Custom Object or Custom Activity or Custom Fields?

[LeaCharnley]

We offer free samples of our products to customers. I am looking to move the sending of our samples order confirmation email to Marketo (it currently sends from our CMS). What is the best method of getting the required data into Marketo to add (probably via tokens) onto the email. We need to include the name and company of the person requesting the samples, any alternative (delivery) contact name and address (these may or may not be different to the person making the request, and the samples ordered. We might want to utilise the products requested at a later time to trigger other campaigns or add to a nurture stream.

I hope that all makes sense, any advice gratefully received.

[AWmindtree · Accepted solution]

Hi @LeaCharnley 

This is a perfect use case of utilizing Marketo Custom Objects and Velocity tokens. I'd recommend following the below approach:

Create a Custom Object
Since you want to include:

- Multiple pieces of order information

- Possibly multiple products per sample order

- Delivery contact details (different from the lead object)

- Reuse data for future campaigns

Example Table:

Field Description

Sample Order ID	Unique ID for the sample request
Requester Name	From CMS
Requester Company	From CMS
Alt Delivery Contact Name	From CMS
Alt Delivery Address	From CMS
Product List	This could be your unique dedupe key in Custom Object
Email	This will be used as Link field to Lead/ Person Object in Marketo
Date of Request	From CMS

Once the data is ingested to Custom Object via APIs or List Uploads, you can use the Email Script/ Volicity My tokens {{my.tokens}}
in your email to populate data. 

Hope this helps. 🙂

[SanfordWhiteman]

100% agree w/@AWmindtree that Custom Objects are the way here! We have a client using them for sample requests almost exactly as shown.

The one thing I’d tweak is using the Lead ID as the link field instead of Email Address. Using the Lead ID is clearer IMO. Otherwise (a) you won’t know which Lead ID gets linked if there are duplicates with the same Email Address, and (b) when you delete a duplicate the CO doesn’t get reassigned, which may be counterintuitive.