UTM Stamping and SFDC Sync

[LNeuman]

I'm new to my company and trying to figure something out. We have a contract vendor that's created a UTM stamping function for us based on form fills/links/email clicks (on a priority system). This information is desired to have in SFDC, so they created synced fields on the Lead/Contact objects for this.

However, the stamping function is slow - so much so that we have had to turn of the Program level SFDC Sync in order to let the UTM stamping function finish updating before the SFDC sync happens, in order to get the information across correctly.

The vendor is telling us that all of this - including the smart campaign driven, "manual" SFDC sync - is best practice, and I'd like community input on this, as well as if there are better solutions out there for capturing UTM Tracked Medium/Source values. 

Thanks for any insight!

[Darshil_Shah1]

Please let me know if I'm missing anything here, but if the custom process around stamping the UTM is slow, then how'd changing the way you sync program members over to the SFDC campaign optimize it? Also, how exactly are you stamping UTM values in Marketo fields using the custom process? For form fills you should look at updating the UTM parameters to the hidden form fields directly rather than doing any custom development for it.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Agreed with Darshil. We need to know more details about this “UTM stamping function” and why it’s being executed via Marketo at all (as opposed to being done in the browser). Certainly there are good justifications for doing it partly in Marketo SCs but we need to evaluate the approach.

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The vendor is telling us that all of this - including the smart campaign driven, "manual" SFDC sync - is best practice

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Sounds like they’re being evasive instead of admitting they didn’t plan for this case!

The automatic SFDC Campaign ↔︎ Marketo Program sync has its place in world-class Marketo instances. It’s not the best fit for every Marketo Program type (channel) but it’s not “best practice” to not use it.

[Amanda_Reilly3 · Accepted solution]

Agreed with all above, UTM stamping is pretty out of the box for Marketo so I'm unsure what the stamping process is. I've noticed with vendors that often times that less than optimal processes are set up because it's required for their reporting, but not yours. I would also argue that "manual" in a marketing automation system is not best practice. 

I also wanted to share a response I recently gave regarding how to set up UTMs and track in Marketo here: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/update-lead-source-most-recent-field-in-marketo/m-...

Not sure if you need the whole picture in one field, but you can easily concatenate a field with other fields into one place using tokens, such as a data value change flow step that uses tokens to populate the information, for example: 

UTM stamp new value is {{system.dateTime}} | {{lead.UTM Medium}} {{lead.UTM Source}} {{lead.UTM Campaign}}

OR if you're looking to include historical values, something like:

UTM Medium Historical new value is {{lead.UTM Medium Historical}} | {{system.dateTime}} - {{lead.UTM Medium}}

The above is super simple, easy on the system, and can sync to a field with the sfdc sync. If you need to insure information is populated before syncing to sfdc, you may consider something like an Initial Processing operational program that runs on lead intake to make sure information is filled before a sync to sfdc flow step action. 

Happy to provide further clarification as well should you like!

Thanks,

Amanda