Custom activities for B2B tech

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone,

I'm hoping someone can help me out a little bit as I'm trying to understand what path to go down.

I work in B2B and currently we're revamping our marketing life cycle stages and overall sales funnel.

We currently work with a MLS where leads go from Audience - Engaged - AQL - SQL - opp... etc etc.. We plan to add a step (MQL) too. As AQL being the main step that sends them into the sales cycle this is key for us. Our problem at the moment however, is that they can become AQL several times as we use the field for Demo requests and Lead nurturing (soon to change). We've been using several fields to collect information for when this happens such as AQL Date (stamp), AQL Type and AQL Source - we also have an interesting moment. We can continue with this, however, we also need something that makes sure that we can gather the information for everytime it happens and not just the last (touch) or the first (touch).

My plan was to use either custom objects and custom activities - haven researched quite a lot on this already I think I've got an idea of how this could help us. I'm still struggling to find B2B examples close to mine so therefore I'm posting in here.

1) Is MLS/Sales funnel an appropriate area to use this type of function?

2) (The golden Q:) Should I use CA or CO?

3) Was thinking to create a Custom A/O to keep information on the action that Lead has become AUDIENCE/ENGAGED/MQL/AQL/SQL/Opp etc... would that work? And what would be most appropriate - CA or CO? What is the actual difference for this example between CA and CO here?

Hope someone can help - all answers are much appreciated!

Thanks,

Mette

[Josh_Hill13]

look up my articles on channel offer attribution.

What you probably need is a combination of Program management, Marketo RCM, and Bizible.

[Anonymous]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for your reply.

We actually do have an integration with Bizible and this is one of the reasons we've now found it necessary to revamp the MLS and begin storing information on the Custom Activities as we see it as equivalent to Salesforces 'Opportunities' function that can hold information on each opportunity. Was that part of your suggestion too? Right now I'm just trying to understand if I've got it right, that the Custom Activites actually is equivalent to 'Opportunities' or how they work.

In regards to your articles - Is there a specific one or more you are referring to?

Thanks,

Mette

[SanfordWhiteman]

You need to be clearer about what you mean by "gather this information." Both COs and CAs have limited visibility across the Marketo ecosystem -- COs can't be accessed as tokens outside of Velocity scripts, for example, and CAs can't be used as tokens at all. They can of course be used (to some degree) in filters and triggers, and if extracted from the system can be analyzed any which way.

A CA is a non-deletable dimension, representing an activity that cannot have "un-happened" to a lead.  In contrast, COs (if the API is used) can be deleted.

I would have grave misgivings about creating either type of object one-by-one in response to ungoverned end user activity, because you will exceed API limits (possibly with legitimate traffic, definitely with malicious traffic). Both types are better suited for bulk insertion.