, just as the contract with their old platform was set to expire. To ensure there was plenty of buffer time, Naomi and her team were slated to complete their migration 1 week before their old system was shut off. This helped account for any unexpected delays or challenges as well as an opportunity to perform a reconciliation as dual systems were run for a period of approximately 6 weeks. Fortunately, everything went smoothly, which left her and her team to face their next big challenge: internal technology adoption and education. 

The Challenge

Up until this point, the Marketing Operations team kept stakeholders up to date via a steering committee call, where various leaders would attend a weekly meeting and provide input on implementation decisions. Now that Marketo Engage was live, the team had to dive deeper and educate each business unit on the parts of Marketo Engage that were relevant to them. 

During this process, Naomi had 3 main objectives: 

1. Educate herself on the new tech stack capabilities 
2. Support her own Marketing Ops team as they went through training 
3. Deliver training to each of the global business units

Always Start At Home

Naomi’s first step was to become a Marketo Engage subject-matter-expert. During both the evaluation and the implementation phase, she was a regular reader of Marketing Nation Community and poured through documentation. Post-implementation, this did not slow down and she spent months reading as much as possible and regularly explored the Product Docs and Community. Throughout this process, she also developed some good tips to be as effective as possible when ramping up her own team: 

• If you have multiple people on your marketing operations team, stagger when they attend the Core Concepts 1 and 2 courses – nobody on her team attended the same class with the same instructor. This way, team members may learn something different in their class from their specific instructor that they can share with the broader group. 
• Use Adobe Experience League’s on-demand  tutorials. These are short, digestible, and a good place for your team to start their Marketo Engage education. 
• Whenever members of her team learned something new that they didn’t think the rest of the team knew, they would share them in a group setting during their weekly team calls. 

Once she found her footing, Naomi turned to her next big task: developing a series of EFI-specific training modules that she would deliver to her marketing business partners – sixteen to be exact!

Internal Training Roadshows

Since Naomi was working on a global scale, she decided to go on a roadshow-style tour to bring her training to each of her marketing business partners. At each office, she conducted in-person education sessions with multiple modules which were tailored to each business unit. Each module focused on a different aspect of Marketo Engage and had a deck associated with it. 

A sample of some of the modules are listed below:

Session Title	Objectives	Training Method	Time Allocation
Marketing Operations Review	·       Marketing Operations team updates and responsibilities  ·       Overview of Marketing Technology stack and processes  ·       Campaign creation (end-to-end)  ·       Review current processes to identify/bridge gaps	In person review, hands on walk through of Marketo Engage, poll of current processes and wants	2.5h
Marketo Engage Walkthrough	·       High level walkthrough of Marketo Engage  ·       Campaign types and naming conventions  ·       Marketo Engage + CRM integration	Live demo, naming convention working session, guest session with sales operations,	1.5h
Emails + Landing Pages	·       Overview of email and landing page templates  ·       Examples of live landing pages  ·       Email + landing page best practices	Live working links, interactive examples, review of industry best practices	1h
Event Management + Webinar Integration	·       Registration pages + iPad check-in app	Live demo of webinar registration process and iPad check in app	1h
	·     Interactive webinar	Live demo of creating, managing, and delivering events within Marketo Engage	1h
Marketo Sales Insight	·       Sending and tracking emails from Marketo Sales Insight  ·       MSI Outlook Plugin	Recorded video of end to end process for easy distribution to new employees	1h
Reporting and Analytics	·       Reporting walkthrough  ·       Email, landing page and program performance  ·       Building your own reports  ·       Email and performance Insights	Ongoing training, recorded videos for important sessions, regular reviews	2h
Content AI	·       Review Content AI functionality  ·       Review assets eligible for Content AI  ·       Map out process (when/where) to use	Live session, walkthrough to review and how it works	1h

Next Steps

• Use the framework that she has created to develop your internal training curriculum below.  
• Fill in the teams that are right for the session topic. 
• Select the method(s) that you’d like to use to create training materials.

Your Turn

How do you conduct your Marketo Engage internal training? What have you found effective to get new users up to speed? Comment below and let us know!