Marketo Event Program - Import Package vs Clone

[shelley_Dusyk]

Help - I am new to Marketo and looking for the best way to set up the platform for our users. We have developed new templates for campaigns and landing pages. I am now looking to create and "Event Program" that has all of the pieces required for an event. Marketo has several prebuilt programs that you can Import from their library. I am wondering if it is better to build the program in the library for our people to import or to just create a Templates folder in Marketing Activities and then build out our Event Program Template with all of the required elements and then just have our people Clone the template and then begin adding their content to the templates.

[Josh_Hill13]

You should create a custom Program Template with the items that make sense for you.

You could use the Marketo Library version as a starting point, however, DO NOT allow non admins to import such Templates. They are rarely aligned with your database fields and won't contain the email and page asset you built.

[shelley_Dusyk]

Thank you for the feedback.

[Karan_Hari3]

Hi shelley Dusyk​,

You can download the program template but I would recommend to have it customized as per your business requirements and have your team used the customized version of the template. Below is a Video on Creating Event and Webinar Programs that could provide some perspective on best practices that you could implement in your template and have your team follow.

Best Always,

Karan Hari

[shelley_Dusyk]

Thank you for the response, unfortunately I was unable to access the video.

[Amy_Goldfine]

Definitely use the Marketo package as a starting point for your own template, then customize that as necessary. You want to take advantage of Program Tokens in your template. That way when you clone the program, you just update the templates and everything is ready to go! You can even use tokens for landing page and email content. Templates+Tokens are what makes Marketo extremely scaleable. You only have to fill in an element (webinar title, date, time, etc.) once and it populates in all the relevant emails and landing pages.

Note—I don't remember what's in Marketo's webinar template exactly. It may include smart campaigns and emails for confirmation and reminder emails. In my opinion, it's totally fine to let your webinar provider send those out. I haven't found that doing them out of Marketo increases attendance so it's not worth the effort IMHO! I do like to use Marketo to send a customized follow-up email, however, rather than letting the webinar provider do that.

Here's a good article about Templates+Tokens in a webinar written by Edward Unthank (ETU)​ How to Build a Marketo Webinar Template that Scales: Etumos