What's the best way to reorganize Channels?

[Andy_Varshneya1]

Hey all,

We're retooling our Channels and having it be multi-dimensional where we have Channel buckets, and then Channel Detail (very similar to Lead Source and Lead Source Detail). Has anyone done this before? What's the best way to manage the transition from the old Channel configuration to the new one?


Thanks,
Andy

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi Andy,

Please see my post about some of these issues:
http://perkuto.com/blog/marketing-automation/marketing-attribution-model-for-marketing-automation

I recommend:

• Offer Type
• Offer Name
• Channel Type
• Channel Name
• First Campaign
• Last Campaign

I take it you don't mean Program Channels here.

[Andy_Varshneya1]

Hey Josh,

I agree with you on the tracking, but unfortunately, the strategy was implemented before I joined and I am working on taking the project to the finish line.

The way they've chosen to do to tracking is

Lead Source, Lead Source Detail.

First Channel Type, First Channel Name, First Campaign.

Last Channel Type, Last Channel Name, Last Campaign


However, the program channels in Marketo right now are the original ones and I need to clean them up (i.e. There's Webinar - External and External Webinar, that need to be merged together).

I'm trying to identify the best way to fix those program channels because the default value is the equivalent of Last Channel Type and Name. If First Channel Type and Name are blank, they are updated also, but I have blocked field updates to prevent the values from changing with each campaign.

Essentially it's like building our own custom version of Sales Insight and RCA.

[Lauren_Beth]

Andy,

Was just curious to see what you ended up implementing here?  I am working through similar issues.

Thank you!

[Andy_Varshneya1]

Hey Beth,

The way I ended up resolving it was naming one of them the master and marking the other one as do not use. I haven't figured out the best way to clean them up yet because it's a lower priority compared to everything else flying around.

[Lauren_Beth]

Thank you! We are in the middle of doing the same.

[BlaneMM]

@Lauren_Beth did you come up with a good way to clean-up the channels.  We are wanting to better align with our Salesforce instance, so it will likely be a migration type effort.