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]

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

[Jason_Hamilton1]

Hi Scott,

When a LaunchPoint partner introduces a new integration, is it tested and vetted by Marketo?

Thanks,

Jason

[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]

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.

[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!

[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.