$TriggerObject usage according to documentation

[Anonymous]

I'm researching an implementation of an email script that accesses custom objects and noticed the "$TriggerObject" in this documentation​​​. Although, the documentation seems to suggest that I should see the Trigger Object fields in the UI because it says:

When using the $TriggerObject, fields must be checked in the editing pane for the object in order to be made available to the script.

The email script edit pane requires you to check the fields that you want to use, but there is no reference to a trigger object? I've triggered an email through the "Added to {Custom Object Name}" trigger (the documentation mentions this) and attempted to access fields on the "$TriggerObject" (like the documentation), but it appears the TriggerObject is not defined?

My hope is that I could access the "Edge" object in this type of setup​, but I can't figure out what "$TriggerObject" is and if it really exists. I tried the following where "groupClassRegistration" is my "Bridge" object and it's field is checked in the script editor for debugging purposes.

ID1: ${TriggerObject.marketoGUID}
<br/>
ID2: ${TriggerObject.MarketoGUID}
<br/>
Else: ${groupClassRegistrationV2_cList.get(0).marketoGUID}

[Anonymous]

Hi Blaine,

So you are using "Added to {Custom Object Name}" trigger. $TriggerObject is the 'custom object' that triggered this smart campaign.

Say you want to do something when a new record is added to a custom object named 'Edge', you will then use,

Trigger: Added to EDGE custom object trigger.

The $TriggerObject will contain a recordset with values of the newly added record for this EDGE object.

And you will need to make sure that the fields of the object EDGE you want to use in the email script are 'checked' in the RHS pane.

For example, if you have a 'courses registered' custom object. And you have API programming set up to insert new record in this custom object when a lead registers for a course on your website. And let's say you want to send them email 'Here are the course materials' for 'that' course, then you will do,

Trigger:

Added to Courses Registered custom object

Flow:

Send email

Email:

Will contain email script merged with $TriggerObject fields. These fields will display values of the 'actual course that person registered for now'.

Does it make sense? Does it answer your question?

Rajesh Talele

[Anonymous]

Hi Rajesh,

Thanks for your reply.

So in your example, is "Course Registered" the only custom object? I have something like:

Lead -> Course Registration -> Course

and the triggers show up as "Added to Course" but I don't see any "Course" fields in the RHS pane of the email script editor, only fields for "Course Registration".

[Anonymous]

I have the same set up of Lead -> Product Interest -> Products, and email scripting won't show any Product fields in the editor. Given that it's a many-to-one relationship between Product Interest and Products, you'd think you'd be able to start at the intended Product Interest record and traverse to the Product record to pull the name, price, description etc into your email.

[Anonymous]

Hello Blaine,

not sure if you solved this, I will give it a try. You have 2 custom objects linked to the LeadId. Do you any common ID that you can link back to ?

Here is what we did in our case.

Lead                             Course                   CourseReg          

Lead ID                         CourseId               RegId

CustomerID(CRM)       CustomerId           CourseId   

                                     CourseName         RegDate, Paid etc   

So Course has all the information related to the course and CourseReg has the information related to registration(event). Now you want to send out a welcome email on Registration to the student.

SmartList : (Triggered)

Added To CourseReg

Flow:

Send Email

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

In order to get the Course information, you capture the CourseId from the triggered event and loop in the Course.

Token for the email.

Reg Id : $!{TriggerObject.RegId}

Course Id : $!{TriggerObject.CourseId}

##get Course Name

#set($list =  ${Course_cList})

#foreach( $value in $list)

    #if( ${value.CourseId} == $!{TriggerObject.CourseId} )

     #set($CourseTitle =  ${value.CourseTitle})

     ## you can get all the vaues form the customObject here.

     #end

#end

Hope that helps.

- Mahesh

[Anonymous]

Hi Maheswar Gunampally,

Why do you have the customer ID connected to the Course and not to the Course Reg?

I would have expected your objects to look like

Lead                             Course                       CourseReg         

Lead ID                         CourseId                    RegId

CustomerID(CRM)          CourseName              CourseId  

                                     Course Cost               CustomerID (or Lead ID)

                                                                      RegDate, Paid etc  

So there would only ever be 1 instance of each course, and if you made updates to the list of courses you'd just batch API update, or send support a csv file. You'd then have CourseReg being created via API (potentially looping back from a webhook request out of Marketo via a proxy of some sort).

It doesn't appear possible to access CourseName via email scripting with this set up, even though the 'TriggerObject' as shown in the interface would be the Course, and not the CourseReg.

Any thoughts on how you'd make this work?

Cheers,

Alex

[Anonymous]

Alex ,

is your product custom object linked to lead? I believe it has to be associated by the link to show. I could be wrong. we have implemented CourseReg object with course related fields. We did not push the Course to MKTO, only have the Course which customer purchased and attributes that are needed.

We have CourseReg and Payment. When email is sent to customer on payment we need show the CourseTitle. When payment object is pushed we only know the CourseId. we go back to CourseReg to get its title and other data as needed.

Hope it helps.

- Mahesh

[Anonymous]

Hi Maheswar Gunampally,

Product is not directly associated to the Lead.

Product represents a library of products we currently sell. It stores product names, costs, descriptions. There's one record for each unique product. We wanted a many-to-many relationship between Lead and Product, hence the intermediary object Product Interest, but we want to maintain only one record for each Product.

The idea behind this is to be able to use the Product table in email tokens, and to be able to segment the DB on past Product Interests. We also want one instance of each Product, so that we can make updates to them that are used across the board (i.e. change a course cost)

According to developers.marketo.com;

"You can reference first and second level custom objects that are directly connected to the Lead, Contact, or Account, but not third-level custom objects. " - Email Scripting » Marketo Developers

I may be misunderstanding this but I take it as the first level custom object would be Product Interest, and the second level is Product, so I assumed this would work.

Add Marketo Custom Object Link Fields - Marketo Docs - Product Docs covers creating the objects in the way I have, which works within Smart Lists just fine, but the Product data is not available in the Email Scripting engine.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't let you do this, as it would be incredibly useful for personalising emails, rather than using a multitude of snippets.

Cheers,

Alex

[Mark_Westerman]

I have exactly the same requirement. I would really like to know how other people personalize their emails with Product information when they have hundreds of products.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I store the product catalog in its own Velocity token (as a VTL/Java ArrayList, i.e. a JSON-like array of objects).

Then we do lookups into that array from our other Velocity tokens.