GoToWebinar integration

[Michael_Florin]

Nothing here looks right to me. 🙂

Let's start with some questions: Do you believe that no-shows are being pushed to Marketo from GTW? I don't think that's true. If you use GTW as your registration source, registrants remain unknown to Marketo. And when the webinar is over, GTW pushes only attendees to Marketo. No-shows are not being pushed but calculated from registrants minus attendees. And as Marketo doesn't know registrants that step is missing. 

I would probably need to test that to be sure, but the documentation states this pretty clearly:

No Show – at the conclusion of the webinar, and once attendance data is pulled in from GoToWebinar, the status of leads that registered but did not attend will be updated to No Show.

https://go.marketo.com/rs/marketob2/images/Marketo_GoToWebinar_Adapter_UserGuide.pdf

Secondly: You want to update the Person Source of all records being sent from GTW to "Webinar"? Even for those that Marketo knew before? That doesn't right to me. If the person existed in Marketo before, they should have another value in Person Source and you don't want to overwrite that, right?

So how would you do that? First, is your screenshot for the blocked actions from the field "Person Source"? So you pretty much never allow Person Source to be updated? If that's how you want to do it, a very simple Smart Campaign would suffice:

If Program Member status changes to "Attended", change data value "Person Source" to Webinar. You don't need the "Person is created" trigger, as existing persons can't be updated through that flow step anyways - because you blocked the update.

And finally: If you block the update for Person Source from Flow Steps, you can never run something like

If Person Source is "Event Partner, change data value to "Webinar"

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You see, some assumptions here. I think we could offer better advise if we knew exactly what you want to achieve.

[lillyfalcon]

Thanks @Michael_Florin ! Super useful advise as always 🙂 I've explained in a bit more detail below:

1. This is just an interim solution until we can start using Marketo landing page and form. What I'm trying to achieve is: 

a) not having to import data manually 

b) updating all new webinar leads (both attendees and no shows) to source = Webinar (as this is the source we've used historically)

Do you believe that no-shows are being pushed to Marketo from GTW?

I don't know. I assumed they were. I'm testing this for the first time with this webinar. 

I don't think that's true. If you use GTW as your registration source, registrants remain unknown to Marketo. And when the webinar is over, GTW pushes only attendees to Marketo. No-shows are not being pushed but calculated from registrants minus attendees. And as Marketo doesn't know registrants that step is missing.

So for this solution to work, I would need to manually import registrants before attendee data is synced?

No Show – at the conclusion of the webinar, and once attendance data is pulled in from GoToWebinar, the status of leads that registered but did not attend will be updated to No Show.

For this update to happen, do I need to set up a program status change smart campaign, or is it automatic?

First, is your screenshot for the blocked actions from the field "Person Source"?

Correct, it is a screenshot of Person Source, but I updated it incorrectly. I intended to untick Flow change data value instead of Custom flow action. I hope this makes more sense now! 

So you pretty much never allow Person Source to be updated?

Correct! We'd like to preserve original source data.

If Program Member status changes to "Attended", change data value "Person Source" to Webinar.

This makes sense! Thank you 🙂 

So assuming I have to import registrations data manually (I generally do this after the event takes place), should I set it up as follows:

1. allow updates from Flow change data value

2. manually import registrations data - I will use a static list instead of Import members functionality:

 

the ones that Attended would be skipped in flow step 1 if they have already synced to Marketo because they cannot move backwards, is this right?

 

and their source will be updated from Event partner to Webinar. And because only new leads would have source Event partner, we can achieve our goal of "only update source for new webinar leads". Does this make sense?

Thanks again for your help! 

  

[Michael_Florin]

Hi Lilly,

I'd import only once after the webinar. GTW gives you Attendees and No-Shows, so I'd import them into two lists in Marketo, and then update their program statuses to Attended/No-Show depending on List Membership. Yes, you're right, the Attendees should come over automatically from GTW, so in that case you can omit that step. And also yes: Nobody can move backwards in a program progression.

And then change Lead Source for both lists to "Webinar".

And by the way: If you have time and bandwidth, why not check out the registration through Marketo? I suppose you send the invitation from Marketo, right? If you have a Marketo page and form, you have not only branding consistency but also form pre-fill. That almost certainly will raise conversion. The only thing you need to add is one flow step that triggers from form fill and sets program status to "Registered", as that program status change will trigger the API call to GTW.

And you're sending all emails - confirmation, reminders, follow-up - from GTW? Sure, that's easier, but it's not prettier. Eventually you will want to transfer all of that to Marketo.

[lillyfalcon]

Thanks again @Michael_Florin !

I'm working on it (we discussed some of the challenges here). After our initial discussion, I explored custom integration but too challenging for our developer without clear documentation.

After a bit more testing our plan for the new year is to use: 

• Marketo event program with local tokens
  • registrations: Marketo landing page and form 
  • invitations, reminders and post-webinar emails: Marketo emails
• confirmation email with join url, feedback surveys: GTW 
• host webinar: GTW 
• reporting: both Marketo and GTW and combine data using a vlookup

Your advise has been super useful - really appreciate it 🙂 

[Michael_Florin]

You can send the confirmation email with personal join URL and calendar link (with personalized join URL in it!) from Marketo too. Google "Personalized attendee link in calendar" to get to the details.