Tips for newbie implementing and managing Marketo for the first time

[Lisa_Forson]

This is amazing, thank you so much Nadia!

[Darrell_Alfons2]

Hey Lisa,

I wrote an article on this (well not exactly this topic, but many of the points apply) for the community last year. 

Hope it helps  

https://nation.marketo.com/community/champion/blog/2018/06/08/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-marketo-admi... 

[Pamela_Lynn1]

Be strategic on creating anything custom. Think about scalability in the future. 

Couple things that were already mentioned are super important to me:

• Naming convention (this will help you scale, organize and report!)
• Folder structure
• Documentation
• Limited customization (you're not staying at a company forever, make sure someone else can continue to admin this system in the future)

When in doubt, it's worth the money to invest on good implementation help. Don't save on that, the tech debt you end up with in the future is more expensive to fix.

[Natalie_Kremer]

I totally agree with all of the above - folder structures, naming conventions and documentation are key!y 

I would also encourage you to think through what your most standard campaigns will look like and create a series of Program Templates to use as a starting point. There are so many little things you should do as a part of each Program and having Program Templates can make sure you have the right assets, Program Status Smart Campaigns and anything else that is repeatable. It'll also save you and your team so much time by not having to start everything from scratch. 

[Liam_Darmody]

Following! 

I'm in the same boat as Lisa.

Our company has just created our first batch of email templates with corresponding smartlists, streams, flows, engagement programs, etc. and are going to be working on warming up our new IP in the next few weeks. We're a start-up with about 120 people and so things like "proper naming conventions that are on LOCK," structure, process documentation, etc., can aren't exactly abundant. I've configured enough internal tools to know that it's always best to measure twice/cut once, so I'm trying to do that with Marketo as well, but it's completely new to me (i've worked with Pardot, Eloqua, etc.) & i'm not a certified admin, so your best practices for low hanging fruit that lays a solid foundation is greatly appreciated! 

LD

[Lisa_Forson]

Hey Liam! Sounds like you're a few months ahead of where we are here, hope it's all gone well so far? 

I take it you decided to use your own dedicated IP address then, as opposed to using Marketo's shared IP addresses? Was that a complicated process to get set up?  We are going down a similar path I think....

[Liam_Darmody]

Great question that I actually don't know the answer to. I know that we are going to be working with the Marketo Deliverability team to warm the IP, but whether it's our own dedicated vs. Marketo's shared is a question I'll need to ask them so that I know. 

As for how it's gone thus far, I'd say pretty well! A member of our team had a friend from a prior job that does Marketo consulting on the side and he built us a modular dynamic template that's a copy of what we have been sending and it's made a WORLD of difference in building the templates. Have y'all done that? 

[Lisa_Forson]

Many thanks for all your fantastic responses! Interesting to see there's some reoccurring themes.....all good stuff for me to be aware of. Really appreciate your time, thank you!

[Meghana_Rao1]

If you're interested, Lisa Forson‌, my team (Marketo Customer Marketing Adoption) has put together a program, Marketo Jumpstart, that sends weekly emails to send some helpful content over to users through their implementation. We also have the Marketo Success program to help users cover the basics of the Marketo solution's core features, which is probably a little less of what you're looking for, but might be helpful for other people on your team who are less familiar with Marketo Engage! 
Sign Up for Marketo Jumpstart  

Sign Up for Marketo Success  

[Meghana_Rao1]

Here's an example of one of our pieces of content on starting your documentation: https://nation.marketo.com/community/product_and_support/blog/2019/01/09/marketo-governance-and-docu...