Period Cost Best Practices

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Programs must have period costs otherwise they won’t be included in RCE reporting unless you set the analytics behavior for a channel to inclusive. However, if you want to filter by cost time frame or if you want to see ROI information in the RCE Program Opportunity Analysis report, each of your programs must have period costs.

I recommend adding multiple months at the same time when you set up a program for ongoing campaigns like web content. The cost should only include the cost of hosting an event, developing the content or promoting the content.

If you want to compare in Marketo how two or more advertising campaigns compare against each other, consider creating one Master program and multiple shell programs each with their own cost.

Example

Master Program contains the form on a landing page, email assets and smart campaigns. Don't set membership or success in this program. Use URL parameters to set membership and success in the shell programs.

Shell Program A - Facebook advertising cost

Shell Program B - Linkedin advertising cost

Shell Program C - Corporate web site with no cost

A great article http://nation.marketo.com/blogs/marketowhisperer/2016/05/08/why-you-need-period-costs-for-reporting on the importance of period costs.

Link to Checklist for Attribution Reporting.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Brian. So timely. To confirm, trying to figure the impact of not adding period costs and what happens when you backfill costs.

A few examples.....

A) Set analytics behavior for a channel to inclusive. This will add the programs to RCE no matter if costs are added or not. Just confirming.

B) Assuming no costs are added but behavior for a channel is set to inclusive, what happens to Program members by cost timeframe report?  I assume that data would not be available? (Side note: Wish Marketo had a Program members by membership date report.)

C) On a related note, what happens if a period cost is added to a program that happened six months ago (like an Event of 200 people). Will RCE associate membership to that cost period when it updates overnight?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

PS, In the above, I'm referring specifically to the Program Opportunity analysis report in Marketo RCA that only has Costs analysis periods and not Membership periods.

[Michael_Langell]

B) Assuming no costs are added but behavior for a channel is set to inclusive, what happens to Program members by cost timeframe report?  I assume that data would not be available? (Side note: Wish Marketo had a Program members by membership date report.)

This is why I just sync everything over to SFDC.  Much easier to do analysis that way.  You get all the membership dates, and if your success map to responded status, you have success dates as well. 

Membership date report would be awesome if Marketo can pull it off.  

-Mike

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Hi Jeff,  Answer to B) Assuming no costs are added but behavior for a channel is set to inclusive, what happens to Program members by cost timeframe report?  I assume that data would not be available? Correct. No data is available. Also, if you add the period cost for just one month, let's say 1/2016 and you filter on only 2/2106 no data will be available.

If you add period costs like all the months in 2015 or for a specific month in 2015, RCE will be updated overnight and you will be able to sort by period cost using the Program Opportunity Analysis report. I hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

Hi Brian Law​ - what do you do in the cases where gated content is created and costs attributed to that piece. Then you want to use that content in paid social or search campaigns, do you just have the cost of the content in one program and then the cost of the paid programs in their respective programs? Or do you include content creation costs in the paid programs also?

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Hi Tim - If you want to be more granular than creating additional programs is the best way to go. If the content was created specifically for the paid campaigns I would split the content creation cost among the programs. If the content has been around for a while and you are recycling it then I wouldn't bother.