Working with SOAP API and Marketo Custom Object

[Anonymous]

Here are the requirements of my project:

Send personalized email to clients 30 days before the expiry dates of their product. 
Ex: Mr Client, Your Product A is expiring on August 21st. Please renew it now... 

Few constraint:
- A client can have multiple products (up to few hundreds)
- A client can have 10 product expiring the same day and ideally we should send only 1 email including the 10 product instead of 10 separate emails. 
- When a client buy a product, the information is currently stored in a in-house system. We would need to push this info to Marketo on a regular basis.
- I know, base on that Marketo Object Model article, that at the time of writing the article, it was not possible to: 

• view the data in records that exists in a Custom Objects belonging to a lead(s).
• directly use any data in records as the source for a dynamic value in a campaign, email, etc.

Is that still the true?


Here is how I'm thinking of doing this: 
1. Create a Marketo Custom Object to store the product information
2. Because I can't use the data of a Custom Object as a Token in a email, I was thinking of writing Javscript code to read the custom Object daily, copy the information (Product Name + Expiry Date) and paste it at the lead level in a custom field in order to use it as token in the emails. 
3. If that worked, I was thinking of having 1 custom fields to store all the product name expiryning the same day. That way I could list them all in the email. 

Now I have the following questions:
1. Am I crazy? Is that even doable?
2. Can I push on a daily basis Data from my in-house database to the Marketo Custom Object using the SOAP API? 
2. With the SOAP API, can I have access to the data stored in a Marketo Custom Field? 
3. Assuming I have acces to the data, with the SOAP API can I copy it into Lead Custom Fields? 
4. Any other idea to manage the issue of multiple product expirying the same day?

Thanks

Alex


 

[Anonymous]

Hey Alex,

We have a feature going into beta next week which lets you use data from custom objects in emails. Want to try it out? I'm at erik@marketo.com and we can see if it'll work for you.

-Erik

[Anonymous]

Thanks Erik, I'm reaching out by email.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a bunch to jump thru vs. writing code/script to have the in-house system send a list of leads who fit the criteria  along with their expiring product info to Marketo.  Then have Marketo send the emails.

[Anonymous]

Erik - that is SUPER exciting news. Cannot wait to be able to have deeper functionality with custom objects. 

[Anonymous]

Aneglo certainly has a good point too. Jeff, I'm glad you're excited, and the beta offer is open to you too if you want. Just let me know.

[Anonymous]

Good point Angelo. Thanks for the suggestion. Let me circulate with the client. 

[Anonymous]

Angelo, I'm assuming that when we send lead via SOAP API, it dedups the same way as it does when Uploading a XLS? 

[Anonymous]

yes... sync lead dedupes by email address like list import.

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,

We are in process of doing the same thing. We are purchasing our custom object in couple of days and will use it for pretty similar scenario.

1. Can we obtain for the beta feature as well, or is this already added to the product?
2. Is there any documentation or an example, except the generic object model information on how the custom object relates to the lead (how many fields are needed, is there PersonOpportunityRole object similar to when syncing oppportunities.. or it's just the Custom object and one relational field to a lead record..).

Thank you in advance for any information that you can provide.