Re: Are there any Cvent + Marketo users here?

Ayan_Talukder · ‎10-06-2016

We onboarded Cvent this summer, great tool and had all of the features we wanted. However we started to notice a few issues with the data from Cvent syncing to Marketo. We set up everything as instructed and was told everything looked fantastic. After two events we just hosted, we noticed the data was not always making it through to Marketo from Cvent. It got so bad, that only 50% of the people attended our most recent event ended up with their status changed in Marketo.

We had to manually update the rest, but it's been a real pain. I just wanted to reach out to the community and see if there are any other Marketo + Cvent users here?

I have to be honest, the Cvent integration with Marketo is pretty out-dated. They rely on a Campaign is Requested trigger and look to see if the Source is Web Service API. I am concerned Marketo is unable to handle the calls coming from Cvent and is missing them.

Ayan_Talukder · ‎04-10-2018

Just to provide an update from 2 years ago, Cvent has been working much better now. They have finally integrated REST API along with having SOAP API making campaign calls. We have seen far less issues with the lead data transferring over to Marketo, but have encountered some newer issues such as:

Cvent requiring the same field type (e.g. string, integer, boolean, etc.) when mapping the Cvent fields with Marketo fields. The only resolution for this was creating a new field. In our case it was Phone Extension which was a string value in Marketo previously.
Issues with the Marketo external authentication blanking out our Marketo values because Cvent changed the way certain fields authenticated. For example our Province field would have the fully spelt out name such as Ontario. Cvent modified their authentication with a province code (in this case ON). When Cvent tried to populate the Province field, it was looking for "ON" and did not recognize the full name (Ontario). It then blanked out the Province field and cleared it in Marketo afterwords. We had to convert all of our province fields to the "province codes" to avoid this issue.
- We're trying to figure out if external authentication is even worth it since it seems to be causing more issues for our customers than helping.

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ChristinaZuniga · ‎05-18-2017

I was told that the internal fix would take 6-8 weeks, which put it just before my event. I'm a very unhappy customer and have to have an intern reconcile each registration to make sure that we aren't losing data (which we've already seen)!

Anonymous · ‎05-18-2017

Hi Christina,

Curious... Did they tell what you the issue is and what the fix is? I've not had this long of a wait time to fix any of the issues I've encountered with the Cvent integration, so definitely curious to know more.

Thanks!

Drew

ChristinaZuniga · ‎05-18-2017

Drew Smith, Benjamin Ortiz is right, it has to do with the API changes that Marketo came out with last year. When the API changed, it caused their integration to become unstable and they began to see data issues.

This is really concerning for me, because I sent them the notification that Marketo emailed me and let them know of the API changes. They assured me that their engineers were aware and there would be no impact. Clearly that was incorrect.

The 'internal fix' is actually rebuilding the API so that it connects properly to Marketo and from what they've told me they plan on connecting that automatically when it comes out, so that I don't have to do any additional work. This worries me, since 1) what if it's not QA'd properly and causes more issues?! and 2) it will be released right before my event. Given the timing there's no way I can switch to another event management provider, so right now it's fingers crossed from my point of view.

Anonymous · ‎05-19-2017

Hi Christina,

I just went through a successful integration within the last 2 months with a client that just purchased both Cvent and the integration. The integration is working as expected. I'd like to offer to troubleshoot your integration, if you'd be interested in that. If you're interested, send me an email at drew@leadmd.com and we can set up some time to hop on a GoToMeeting.

Let me know if you're interested.

Thanks,

Drew

ChristinaZuniga · ‎05-19-2017

Hi Drew, please reach out to CVENT to confirm what I've said - their integration has serious issues that cause random data problems. If your client's integration is working, that's wonderful, but the issue is not with my specific set up. It's a serious underlying problem with their API.

Anonymous · ‎05-17-2017

Hi,

One other thing I meant to include, but didn't. A great way to help troubleshoot integration issues is to run the "Records Transferred to Marketo" report. It's a standard report that exists in the reporting area. That report can help you identify failures during a specific time period, which is certainly helpful in the troubleshooting process. I've found this report to be an invaluable tool when diagnosing the cause of integration challenges.

Thanks,

Drew

Anonymous · ‎05-17-2017

Hi,

I've worked through several Cvent integrations and have several issues that arise. Below are the common issues and resolutions that I've found.

Authorization - At times the integration will fail completely. In this situation, calling Cvent Support has resulted in them explaining that there was an authorization issue on their end. They will fix it and the integration will resume.

Leads not syncing to the correct list - This is oftentimes caused by a typo in the list name for a specific integration point at the event level.

Leads not syncing to the correct list/Program status not updating - This can be caused if you are using workspaces and partitions. Sometimes, the lead record won't be in the correct partition for the workspace that the event is located in. In this situation, you need to reevaluate your data collection practices to ensure that you have the proper information to place leads into the correct partition/workspace.

Trigger campaigns not firing - This can be caused by your campaigns not reacting to the proper triggers. We recommend triggering off of the addition of a lead to a list and/or data in the Cvent Custom Object changing. The Cvent Custom Object functionality is pretty cool and seems to work more reliably than the list addition process. If you aren't using it, I highly recommend it.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to me at drew@leadmd.com

Thanks!

Drew

Anonymous · ‎01-11-2017

Ayan:

As others have suggested, definitely try working with cvent to try to address the matter. I don't have direct experience with cvent but know they are one of the leaders in the event management space.

If you can't find an adequate solution natively (Have seen with other solutions), you may want to look at some middleware to connect the systems. Haven't used them for marketo-to-cvent but solutions like Zapier and Bedrock Data can sometimes fill that data sync gap. Zapier is more for easy one-off data moves while Bedroock is more for ongoing syncing.

Good luck

Benjamin_Ortiz1 · ‎01-11-2017

Anyone have experience handling guest registration with cvent and Marketo? We would like to somehow relate the guest back to the main registrant. We are also running into the issue of registrants sometimes entering in the same email address for their guest if it is a family member, therefore they would be de-duped when synced to Marketo.

Casey_Henry2 · ‎01-04-2017

Update: as of 12/20/16 the integration is still failing. Session tracking turned off. Using the campaign call at global and event local level. Not all registrants get created, not all mapped fields sync. If anyone else has any news on this, it would be appreciated. Thanks!

Sara_Greaves · ‎12-14-2016

Hi Ayan,

We had some issues (with INXPO) that were related to duplicate leads. When there was a duplicate lead, the data wouldn't sync back into Marketo. Dayna Lessig can elaborate on these issues if you're interested.

Anonymous · ‎12-14-2016

This reminds me of another issue and one I can't blame on the tech. We had plenty of cases where the email address we had in Marketo was different than what the registrant used to sign up for the event. That, of course, didn't sync back as expected.

Anonymous · ‎12-13-2016

We've used both for a few years. I'll need to go back to my notes but there were some issues in one direction of the sync at times. I want to say it was Cvent->Marketo but I believe it was because we had to manually upload a large amount of the registrations from Marketo into Cvent initially. We are looking at structuring registration differently this year to avoid that issue.

If you want to reach out to me, I can take a look at your process with you and see if maybe there are some lessons we've learned that may apply to your case as well.

Meanwhile, I'll dig through my notes from last year and see if I can find where the data issues sprung from.

Dina_Otero · ‎11-01-2016

Hi Ayan, we are Cvent and Marketo users and ran into a similar issue. We ended up exporting our list and imported it into Cvent. It worked for what we tried to accomplish but was a pain to send emails (ended up doing it from Cvent), track and score activity.

Ayan_Talukder · ‎12-13-2016

Same here! We were manually doing list uploads but figured it defeated the purpose of using the integration. Hopefully they have a fix for early 2017.

Anonymous · ‎10-12-2016

Hey Ayan, I'm working on my integration right now and there's a lot to do for the overall integration, and then by event. I could easily see something being missed or done even slightly incorrectly that there could be hiccups. *nervous*

If you learn anything, please keep us updated!

Anonymous · ‎11-01-2016

Ayan,

Did you ever get your integration issues resolved? We've been on Cvent coming on 3 or 4 weeks and our integration has failed horribly. Just had a call with them the other day and they said I did everything correctly and that there is a bug on their end. Waiting to hear more, but so dissapointed. Wondering how you are doing.

Ayan_Talukder · ‎12-13-2016

Hi Amanda,

Sorry for the late reply, didn't see this! So for the last 3 or so months we have been going back and forth between Cvent and Marketo. We have finally been able to get both Cvent and Marketo developers to work together and it seems to be in Marketo's hands now.

We did notice the number of leads that were being updated by Cvent were increasing but there weer still small discrepancies. Our events are done for 2016, but the real test to see if their "fix" works will be Spring 2017.

You can mention that you are facing a similar problem as Esri Canada, and maybe link this thread. Hopefully it sparks something on both of their ends to get something working soon.

I wish the integration with Cvent was as simple as it is with webinar providers. Never have had an issue with WebEx because of the direct integration built in Marketo

Josh_Hill13 · ‎10-06-2016

I would contact cvent support. It's also possible there are too many triggers in your system, which may have created issues for updating data.

Ayan_Talukder · ‎10-11-2016

Thanks Josh, we've been going back and forth with Marketo and Cvent's support. They are definitely both helpful in terms of looking into the issue but it's been an ongoing case for over 2 weeks . We'll have to wait and see what the eventual outcome is.

I suspected it to be Marketo unable to handle the dozens of API calls at the same time. We do have many other trigger campaigns running as well, do you think that could be slowing our Marketo instance down?

Kim_Gandy1 · ‎10-06-2016

Ayan, our conference team has been using the Cvent/Marketo push API for two months and I haven't heard of any data issues. I'll agree, it wasn't the most intuitive integration process.