Interesting Moments and CRM sync

[James_Zolinski]

Hi Trevor, we are looking to have IM’s included on an alert email that goes to our sales team. So when our sales team receives the alert email about a new lead or scored so many points to become a SQL, sales will see either a small history of the leads IM’s or the leads last IM. This way our sales team would have an idea of the leads activity.

James Zolinski

Marketing Operations Manager

Direct: 602-601-5833

Email: james@helpinc.us<mailto:james@helpinc.us>

Web: www.helpinc.us<http://www.helpinc.us/>

[Trevor_Parsell]

Hey James,

To have Interesting Moments included on an alert that goes to your sales team, you would not necessarily have to have integration with CRM, since that can all be done within Marketo. However, for sales to see a small history of the lead's interesting moments within a Salesforce page layout, you will need to have the integration in place.

In your alert to sales, I would also recommend including a link directly to the specific lead (using the lead ID token), which also requires the integration.

[James_Zolinski]

Thanks again Trevor for the information. Well, CRM is a bit of tricky subject. Our CRM is Microsoft Dynamics, which I believe can be integrated with Marketo, but the problem is that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been so customized, we can’t even get the new updates for Microsoft Dynamics, which leaves us almost unable to integrate with it.

Based on this info, would it be wrong to assume that with our current situation, the best I will be able to do with IM is list the leads last IM on the alert email?

James Zolinski

Marketing Operations Manager

Direct: 602-601-5833

Email: james@helpinc.us<mailto:james@helpinc.us>

Web: www.helpinc.us<http://www.helpinc.us/>

[SanfordWhiteman]

Based on this info, would it be wrong to assume that with our current situation, the best I will be able to do with IM is list the leads last IM on the alert email?

With a single email you can't look back into someone's IM history, no matter what your CRM situation.

However, you don't need to use Interesting Moments proper for this (if there's nothing else about the feature that you need). Just use a Textarea field and append a history of the, let's say, shminteresting shmoments to it. Timestamp each line. Then you can use a Velocity script to output the last N shmoments, all the shmoments this month, etc.

[Dan_Stevens_]

You don't need CRM for this.  Have a look at this thread (which also includes a link to the presentation I gave on this at this past year's Summit): Re: Custom Report - All Interesting Moments

[Trevor_Parsell]

Hey James,

That would certainly be a good starting point if integration with MS Dynamics is off the table for now. Another thing you can do is create a new "Lasting Interesting Moment History" text area field that keeps track of all intersting moments over time. You will just need to continually update this field each time. You could then include that field in your alert so reps have an idea of the lead's history.

Dan Stevens talks about this strategy here: Custom Report - All Interesting Moments

[James_Zolinski]

Thanks everyone for your insights. Dan, I actually came across that thread and presentation from last years summit when I was searching IM's, too bad I missed it. The text area that Sanford and Trevor reference, is that something that would appear on the alert email?

In order for the last interesting moment to appear on our alert email, would I just follow your setup from the thread? Here is an example of our current set up:

Text area field is that field I would add to our alert email so the last interesting moment will appear? And is it also a token I would create, {{lead.Shminteresting Shmoment}} What would the value be then?

As for the velocity script for outputting, is that a token I would set up? How would I set that token up to output the interesting moment? Is appending the history field a flow, like in Dan's example?

[SanfordWhiteman]

You'd create a Textarea field called Interesting Moment History. Then use a Change Data Value as in Dan's presentation to continually append to this field.

You'd then create a Velocity token {{my.Really Interesting Interesting Moments}} that interprets (slices/dices/filters/sorts) this token.

Or of course you could just output the whole {{lead.Interesting Moment History}} in an email, too, it would just include everything and wouldn't be well-formatted unless you include <br>s and such when Changeing its Data Value.

The use of the standard Interesting Moment flow step is optional/supplementary in this scenario (and still beneficial for the extended activity history as I mentioned above).

[James_Zolinski]

Thanks Sanford, I think I almost have this. I've created a text area field called Interesting Moment History. Is this how the flow should look:

For the new value I have: {{system.dateTime}}: Filled Out Form: {{trigger.Name}}{{my.linebreak}}{{lead.Interesting Moment History}}, is that right

I'm still a little confused about what a Velocity token is. Is that a token I would create at the program level? Based on the {{my.....} it looks like a token I would create at the program level, but I'm going to guess that isn't right.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I'm still a little confused about what a Velocity token is. Is that a token I would create at the program level? Based on the {{my.....} it looks like a token I would create at the program level, but I'm going to guess that isn't right.

Velocity is the language used to write "Email Script" type {{my.tokens}}, though calling it merely a scripting language is understating its power.

The seminal collection of Marketo-specific Velocity deep dives is at https://blog.teknkl.com/tag/velocity (many of those posts are cross-posted here to the Products blog).

With Velocity, you can reformat, rearrange, slice, dice, sort, calculate... do anything you want with Lead, Opportunity, and Custom Object fields.

I wouldn't say, though, that you're going to learn Velocity overnight or even quickly. It's a very robust language with its roots in Java (not JavaScript) and while it can create just about any type of email content you want, it takes time to learn and test.

For the new value I have: {{system.dateTime}}: Filled Out Form: {{trigger.Name}}{{my.linebreak}}{{lead.Interesting Moment History}}, is that right

That will suffice for storing the data in general, but it should be more structured if you're going to parse it with Velocity (i.e. to get only the forms from the past month, etc.).

Use something like this:

{{system.dateTime}},Filled Out Form,{{trigger.Name}}{{my.linebreak}}{{lead.Interesting Moment History}}

This means you're storing CSV-style:

2018-12-15 12:34:58,Filled Out Form,The Form to End All Forms
2018-12-20 14:56:12,Filled Out Form,The Mother of All Forms
2018-12-25 09:31:29,Filled Out Form,Nothing to Form but Form Itself

Velocity can then split the field on the line breaks, then split on the commas, and have distinct variables to work with.