Options other than CC/BCC Feature in Marketo

[ashah123]

Hi Team ,

Currently, we send out two types of marketing emails:

1. Standard Marketing Emails: These are sent from our company name as the sender.

2. Sales Representative Emails: These appear to be sent on behalf of the sales representative.

Recently, our sales team requested that any emails sent on their behalf should include them in either the CC or BCC fields. This way, they can stay informed about what emails their customers receive, allowing them to have a clear understanding of the communication if a customer reaches out.

• We recently tested the CC feature in Marketo. While we did receive a copy of the email with the representative marked in CC, we found the user experience lacking. The customer can see the CC'd email addresses, which the sales team prefers to avoid.

• We also consulted support regarding the BCC option. They informed us that once enabled, it would apply to all emails and programs sent out from Marketo, which is not desirable for us. Therefore, this option is also not helpful.

We would like to explore options beyond the CC/BCC feature for building a trigger or workflow that notifies the sales team on the same day or weekly about the following information from the past seven days:

• Emails sent to their customers

• Subject lines of those emails

• A copy of the email attached in the notification sent to the sales team, along with a list of recipients

Previously, we utilized a workflow in Adobe Campaign that allowed us to attach a list and a copy of the email for this purpose. We are uncertain whether Marketo offers a similar feature. If it does not, we would appreciate any options or suggestions you may have to ensure that the sales team receives these details whenever an email is sent on their behalf to their customers.

I look forward to your suggestions and feedback! 🙂

Regards,

Akshat

[Michael_Florin · Accepted solution]

Hi Akshat,

the default way to inform sales people of emails being sent, is the Alert feature. The moment you send an email to your customer, you can also trigger an alert to the same person you used for the From-Email or signature of that email.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/core-marketo-concepts/smart-ca...

Additionally, you can make use of the Send Alert Token, so you don't even have to create a dedicated alert email: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/email-marketing/general/using-...

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What you describe in your second paragraph with regards to reporting is pretty different though. Here you have to dig into reporting or Smart List subscriptions. "A copy of the email attached in the notification sent to the sales team, along with a list of recipients" will not be possible with Marketo though. Stuff like that is usually handled via Salesforce/Dynamics campaigns memberships where the copy of the email could be attached to the campaign.

[SanfordWhiteman]

As Michael mentions, the most appropriate way to send a copy to sales is Send Alert.

Regarding the CC feature, there's something else you likely didn't realize: clicks and subsequent web activities will be associated with the person (i.e. lead) that was sent the email – for the CC'd copy as well! This makes it completely wrong for CC'ing sales.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the auto-BCC feature, though – in the sense that you can adapt that method to auto-CC relevant people. To do this, you need a quite adept IT team. But they can set up a server that gets the BCCs and filters down to only those you're interested in (say, by including the campaign name in a <meta> tag). Then only those emails can be forwarded to sales owners.

As Michael also notes the other setup you're describing is not possible natively with Marketo, and indeed would be very difficult to do even with the Marketo API and very good developers. It's pretty much impossible.

[ashah123]

@Michael_Florin @SanfordWhiteman 

Thank you for your response! Your insights are truly helpful!

I have tested the send alert feature and have a couple of questions:

1. Regarding the send alert option that I tested, I used the "to other email" feature and included my email address. I successfully received the email. Can this option be utilized whenever necessary, and can we include multiple email addresses as well?

2. I have another question regarding the "send to" option located above. Currently, it provides three choices: none, sales owner, and account owner. Is it possible to add an additional field for the marketing owner email? The existing fields are not utilized by us, and they do not reflect the sales representative's email, making them impractical for our needs.

3. Additionally, you mentioned the use of the send alert token. What distinguishes this from the options mentioned above? I came across a tip in the documentation that left me a bit confused. Are we required to create a new workflow specifically for the send alert token, or can it be incorporated into the send email flow step?

Tip - This token only works as intended when sending the email containing it with the Send Alert flow step. It will not work when used in a Send Email flow step.

4. @SanfordWhiteman Regarding your recommendation for the BCC feature, are you suggesting that we need to create a meta tag to identify where this feature should be applied and share this with the IT team so they can ignore the remaining emails and only limit those that include the specified meta tag.

Thank you for confirming that attachments are not supported in Marketo; this clears up many of my questions regarding how to have an attachment.

I look forward to your response regarding the four questions mentioned above, as well as your recommendations, so I can move forward accordingly.

Thankyou once again 🙂

Regards,

Akshat

[Michael_Florin]

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Can this option be utilized whenever necessary, and can we include multiple email addresses as well?

RTFM is not the appropriate choice of words in this forum, right? 😉 Just kidding: Yes, use a semicolon-separated string. We usually use a my.token for this, as in:

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Currently, it provides three choices: none, sales owner, and account owner. Is it possible to add an additional field for the marketing owner email?

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No, you cannot manipulate Marketo's standard UI. But if you have your marketing owner email address in a database field, you can just reference it with a lead token:

(Assuming the name of that field is "Marketing Owner Email Address")

[ashah123]

Hi @Michael_Florin ,

Thanks for the feedback.

1. I tested the suggestion you shared below, but it didn't work as expected.

My response -

• Below is the field name in Marketo that we are referencing, which has a value and its type is set to Email.

- When the test is sent, an alert is created in the activity logs; however, no alert is triggered. It appears as follows:

2. Regarding you response for BCC 

I wanted to verify whether Marketo can utilize a lead token with an owner email value when BCC is enabled. During my inquiry with support, I was informed that only one static value can be used.

Creating a shared inbox without including the representative token raises concerns about how IT will determine which email to send based on their customer. Your explanation seems good, as it appears to fetch the owner and, if a tag is identified, the BCC email is sent. However, I am a bit confused about this aspect.

1. I now understand that the "send alert" special token is essentially used to generate an email that retrieves the lead details and forwards them to the associated sales representative, correct?

We are very interested in utilizing Option 1, as it seems to be more effective for our needs compared to CC/BCC. However, this is contingent upon our ability to populate the token I mentioned earlier, which is currently not functioning correctly.

Could you please assist us with this issue?

I look forward to your response.

Regards,

Akshat

[Michael_Florin]

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1. I now understand that the "send alert" special token is essentially used to generate an email that retrieves the lead details and forwards them to the associated sales representative, correct?

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Well, the token {{SP_Send_Alert_Info}} is probably not as exciting as I made it sound in my first answer. As Sandford already said: It just contains some pre-assembled information about the lead that you might as well assemble otherwise. What's interesting about it is, that on the email that you send to your lead, it doesn't do anything. But if that same email is sent as an alert, it resolves to a little snippet with the person's name, company and a link to the Marketo database. So essentially, you can use the same email both for your send to the customer and as alert.

But most of time - at least in my experience - people opt to create specific alert emails that contain a lot more information that is tailored to the sales person who is supposed to received.

"Dear Sales person, here's is some information about a lead:

{{lead.First Name}} {{lead.Last Name}} from Company {{company.Company Name}} downloaded a whitepaper."

So the cool thing about alerts is that it is sent to Sales Person A but uses database fields from Lead Person B. That's why the alert send is an activity on Lead Person B, and not at all on Sales Person A. Sales Person A doesn't even need to be in the Marketo database.

It is also worth noting that anything that Sales Person A does with that alert email, like open or click it, is not tracked by Marketo. The only thing you'll ever see in the activity history is the send. Anything else remains unknown.

[ashah123]

@Michael_Florin Thanks for the explanation .

1. I tested this feature using a new plain text email, and I received the email below. However, it could certainly be improved or rewritten for better clarity, ensuring that sales rep can easily understand its content.

2. You mentioned that even if we use the same email with that token, the lead will still receive a standard email, while the sales rep will see an email containing the preassembled text. Is that correct? We want the rep to be aware of the content being sent on their behalf. Since we cannot attach anything as the marketo limitation, this strategy could allow us to send the same email, but the rep would receive the preassembled text due to the special alert token. Can you confirm this?

3. It's good to know that clicks from the rep are not tracked and they do not need to be in the database. I tested a couple of them and received the results correctly.

4. In my previous comment, I mentioned that I was unable to receive the alert because I was testing it as a batch email. I later realized that I needed to use a trigger, and once I did, it worked perfectly. So, that issue is now resolved.

Looking forward to your response 

Thanks @Michael_Florin Once again

Happy Weekend !!

Regards,

Akshat

[Michael_Florin]

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2. You mentioned that even if we use the same email with that token, the lead will still receive a standard email, while the sales rep will see an email containing the preassembled text. Is that correct? We want the rep to be aware of the content being sent on their behalf. Since we cannot attach anything as the marketo limitation, this strategy could allow us to send the same email, but the rep would receive the preassembled text due to the special alert token. Can you confirm this?

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Yes, that's exactly right. And if that token is not sufficient for you, just clone the email you send to your customer, probably change the subject line, add some explanatory words for sales and use that clone as alert email. Again: That's what most of our clients do. Or probably all of them... 😉

Have a nice weekend yourself!

[ashah123]

Thanks @Michael_Florin That works 🙂 

[ashah123]

@Michael_Florin

One final point: the pre-assembled information includes a lead info link from Marketo. I noticed that this link contains view-only fields, and cannot be edited, correct? Just concerned so double checking on this one 

I noticed this in the document: do you know when we will be able to incorporate the CRM link instead of the lead link from Marketo in the pre-assembled data that has been fetched?

Is it currently set to include just lead information? I suppose that's acceptable since it still provides valuable insights and is view-only.

[ashah123]

@Michael_Florin  Happy Monday !!

Do you have any insight's on the below ?

Regards,

Akshat

[Michael_Florin]

I'll test this myself to make sure it's not the field type = email that causes issues here. But have you read this on the Alert documentation page?

Alerts needs to be send from  trigger campaigns, not from batches, in order to work with tokens.

The second thing I'd like to check is: Could it be that your field "Marketing Owner Email" is not on the lead object, but on the company object? If it were on the company/account, the token would need to be {{company.Marketing Owner Email}}.

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Update: I ran a quick test and everything works as it should.

And indeed: If I run this Smart Campaign as a batch, the token won't be resolved.

So please run it as a trigger. Quickest way to setup a trigger campaign btw. is to put "Campaign is requested" as the trigger in the Smart Campaign (and activate it!). Then just go to your test person in the database and run "Request Campaign" from here:

[SanfordWhiteman]

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3. Additionally, you mentioned the use of the send alert token. What distinguishes this from the options mentioned above? I came across a tip in the documentation that left me a bit confused. Are we required to create a new workflow specifically for the send alert token, or can it be incorporated into the send email flow step?

Tip - This token only works as intended when sending the email containing it with the Send Alert flow step. It will not work when used in a Send Email flow step.

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It wouldn’t really make sense with Send Email. The email needs to be sent in the context of a lead, but not to the lead, and that‘s only the case w/Send Alert.

In any case, you can make your own equivalent (or better) of the {{sp_send_alert_info}} token. It’s not special except that it’s pre-assembled.

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4. @SanfordWhiteman Regarding your recommendation for the BCC feature, are you suggesting that we need to create a meta tag to identify where this feature should be applied and share this with the IT team so they can ignore the remaining emails and only limit those that include the specified meta tag.

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Yes, you essentially tag the body of the email with “this is interesting.”

The mailserver receiving BCCs checks for that tag. If found, it fetches the owner and redirects the email to them. If not found, the email is simply deleted.