Target Account Flagging - Looking for Ideas & Advice

[Denise_Greenbe7]

I've been asked to create a checkbox field called Target Account 2019 and set it to True for... you guessed it... our Target Accounts for the year. I'm reluctant to create new Target Account field every year from 2019 going forward. You know, Target Account 2020, Target Acount 2021....... Target Account 2030.... as opposed to one Target Account field that gets unchecked if the company is no longer a Target Account. But I can understand how creating a new field for each year allows for reporting comparing Opps and Revenue from Target Accounts from year to year. I'm interested in how other people handle this. Am I wrong to be reluctant to create a new Target Account field for every year? Is there a better way to achieve the same thing? I would appreciate any advice or ideas. Thank you!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Why not a (implicitly) multivalued string field that holds every year for which a company is a target?

   2019;2022;2023

Booleans aren't any better than String [contains], as long as the [contains] is unambiguous. Since years are always 4 letters, [contains] "2019" and [contains] "2020" will always be accurate.

[Chris_Wilcox]

I fully support this solution. You can still use the current year in all your lead scoring and nurture programs with the contains constraint, but keep the history side by side in the same field. Best of both worlds. 

[Veronica_Holme4]

+1 to this - it's how I've managed it in the past. The last thing you should do is create a new checkbox for each year, you're right, that'll be hard to maintain and they keep stacking up...

[Ronnie_Duke2]

Sanford Whiteman‌ - wouldn't you need a shadow field (i.e. Target - Historical) to preserve current values and concatenate the new year in the string field going forward? So when 2020 rolls around, your flow step would be to change the value to {{lead.target - historical}}; 2020 to add them together?

Unless Denise Greenberg is not doing these in batches and manually adding values to individual leads...

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can do it in a flow step. You don't need another field.

Now, accurately pruning this field -- as with all multivalued fields -- to remove only a specific value, if that should be necessary, would require a webhook.

[Denise_Greenbe7]

Actually, Ronnie's question makes me realize I have a harder problem than I was thinking about at first. The Target Account field has to be on the Account - and Marketo can't write to Account fields.

[Ronnie_Duke2]

Denise Greenberg Yes and no.... Are you using SFDC? If so, Marketo can write to Account fields, but only through a Contact's company fields that are mapped to the Account. You can't just write to an Account directly. So, if you knew a contact from a certain company, you could update that contact's Account field via a flow step, or manually on the record.

[Denise_Greenbe7]

Hi Ronnie,

Yes, we are using SFDC. And I have this issue with another field, too. I know that Marketo can write to a Contact field, of course. But in SFDC, how would I transfer the value from the Contact to the Account? As far as I can see, you can't map Contact & Account fields.

Thanks,

Denise

[Ronnie_Duke2]

I believe all Account fields you create in SFDC are mapped to Marketo, but they are only accessed in the context of a Contact. So if you had your Target Account field on the Account, you would have to pull up a Contact from that Account in Marketo (or have them qualify for a Smart Campaign), and then you can edit the Account field relative to that Contact.