Improved SFDC Custom Object Integration Trigger, Tokens, Flow choice

[Anonymous]

Marketo needs to improve its current integration with Salesforce Custom Objects. Right now, all you can do is filter with a "Has [CUSTOM OBJECT]" filter, and add some constraints (from Custom Object fields); or trigger off of a basic "Add to [CUSTOM OBJECT" trigger.

However, this is an incomplete and insufficient level of integration for what most marketers need to do with their Custom Objects. The bare minimum of what we should be able to do are:

1. Trigger off of Custom Object field. So if a Custom Object has a Status, you can say when the Status = X or no longer empty, then trigger a series of steps. 

2. Add Custom Object Tokens. We are currently unable to bring in any Custom Object field values into an email or landing page. {CUSTOM OBJECT FIELD}.

3. Add Custom Object Fields to the Flow. Right now, we can't put choices in a Flow that key off Custom Object field values. For example, if a custom object field is a Utility Company, we cannot say, "Send Email A if Utility Company is A; send Email B if Utility Company is B".

4. We should be able to see the 1:1 relationship between a given SFDC Standard Object (e.g. Contact) and Custom Object (and its fields). Right now, with the "Has [Custom Object]" filter, that just looks for a Marketo record (Lead or Contact, etc.) with that [Custom Object], but then all the Custom Object fields are clustered together. However, that's an imperfect filter if the record has TWO or MORE Custom Objects. B/c then it might pull in the wrong Custom Object field. This can perhaps be mollified if we were to correct #1 and #3 above. But in any case, it should more closely mimic the relationship in SFDC - where you can have a Custom Object and its fields grouped together.

In addition to custom object, the Opportunity object integration is very weak. We cannot read and pull in all fields and we should be able to.

This would not be a "nice to have" but critical to have for marketers to run effective campaigns and provide value to their customers.
Thanks!
Nami

[Anonymous]

As a new Marketo customer getting into the meat of our implementation, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out I wouldn't be able to use our SFDC custom objects to do basic things like triggers off of custom object data value changes, update custom object fields with Marketo forms, and use custom object tokens.

This missing functionality was a huge disappointment to me as I didn't even think to ask about our custom SFDC objects in the sales process. All of the SFDC integration demos/functionality that I saw never indicated that Marketo's integration has this serious flaw when it comes to custom SFDC objects.

I'm so pleased with everything else that I can do with Marketo, but this is a HUGE disappointment and a major weakness that just doesn't make sense to me. I really hope Marketo is planning on getting this in soon (although the status of this idea doesn't give me a lot of hope).

In my opinion, it's misleading to say you have tight integration with SFDC and not actively advertise that you can't really do any of the basic things a marketer would expect to be able to do with custom SFDC objects. It's like buying your dream car and then finding out, after the purchase, that you can only drive 50 miles at time.

[Anonymous]

Hey Ken,

Check out email scripting....you are able to add custom object tokens into emails now.  We do this for an automotive company and send alll of the car details which are sitting as a cusotom object associated to the person account.  Takes a bit of code, but its functionality that is not available ANYWHERE else (we've been looking to do this exact thing for years and have investigated about 20+ products).  So this was a huge win for Marketo.

The triggering on custom object field updates is still not available, but as I mentioned above, you can do a batch recurring campaign for now on a daily basis and this should solve most fo your problems.

Hope that helps!

[Anonymous]

Nami, in order to fix you point 1, what we miss is a "custom object is updated" trigger. With regards to opportunities, Marketo provides a "is added to opportunity" and "Opportunity is updated" triggers. The later, together with its constraints , enables to do what you describes for opportunities. But when it comes to a custom object, only the "Is added to [Custom Object]" trigger is available. 

The "[Custom Object] is updated" trigger would be needed as well.

My 2 cents to this feature list which is really needed if Marketo wants to compete in the B2C world.

[Anonymous]

Marketo are there any plans for this on your roadmap?  This is desperately needed feature.  As well as visibility into the actual constraint data values within the UI.

[Anonymous]

This feature is not only useful but is essential to implement one of our upcoming strategies. This should be included in the custom object package considering what we're paying for it.

[Anonymous]

Agreed! Especially with Custom Objects like the Contact Role Object or Account Team Member Object which are both fairly standard out of the box objects from SFDC. Would love to see any updates/improvements in this area.

[Valerie_Armstro]

Having the ability to trigger of data value changes on fields from a custom object and using fields from the custom object as tokens has become an urgent need for my company.  We currently have four critical projects blocked by the inability to do these things in Marketo and we have started to look into other solutions in order to achieve this, as workarounds such as duplicating fields, email scripting, and API calls are not easily scalable, manageable or cost-effective (one solution that was suggested would have been 60 hours of work and a few thousand dollars in addition to what we are currently paying Marketo!)

I have opened a Support case, created many discussion on community about this topic, and I'm currently engaged with a month-long discussion with Marketo Services on how to best tackle these projects.  If we are unable to find a solution that meets our needs that I am able to manage, we will need to explore other MA solutions that can accomplish this.

Integrate Custom Objects in Marketo 

Make fields on SFDC Custom Object available in Triggers and as Tokens

[Anonymous]

Now that Salesforce is piloting Shared Contacts, where a contact record can be related to more than one accounts--better integration is a big need.