Program Membership Date Best Practices

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

The program membership date is set when a record is added to a program by changing the program status. You can see the program membership date when you click on the members tab in a program. A friendly reminder that the column needs to be on your view.

Program membership can be used in the RCE Program Membership Analysis report

RCE Reports	Membership Date Filter Available in Report
Email Analysis	No
Lead Analysis	No
Model Performance Analysis (Companies)	No
Model Performance Analysis (Leads)	No
Opportunity Analysis	No
Program Cost Analysis	No
Program Membership Analysis	Yes by using Program Membership Timeframe
Program Opportunity Analysis	No
Program Revenue Stage Analysis	No

I recommend not changing the program status to ‘Not in Program’ to remove members from a program if you need to move the program to another workspace. When you use this status it will clear the membership date. There is no method to reset the membership date back to the original membership date. If the program was the one which acquired the record, removing a record from a program will also clear the acquisition program and acquisition date which will mess up attribution reporting. The best option when moving a program to another workspace is to use a temporary lead partition to remove and then re-add them members.

Details about how records become a member of a program:

• When a record fills out a Marketo form on a Marketo landing page in a program the record will automatically be moved to the first status in the program
• When you import members into a program from a CSV file, the program members tab (not a static list), records will automatically be moved to the first status in the program
• When you use the change program status flow action
• When a record is created using the Marketo iPad check-in application

[Rachel_Egan]

Thanks so much for the details, here! A couple additional questions:

• How do you set up a temporary lead partition?
• I had to just move around a few people in programs because I had to change the program channels. When I transferred the acquisition programs, the acquisition date remained the same, however your post said it will clear. Am I missing something? Just want to be sure!

[Anonymous]

Hey Brian - appreciate the additional detail regarding program membership best practices.

Had a follow-up to see if you know if program membership Date has any relation to Cost Month?  One of our theories is that when there is a cost month setup for a program where it coincides with the program membership date that Marketo aligns the two and it is only in cases where there is no cost month identified where it would push that membership date to the last cost month for reporting.  But in both cases marketo matches/relates the two.  Another theory is that cost month being a period cost is not related to program membership date and doesn't have a marketo relation, but we are not sure either way and are looking for confirmation.

Thank you.

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Hi Dwight, yes the program membership data is related to period cost month in reporting. If you have entered period costs but forget to enter the most recent month, when you look at a report, Marketo will push the membership count to the last month with a period cost. It is a confusing quirk in Marketo.

[Anonymous]

Ok great, thank you so much for confirming this.

[Justin_Norris1]

Brian Law​

Regarding this point:

• When you import records into a static list that's a child asset of a program, records will automatically be moved to the first status in a program

I just tested this to verify, and records do not get added to a program automatically when imported to a local list.

Just mentioning it for anyone else reading this and in case you are able to update the post.

[Alex_Firtl]

Hey Brian, could we use this quirk to our advantage if we have some people that should've been added as Program Members in March, but we're only finding it out 5 days into April? I'm thinking if we just set a period cost for March, but not April, would it update their membership date to March?

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Hi Justin, I clarified my article by stating I meant importing a CSV to the program membership tab. Thanks!