Rethinking Marketo Program Structure

[Ari_Echt1]

Hello, 

We're reworking our Marketo program structure to get better visibility into what's working/what's not, and to be able to best leverage tools like Program Analyzer.

The approach we're working on creates a separate program for every delivery channel for each offer. For example, for an ebook X, we'd have the following programs: 

ebook X - Organic (for all non-paid efforts)
ebook X - Display
ebook X - Paid Search
ebook X - Paid Referral
ebook X - Social
 

There's obviously a lot of overhead in managing all these programs, but for the questions we're trying to answer:

• in the big picture, what channels are creating the most names, pipeline, revenue? 
• which offers are creating names, pipeline, revenue? 
• for offers that are working well, what channels are best delivery mechanism?

this seems like a good approach. 

We've gotten valuable input from a couple of people on this, just asking for last minute feedback from the community to see if there are any unexpected pitfalls in this approach before we go to all the work of building this. Anyone else taking this approach?

Thanks a lot for any input. 

[Dan_Stevens_]

Ari, we're actually looking to do the complete opposite.  In the past, we've done something similar: for each piece of content/offer, we create a WEBSITE program (to attribute those leads that engage/convert just by visiting our website); an EMAIL program (not a marketo email program - just a program using the email channel); a SEARCH program; etc.  That has created a tremendous amount of extra work for us - we're up to 1000+ programs across 24 country workspaces - it's out of control! 

Unfortunately, we haven't identified a good approach to simplify this approach AND be able to continue to attribute to the activity to the proper channels.  For example, if we combine the WEBSITE and EMAIL programs into a single program (and define the necessary program statuses to apply to both channels, e.g., clicks email link, visits landing page, fills out form, downloads file, etc.), we lose the ability to give proper attribution to the email channel against those leads that were driven to the page and converted via email.

I look forward for others to share there thoughts here.

[Ari_Echt1]

Thanks for the input, Dan. You raise good points to consider. 

Hopefully others may chime in.

[Anonymous]

Ari-
We currently do this and simultaneously populate a SFDC campaign with the same name/channel. I think it's way too complicated myself. In my previous company we had Source and Record Type fields, a set that changed for every form submission and another set that populated the first time only and didn't change. SO in your example, if a new lead was create as a result of downloading the eBook from a paid search ad:
Original Record Type: eBook X
Original Source: Paid Search
These values never change after lead creation.

Then if the person came back another time and downloaded a white paper from seeing it on a social channel:
Record Type: White Paper X
Source:  Social

To run reports on these I could find out how many net new leads were created as a result of promoting the eBook through Paid Search by using the Original fields for criteria. OR if I wanted to know how many people downloaded the White Paper X from Social over the past 30 days, I would do a smart list with the White Paper X form completion and Data Value Changes criteria Source and the time criteria.

Make sense? Or does this method not completely provide the insights you need?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Alisa - we do something very similar today.  Whenever success is achieved within a program, populate three fields:

• Last touch program
• Last touch channel
• Last touch date

And then we use these values to populate similar fields when MQL status is achieved, when the lead is accepted by Sales, MQL is converted to opportunity and closed business.  We can then run the appropriate reports in RCE.

One question I have for you is how do you accurately track the "Source"?  Let's use "Social" as an example.  Obviously when someone arrives to a landing page or your website, you can use techniques like "SourceID" querystrings or grab the referral source.  But what happens if conversion doesn't take place on that page.  Let's say they navigate to a second page and convert.  The querystring and referral source are no longer intact.  How do you keep the source persitent throughout the session so that when conversion does takes place, you can accurately capture the source value?

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan-
My method isn't the best for tracking conversion attribution/campaign attribution. It is good for tracking the original source of net new leads as well as other touches along the way. We also had the Original Source and Record Type travel with the lead in SFDC to contact through to opportunity so we could track by those fields and see which sources generated the most revenue as well as which channels. I like your method of capturing the last touches. But do your program successes always equal conversion? For example, if the program is a webinar and success equals attended, how does that relate to conversion?

[Ari_Echt1]

Dan and Alisa, thanks for the additional feedback. It feels like I'm struggling with the same thing,  balancing high granularity in reporting with program overhead. 

Everytime I feel like I've made a breakthrough and found some efficiency, I continue down the path only to find that it hits a snag and I go back to super manual, one program for each offer/channel.

Dan, regarding your question: 
"...But what happens if conversion doesn't take place on that page.  Let's say they navigate to a second page and convert.  The querystring and referral source are no longer intact.  How do you keep the source persitent throughout the session so that when conversion does takes place, you can accurately capture the source value?"

I'm not 100% sure on this, I feel only 50% sure, but I believe you could achieve this persistant tracking by using "Get Values from Cookie" instead of "Get Value from URL Parameter" in your hidden field settings. 



Again, not 100% sure, but I believe that's one of the benefits of using cookies. But cookies are also harder for non-technies like me to deal with. I prefer donuts. 
 

[Dan_Stevens_]

@Alisa: My use of the term "conversion" refers to success for a given channel.  Basically, the user has achieved the goal we had set out within the specific channel (and therefore, achieving a "success" program status).

@Ari: I too would be interested to know if this would work.  But my gut tells me it wouldn't.  To use this, you'd need to define a custom cookie to capture/pass on the values beyond the initial page.