New BrightTalk Integration?

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone

We recently purchased BrightTalk as our new webinar platform, and I have had quite the time trying to establish the sync between Marketo and BrightTalk. We used Webex in the past, so I am used to the process of adding a new Service into Launchpoint and connecting a specific webinar to a specific Marketo Program. That is how Webex worked and according to the help article below that is how BrighTtalk used to work.

http://launchpoint.marketo.com/assets/company/472/Marketo-BrightTALK-Adapter-Guide-v3.pdf

However, in talking to BrighTtalk support this is no longer the case. Instead, you now have to create a custom API Role and User that allows BrighTtalk to speak to Marketo. You don't sync one webinar to one Marketo Program either. Instead you have to use smart campaigns inside your program to read the data flowing in from BrighTtalk and move registrants & attendees through Program statuses using flow steps. This seems to be a much worse way to do things. By not syncing one specific program to one specific webinar there is a much higher chance of missing registrants/attendees or accidentally adding them to the wrong Marketo Program.

There doesn't seem to be any documentation on the new process on the Marketo side and BrighTtalk has only been able to provide me with screen shots that weren't very helpful . Has anyone had any experience with the new BrightTalk integration? I would love to connect and see how you are transferring registrant/attendee data in Marketo.

Thanks a lot!

Cam

[Anonymous]

We've worked with Webex, GTW, On24 and BrightTalk. There are lots of intricacies but I wanted to expanding on two major considerations around BrightTalk.

1) The Network---Awesome. BrightTalk rules in this area as its network provides tons of viewers to your webinar. Huge value here as lead generation is part of the platform. If you are looking for more net new leads, BrightTalk excels.

2) Time to Implement--Not So Good....Yet.

How it works w Webex, GTW, etc

These connections work like a charm. After setting up the connection, it's a matter of syncing Marketo's Program to the equivalent webinar. This allows webinar membership (Registered, On Demand, etc) to sync sync back and forth automatically. No fuss--it just works just like opening the door of your house with a doorknob.

Example GTW - Just pick the webinar and membership flows between GTW and Marketo

How it works with BrightTalk

The BrightTalk process requires a lot of manual setup. If setting up the others is like using a doorknob, imagine that you don't have a door knob to open the door. There are various hoops to jump through.

Companies must set up a series of fields that change every time someone registers, attends or watches a webinar. Rather than automagically syncing to 1-to-1 Marketo programs, listening campaigns must be setup to listen for the numerous field changes that get pushed over from BrightTalk. Documentation is currently lacking so support is usually required (Side note: Support is very fast with answers). Better documentation would be an enormous help and that is apparently on its way.

Registration Example BrightTalk - Leverage numerous fields to trigger Program membership. Forget to set it up or do it incorrectly? You'll need to backfill all the data (Yes, have learned this the hard way). Note, your setup may vary so please always test.

Example of 14 fields that you will add to your Marketo instance. Most change every time a webinar is watched, attended or registered for.

Other Things to Consider

Even with better documentation, I would still rather see an automatic 1-to-1 relationship between a Marketo program and a BrightTalk webinar. Relying on various field changes is too system and error prone so you need to make sure to follow process.. What happens when someone forgets to activate a trigger or makes an error? Put in more time upfront to avoid ongoing issues.

Additionally, setting up 10-30+ fields is not exactly ideal. Your Salesforce admin might not be too happy if you ask for all those fields so I'd recommend keeping most/all in Marketo. Yes, there is lots of additional information you can use for intelligence but most like Webinar Viewing Time should really live at the webinar object level. Currently, the data lives at the lead level and changes constantly for all webinar status changes. In other words, the Webinar Viewing Time intelligence from a few webinars ago is captured and can be used for real-time alerts/interesting moments---but it's not maintained in Marketo for historical analysis once another webinar occurs (Side note, other providers don't give you this intelligence at all).

Wrapup - What to Do

BrightTalk functions at two extremes. Its lead generation capabilities are tremendous but its integration can be unnecessarily time consuming to setup. If you can live with the extra upfront effort, BrightTalk provides tremendous benefits...especially if lead acquisition is part of your goals.

I've seen some of the pros/cons so let me know if you need any specific help getting BrightTalk up and running, give me me a shout. Otherwise, push on the BrightTalk team for documentation and changes.

If anyone else has the magic bullet, please share here.

[Travis_Pearl1]

Thanks for the overview Jeff!

Can people using Marketo + BrightTalk share out their webinar archive pages? I am inheriting an existing instance and Marketo + BrightTalk integration (coming from a Marketo + Go-to-webinar) environment and am trying to find out how people are setting up the lead gen forms.

Currently, the process for a website visitor to view a BrightTalk on-demand webinar involves them having to set up a BrightTalk account (tons of fields + password), which doesn't seem very friendly for lead capture on our website.  Would like to see an example of a simple First/Last/Company/Title/Email/Phone form in Marketo that will let the user access an on-demand Brighttalk-hosted webinar.

Thanks!

[David_Pitta]

Hi All,

I'm happy to be a resource to anyone setting up integration or has questions with using BrightTALK + Marketo.

I'll explain the value of our advance integration, but it may be helpful to understand the original (basic) integration we used and is still used by webinar platforms today. Many years ago, when Marketo started LaunchPoint - they created the event API and completed the integration with webinar platforms (GoTo, WebEx, On24, BrightTALK, etc.). This API was closed-off from integration partners to develop custom solutions. Marketo hard-coded the progression statuses; frequency of API calls and the data set that could be sent between the webinar platform and your Marketo instance.

Roll forward many years, our clients (and the market) demands more data, more often, and with more flexibility on how they manage progression statuses. Unfortunately, because the event partner API and configuration is not within our control - we had to build an advance connector.

The advance BrightTALK + Marketo connector sends a full data set; it calls the API every hour; and it allows you the flexibility to customize the progression statuses for your webinar programs. Whereas the first connector sent through 13 fields of data and hard coded a limited set of progression statuses, the new connector provides 82 fields of data and full customization. Notable fields in the advance connector include:

• Unique UTM tracking for registrations vs. live viewings
• The ability to pass-through a MKTO token to associate an unknown visitor to a known user after registration
• Tracking of attachment downloads or clicks by UTM
• Track live viewings vs. recorded viewings vs. total viewings for each viewer
• ....and other advance techniques that are simply not available with the basic connector.

You can also customize progression statuses far beyond a registration or viewing. For example, many of our customers track progression statuses of registrations based on UTM or track opportunity creation, by webinar, by UTM. You are in control of how granular you want to track progression in a program.

With our advance connector, you do setup a 'custom' LaunchPoint service. We have a master program template you can import into your instance, which is built with the latest best practices and is engineered to do program membership association (it's even easier than the original event connector). Or we can send you our best practice document that highlights how to easily do membership association by program.

I'm a user of BrightTALK + Marketo for over 8 years and love the power these two technology platforms provide. I firmly believe BrightTALK has built the most advanced connector available between a webinar platform and Marketo. Please reach out here, or directly dpitta @ brighttalk.com, with any questions.

Best,

David Pitta

CMO @BrightTALK

[Anonymous]

RE: Documentation

Could you simply post a link here, rather than needing to take extra time going through Support channels?
Thanks

[Anonymous]

David Pitta​ - The documentation for this would be very helpful.

[David_Pitta]

Hi Christina,

The documentation is ready. We've also maneuvered MKTO support to connect clients to our sandbox. This allows you to import our master template. We will continue to invest in making sure our templates are best-in-class and the data/connector provides what you need to be successful.

I'll have Success to send you the documentation right away.

David

[Kara_Fischer3]

Hi there, looking for the documentation from BrightTALK and the supposed template to go along with this. My marketo isn't receiving any of the registrants from my integration and I have followed all the documentation I can find. 

[Anonymous]

Hi David,

We are also currently trying to implement the advanced connector. Could you please share the documentation + program template? Much appreciated.

-Bruno.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the response David,

The new advanced connector sounds like a great improvement, as a brand new client of BrightTALK we are excited to use all those new features you listed. Can you have someone post some kind of documentation about how we can set up those features?

Much appreciated,

Sue Fee

[Jason_Hamilton1]

Hi David,

Have you updated documentation yet that explains to marketers how they use it after it has been implemented?

I think the improvements provide a lot more data in a more realtime fashion, but I think the snag is how we as marketers work that into our flow.

With the other event integrations users have become accustom to simply syncing the program and let it do the work of changing membership and program statuses.  If the new connector does not do that out of the box then I think the solution is solid documentation.

Thanks,

Jason

[Guy_Goldstein6]

Quoc- Thai Dang​

[Anonymous]

Hi Cam Conrad​

Unless they've just updated it, my experience with BrightTALK was similar to other webinar platforms in that once you set it up you can then sync it to specific Marketo programs and the relevant attendance information will be synced into Marketo. There were a few limitations, like lead source always came across as Event Partner and if you have the lead source field as write-once it can be painful to over-ride. There were also some other quirks with BrightTALK in that even though leads are meant to come into the database after the event, sometimes these came into the program before the event itself, which meant they flowed into our lead nurture too early. Also, when someone is signed into BrightTALK they effectively don't need to register for any of your on-demand webinars, instead people can click around in BrightTALK and they will have attended your webinar on-demand (minor thing, but a slight difference between a form fill and a link click). But, the flipside is that BrightTALK introduce a lot of new leads that we previously had not been, the webinar platform was wayyyyy easier to host a webinar on and instantly records your webinar.

If you can not sync the programs, I found for another vendor I had to use the lead source most recent field as the identifier to place people into the right campaigns and then the right program statuses if the leads are just added to the entire Marketo lead database.

[Anonymous]

Hi Tim,

I'm currently dealing with the lead source = Event Partner issue. We are now using "original lead source" in place of our "lead source" field and are using new values for this new original lead source field. I'm in the process of a clean up effort and cannot figure out how to redefine what field to map to (original lead source instead of lead source) and change the value from Event Partner to BrightTalk. How did you go about changing this in the past? I've setup some 'change data value' workflows for a webinar program we have running right now, but it doesn't seem to be working across the board.

I contacted BrightTalk about this and they told me to ask someone at Marketo, so figured I would check here before filing a ticket.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Tim,

It sounds like they did just update it sometime in the past few months.

Apparently, you can no longer connect a Marketo Program to a BrightTalk Webinar using the event partner feature. Instead you have to create the custom API and somehow use smart list triggers to get leads from BrightTalk into the correct Marketo Program. The bad news is all you can find is documentation on the old process (using event partner) and no one at BrightTalk or Marketo seems to know how the smart list triggers/filters need to be set up for it to work correctly.

Its been a frustrating process and until we can get the sync to work correctly, I have have been exporting lists from BrightTalk and uploading them in to Marketo which certainly isn't ideal.

Thanks,

Cam

[Jason_Hamilton1]

Hi Cam,

I am having a similar issue, the new integration is far from simple and straightforward, and if you have other services using the API, you now need to worry about limits.  I have a client who regularly hits their daily limit, and it is preventing us from even completing the initial set up.

And the fact that you now need to create smart campaigns to basically do anything, including program membership, really makes me question why they would have done this in the first place.  Since nothing is straightforward some documentation that explains what to do (day to day) once you have completed the initial integration would be incredibly helpful.

When I contacted support and explained there is no documentation, this is what they sent me Notes on Marketo Connector for BrightTALK .

I think my next course of action will be to see if the client can get out of their contract so we can switch to a decent platform.

If anyone out there has any success with the new connector and is seeing any benefit to please let me know, this includes anyone from Marketo.

Thanks,

Jason

[Eileen_DeLeon]

This thread has been very helpful! We are currently evaluating webinar platforms and BrightTalk was on my shortlist because of the advertised Marketo integration, but it sounds like it's not as seamless as some of the other partners. That'll narrow down my list!

Do you have any recommendations of webinar platforms that you particularly like (or dislike )?

[Jason_Hamilton1]

GoToWebinar and ReadyTalk are generally what I recommend (from a Marketo point of view). I have used ON24 and Webex as well.

[Eileen_DeLeon]

Good stuff, thanks Jason and Geoff for the reqs! GoToWebinar is currently our frontrunner, with On24 being the pipe dream premium option if we can justify the spend. I was hesitant about ReadyTalk because according to the rep that I spoke with the standard webinar package does not include live video/webcam streaming, and we would need the more expensive Webcast option if we wanted that sort of feature.

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

We just transitioned from ReadyTalk (for external) to ON24.  I like the integration and the tool much better as it seems more robust to me!

Have not see a GTW integration, but would be interested to see!

[Anonymous]

Hi there. You might want to contact Brighttalk directly BrightTALK for Marketo – Marketo LaunchPoint