Marketo Measure (Bizible) Offline Channel Mapping Pro Tip

[Kate_Colbert]

Let's talk Channel Mapping on the "Offline Channels" page of the Adobe Marketo Measure (formerly known as Bizible) account!

First, what is this page for?!  This page handles the Marketo Measure Channel and/or Subchannel mapping for "Offline Channels". For Marketo Measure's purposes, "Offline Channels" means CRM Campaign Touchpoints or Marketo Program/Activity Touchpoints. More info on Touchpoint types here. 

On the Offline Channels page in Marketo Measure, you should see all CRM Campaign Types that are ACTIVATED in your CRM displayed along with drop-down picklists to select the appropriate Marketo Measure Channel/Subchannel you'd like to map to. The tricky thing to remember here is that we're truly only trying to map your "offline" type data here. In other words, if you have a Campaign Type such as "Ebook Form Fill Outs" or "Content Downloads" -- that's fine, you can keep doing that in your CRM but you DON'T want to map it to a digital channel (nor do you want to create a corresponding touchpoint sync rule). 

Why? Because the Marketo Measure JavaScript is already creating touchpoints for form fills so you don't want to double count that form fill (you don't need a JavaScript Touchpoint and a CRM Campaign Touchpoint for one singular form fill as that would inflate your reporting). 

So, what I like to do is take any digital-like Campaign Types -- or just any Campaign Types where it doesn't make sense to sync the corresponding CRM Campaigns for Touchpoints -- and map them to a channel called "DO NOT SYNC". This is helpful because it's a visual cue that the Campaign Type is more or less irrelevant in the context of Offline Channels. I used to recommend "NULL" as the channel value but over time I've found that "DO NOT SYNC" is just much more clear/explanatory. Really anything that captures attention is fine -- you could even do 'ERROR -- FIX'

Using this trick will also act as a diagnostic flag in your reporting because if you ever see "DO NOT SYNC" pop up as a channel value in a report, you'll instantly know that you need to take corrective action. Either someone accidentally synced a CRM Campaign (or Marketo Program/Activity) that they shouldn't have, or the Campaign Type was wrong on the Campaign (or Marketo Channel was wrong on the Program).  Having this channel value (DO NOT SYNC) is easier to spot than a value such as "Other", because there will more than likely be genuine data in the "Other" channel so it would be harder to pick apart. 

Here is a visual of what this would look like in the Offline Channels section of the Marketo Measure account: 

do not sync example

Steps to implement: 

1. On the Create Channels page in Marketo Measure account, create a channel called DO NOT SYNC.
   • Subchannels are not needed. 
   • Don't forget to save at bottom of page. 
2. On the Offline Channels page, set the appropriate CRM Campaign Types to this newly created Channel Value.
   • Don't forget to save at bottom of page. 
3. If you are using the Marketo Integration, repeat step 2 for the appropriate Marketo Program Channels

I hope this helps! 

Read here for more about Offline Channel Mapping in general 

Last Updated 4/5/2024