Marketo Workspaces: Pros and cons?

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,

Our company is growing fast and we are opening different business units. I saw that we can use segmentation in our database with Workspace.

What are the pros and cons to use it? What are the problems you faced?

Thanks in advance!

[Dan_Stevens_]

I could spend hours on this.  Head on over to the KreweChats episode that Dory, Joe​, Jenn and team produced:

#KreweChats Episode 5: Workspaces & Partitions - YouTube

I also co-presented on this exact topic at the 2015 Summit.  Unfortunately, all links to those sessions redirect to the 2017 Summit portal.

[Anonymous]

Very interesting!

Just a question that was not answered in the video. If a lead unsubscribe from a newsletter in a partition, is he unsubscribe from all the partition?

Thanks,

Hugo

[Dan_Stevens_]

Yes.  Unless you have a more flexible "subscription center" deployed.  But if using the standard "unsubscribe" process, he/she will be unsubscribed from anything sent from Marketo.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I found the presentation that Ashleigh Davis​ and I presented at the 2015 Summit.  Since I'm unable to include attachments here, here's a link to a shared version on Dropbox (note, you do not need to create an account or login - just skip past that page when prompted):

Dropbox - BO_Stevens_Davis_Apr15_FINAL.pptx

[Dan_Stevens_]

In order to work as efficiently as possible across workspaces/lead partitions (we have 23 of them), one of the most important items - at least for us - is the ability to share assets in Design Studio across all workspaces.  This way, we don't have to clone those assets n number of times to every workspace that needs them.  Unfortunately, not everything can be shared.  Today, only these assets can be shared:

• Email templates
• LP templates
• Images
• Snippets
• Smart lists
• Segmentations

What continues to cause us some pain is the inability to share:

• Forms
• Emails
• Landing Pages

Here are some ideas related to this:

Allow forms in Design Studio to be shareable

Global assets for workspaces

[Grégoire_Miche2]

So True

-Greg

[Jep_Castelein2]

A couple of things to keep in mind:

Marketo Programs live in a particular Workspace, which has access to one or more Partitions. There is a caveat if the Workspace does not have access to all Partitions and a new Program Member is located one of the inaccessible partitions. If that prospect/customer fills out a Form that lives in that Program, none of the Smart Campaigns inside the Program will trigger, because the Lead is not accessible.

Lists are uploaded inside a Marketo Workspace, which has access to one or more Partitions. If the list contains a record with an email address that matches an existing record in an inaccessible Partition, the import of that record will fail. At the end of the import, it is possible to download a CSV will all failed records. Those can be re-uploaded in a Workspace that has access to the other Partition. Alternatively, you could do all List uploads in a “master” Workspace, which has access to all Partitions. However, if you’d like to add Members to a Program, you need to upload the List in the Workspace where the Program lives. Therefore you may be forced to move the Programs corresponding to the List uploads to the “master” Workspace.

The two items above are specific to Partitions. Generally, I advise against using partitions unless absolutely necessary due to legal/compliance reasons. Workspaces are easier to recommend, although there are also a couple of things to keep in mind: Dan already mentioned that not all assets can be shared across Workspaces. Also, A Program cannot be moved to another Workspace when it has Members.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Jep makes some good points here.  I'd also like to share with those on this thread some insight on how Marketo treats duplicates when it comes to list imports, emailing, form submits, etc:

If duplicate leads are an issue, be aware of how Marketo determines which lead is active

As I mentioned before, we have 23 workspaces and lead partions; AND have a purposeful duplicate process (which I've documented here and will be the topic of my session at Summit (see my response further down in this thread: Re: Lead Process Updating) - and in the process of moving away from).