Acquisition Program Name and Date Not Automatically Set

[Sean_Hardaker]

Hi

When a new lead is acquired via one of our programs in Marketo such as a form fill-out for gated content, the system is not automatically setting Acquisition Program Name and Date and is leaving them blank each time.

The forms are Marketo forms embedded onto our webpage.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

thanks

Sean

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Sean,

This is the expetced behavior: no acquisition credit will given for a Marketo form on a non Marketo page.  you will have to set it up with a smart campaign: trigger: fills out form, flow steps: 2 change data value:

-Greg

[Marie_Ligier]

Just learned that marketo forms embedded into non-marketo pages will not update the acquisition program ! Good to know and that explains a lot

Thanks Grégoire !

[Josh_Hill13]

Marketo does not automatically do this all the time.

1. Did you use a campaign to stamp the lead as a Member or Success?
2. Best to ensure that you run CDV at the correct times like Acquisition Program IS EMPTY, set to this Program and then set Acquisition Date={{system.dateTime}}.

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Josh is right, you need to check they are empty, I wrote too quickly

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

One minor correction here: when evaluating if AP is empty you must use the attribute "Acquisition Program Name" (not "Acquisition Program").  Marketo has two separate attributes in their DB specifically for use-cases like this.

[Josh_Hill13]

I was trying to recall which one to use. If you set Acquisition Program Name, is Acquisition Program then also set? what is the difference between these fields?

[Dan_Stevens_]

"Acquisition Program Name" - which is the actual attribute that exists within the lead record - is a system locked down field in Marketo.  So if you need to do anything with this field, such as filtering on it, using it in a trigger campaign or as a 'choice' step as being discussed here, Marketo created another field ("Acquisition Program") tied directly to the locked down field.  Even though in the screenshot that Greg provided - where "Acquisition Program" is available as an attribute, you can't evaluate against it.  It's sole purpose is a proxy field for "Acquisition Program Name" - so that you can set it's value if the value is empty.  So in other words, you evaluate against "APN" (the real field), and if you need to define it, you do so by setting the "AP" value.  Also, there's no need to set the the AP date - Marketo automatically does this when it sets the AP name.

It's also worth noting that this is one of the rare instances where tokens cannot be used to define the AP name.  You must hard-code the new value in this field.  Here are the four common flow steps that are part of any smart campaign (trigger/batch) that involves any sort of lead engagement (notice that we can't use the "Program Name" token for the AP value):

[Anonymous]

This discussion has really helped me a lot here, but it raises another question.  If Acquisition Program is a "system locked down field", as you say, why are we able to Attribute a new value to this field?  I would think the only field we could attribute a new value to would be the Acquisition Program Name, but this screen shot example above leads me to believe we are able attribute a new value to Acquisition Program, but not Acquisition Program Name, so I'mstill a bit confused?  I also believe that both Acquisition Program Name and Acquisition Date would need to be set for those that have not gone through a Marketo Program, i.e. these leads came in through salesforce or a 3rd party form with an API Call.  Love to hear you insight.

Thanks

[Dan_Stevens_]

AP is "locked down", meaning if there is already a value, there is no way to change it.  I know - it's confusing.  So if you're running a smart campaign to test if AP is empty - so that you can backfill them with the proper program names - then you use APN as your conditional field (e.g., "if APN is empty") and populate the value in the actual AP field.

You might want to direct users here to the thread you started the other day: Re: Acquisition Program and Acquisition Program Name

I also came across this post (Setting Acquisition Program Names in Bulk) where Tabitha Adams​ mentioned that she uses program tokens to populate the AP value.  When we used tokens, this didn't work - and therefore we always use a hardcoded value.  I may need to do some more testing to see if it's now possible using program tokens (vs. "my" tokens set at the program level).