In early 2022, my company finished its acquisition and, as with many, streamlining and centralizing were key themes for all teams. One of the core focus areas was a relaunch of our Microsoft Dynamics CRM (D365) so that both sides of our company could work in a single tool (the other side of the house used Salesforce). As a result, my team had to relaunch our Marketo instance so that we could integrate with the new CRM (Marketo can only be connected to one CRM ever).
This meant the start of a core MarTech project – a project that none of my team had any experience with or had taken part in before, a project that would take almost 18 months to complete, and a project that would provide us with many learning opportunities along the way.
Here are my five recommendations for fellow MarTech and Marketo professionals, should you find yourself starting your own migration project.
Work With a Partner
When our project started, my team had three people, one of whom had just started, and while we had no idea what the project would entail, we were confident that we’d need external support. We reached out to Merge (then Perkuto), as we had worked with them in the past and knew they were a reliable expert in all things Marketo.
We were matched with a phenomenal team, led by Senior Marketo Consultant, @NicoleMarcoe1. The team included all the resources we would need to get started on this project, as well as one member who could speak to D365 and Marketo in relation to one another – a huge benefit for us as our CRM and MarTech teams are entirely separate.
Regardless of the size of your team, if you have little to no experience in standing up a new Marketo instance and/or migrating from an existing one, having a group of experts to support you every step of the way is my main recommendation.
Include All Stakeholders in Your Discovery Call
Whether you are holding your discovery call internally or with a partner, it is critical to include all potential stakeholders, even if they’re not going to play a huge role in the final implementation process. I’d recommend involving:
- Team members that manage/support your CRM – they have expertise on how the CRM functions, including elements that may affect integration functionality, and you can collaborate on which system owns which processes.
- Team members that manage other tools that integrate with Marketo – not only do they have expertise in how these tools work, but they can use this to understand the integration better and prepare for impending changes.
- Specific leadership roles, namely in Marketing and Sales – Marketo and CRM share the customer journey from start to finish, and knowing what that looks like from both perspectives is vital, as well as understanding company goals.
- Members of your Marketing and Sales teams – these are the folks that are going to see the benefits (and problems) of both systems the fastest. Understanding what is most useful for them in their daily work also provides important insight and context.
While the focus here is on the Discovery call, be sure to include the stakeholders you need at any milestone in the project, and especially if something deviates from the original plan.
Get Buy-In from All Stakeholders
It’s one thing to involve your potential stakeholders in your project, but it’s entirely another to get active buy-in for the project. While not everyone is going to have intimate knowledge of each step of the project, they should at least have a general understanding so that they can provide feedback at regular intervals and share information with wider teams to keep everyone on the same page. You don’t want to get to the end of the project and have people not know anything about it – that leads to them questioning it or demanding changes, either of which is a significant challenge at that point.
This is also a great opportunity to set expectations of each stakeholder, whether it’s to review documentation, make a decision that’s beyond the system(s) itself (i.e. a team- or company-wide process or understanding), or make a change to a process that might not have worked well or could do with an update/optimization. Stakeholders can (and should) use this time to set expectations of the project owners as well.
Document Everything
One of the many things we were exceptionally grateful for throughout our project was the detailed documentation we were given, starting right at our Discovery phase. Not only did it provide a clear summary of the conversations had to date, but it showed us just how intense this project was about to become – for a team that had no experience with relaunching a Marketo instance, it was the moment we realized we couldn’t go this alone.
When everything is documented:
- It provides a step-by-step guide on what to do for each part of the project and how it relates to other parts.
- It provides a reference/explanation for anyone that needs it, including team members that worked on it as a refresher down the road, and may also be used to optimize processes in the future if applicable (i.e. if a process was a placeholder until a future decision is made).
- It provides future team members with context on a project they weren’t part of, and to use as a foundation for changes they might need to make.
By the time we were in implementation, we had documentation for every step of the process, including Technical Design Documents, Technical Detail Documents, and extra tools like a Data Dictionary and Lead Scoring flows.
Establish a Workback Plan
The CRM Team had a target Go-Live date for the new D365 instance, so we had to make sure our Marketo implementation and Go-Live matched it. We set up a workback plan that identified what we had to work on and when, who was responsible for each task for accountability, and to ensure that tasks across the MarTech and CRM Teams were completed in the right order.
As with any project of this size and involvement, there were delays and setbacks – not only did we add buffer timing for several tasks (like User Acceptance Testing), but we adjusted and created workarounds (within project scope) wherever possible to keep things moving.
While our project took significantly longer than planned (we originally aimed for ~6 months), we're thankful for the experience and education, and that we got our new Marketo instance up and running. We had the opportunity to re-work Marketo (and D365) processes so they’re more efficient, implement a true Lifecycle, adjust our lead scoring model, and establish a consistent, streamlined instance for long-term scalability.
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