Product Documents

Note: This originally appeared on our LaunchPoint partner, Elixiter's, website. Filter Operators: How to Define the Perfect Smart List String Fields Smart Lists are probably the single most important thing to learn in Marketo. They are extremely powerful and flexible. Their sole purpose is to define a group of people. Knowing how to use Marketo smart list filters and their operators will ensure you capture the exact group of people you need. An operator is part of the smart list that lets you get specific, narrowing down your group with clearly defined criteria. It lets you describe your filter or trigger in straight-forward language. The available operators are different depending on the type of field you are using. This article will cover smart list string fields, its operators and how to use them to get exactly what you need. String Fields A String field supports up to 255 characters and stores them all on a single line. A few examples of string fields are: Name Fields Email address City Company Name Job Title Industry Acquisition Program Name Lead Source Clicked on Web Page String Field Operators All string field filters have the following operators to help you define your smart list criteria: Operator Definition Is Exact match (not case sensitive) Is not Anything EXCEPT exact match Starts with First letters of string match Contains Any letters together in the string match Not contains No letters together in the string match (opposite of contains) Is empty No value (NULL) Is not empty Records with ANY value When to use Operators Knowing what operator to use to get the group of people you want is imperative. Operators directly impact smart list result. If you’re not careful, the wrong operator will include incorrect leads or exclude vital leads in your smart list. Below is a table to help you decide what string field operator to use when to use and an example of the results: Operator When to use Example Results with Job Title Field Is Use when you need only exact criteria Is “Manager” will return leads only with this title.Leads with titles such as “Senior Manager”, “Marketing Manager” or “managing” will be excluded from results. Is not Use when you need to exclude specific criteria Is not “Manager” will return leads who do not have this exact match.Leads with titles such as “Senior Manager”, “Marketing Manager” or “managing” will beincluded in results. Starts with Use when you want a group of people who have similar first letters in a string field. Best used in fields that don’t have a lot of variation. Starts with “Marketing” will return leads who have this in the first letters of their job title.Leads with titles such as “Marketing Director”, “Marketing Associate” will beincluded. “Chief Marketing Officer” and “Director of Marketing” will be excluded. Contains Use when you need a group of people who have similar letters anywhere in a string field Contains “marketing” will return leads who have this anywhere in their job title.Leads with titles such as “Marketing Director”, “Marketing Associate”, “Chief Marketing Officer” and “Director of Marketing” will all be included. Not contains The opposite of Contains. Use this when you need to exclude a specific criteria. Not Contains “Accounting” will return ALL leads that do not have this in their job title. Is empty Returns only fields who are empty (NULL). Is Empty will return only leads who do not have a job title listed on their account. Is not empty The opposite of “is empty”. Returns all leads who have any value in this field. Is not Empty will return ALL leads who have a value listed. Still having trouble with your smart list results? Contact us for assistance with a custom solution. Related How Tos: Marketo Fields: How to Translate Checkbox Fields Into Text Using Formula Fields

Simple Set up (Before you start using product): Setup Checklist - Marketo Docs - Product Docs Detailed Steps to Set up (Before you start using product): Setup Steps - Marketo Docs - Product Docs Configuration Protocols: Configure Protocols for Marketo - Marketo Docs - Product Docs Smart Campaign Checklist: Smart Campaign Checklist - Marketo Docs - Product Docs Campaign Checklists (From one of our Champions): Campaign Checklists for MarketoMarketing Rockstar Guides  (from: www.rockstarguides.com) Understanding Batch and Trigger Campaigns   Understanding Batch and Trigger Smart Campaigns - Marketo Docs - Product Docs Checklist for Lead Scoring Rules: The Big List of Lead Scoring Rules – Marketo.com Certified Expert Checklist: Certified User Checklist Certification Tool Kit: Marketo Certified Expert Preparation Tools Marketing Automation Checklists: Marketing Automation Checklists (from: www.rockstarguides.com) Setting up Marketing Attribution: 12 Steps to Setting Up Your Marketing Attribution in Marketohttp://learnadmin.marketo.com/LearnerPage.aspx  (From www.ringleads.com)

By: Mike Tomita Posted: January 8, 2016 | Modern Marketing Since the news first broke about Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012, there has been a ton of speculation around whether Disney will be able to carry on the Star Wars legacy. Our questions were answered as Disney closed out the year by releasing Star Wars: The Force Awakens globally, and since then, it has been breaking box office records from left to right. While George Lucas is much to credit for building the massive Star Wars fan base, Disney continued his legacy by catering to the fans and giving them what they want. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Lucas shared that, while it wasn’t what he wanted, Disney wanted to make something for the fans—a retro movie. And they did just that. By keeping certain elements consistent with the prequels and adding their unique Disney-esque touches, Disney succeeded in carrying on the legacy and impressing critics, earning a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While it’s unlikely you’ll be directing a box-office hit anytime soon, there is a valuable lesson you can learn from this handover: your audience should always come first, whether it is a theater full of fans or your targeted prospects. It’s important to cater your messaging to them to give them the best experience possible because, at the end of the day, it’s their dollars that are feeding your bank. From my perspective, these are some of the key elements that Disney incorporated for the fans that contributed to the success of the new Star Wars movie, and can help you build your brand: (Warning: This blog contains SPOILERS) 1. Consistency Granted that this is the seventh installment in the Star Wars saga, so Disney had to build on the story that George Lucas had created. Since The Force Awakens occurs after the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, they had the advantage of bringing back the original characters and actors that established the fanatic legacy that Star Wars enjoys today. However, that advantage came with the peril of tarnishing the “happily ever after” ending that was implied at the end of the last Star movie, Return of the Jedi. When we last saw our heroes, the Rebels had just blown up the second Death Star and defeated The Empire, Han and Leia were young and in love, and Luke led his father (SPOILER ALERT: Darth Vader) to redemption, finally becoming a true Jedi in the process. Skip ahead a few decades and the events of the original trilogy are now a half-believed legend. Luke is a just a rumor of a broken man who ran away, Han and Leia are split up and trying to forget the pain of their alienated son by going back to old habits, and The Empire is back in a big way (now rebranded as The First Order). Did Disney just ruin the original Star Wars trilogy? In my opinion, no. What they did do is create believable continuity between the conflicts of the past and present. After all, who wants to watch a Star Wars movie about a universe where everything is going great? It would just be a boring movie about political debates and teen angst (*cough* the prequel trilogy). In The Force Awakens, Disney brings back the basics with the good versus evil theme that defined the original films. In the new movie, the ultimate villain, Darth Vader, still looms large even from beyond the grave. This time, instead of Luke Skywalker trying to resist the temptations of the dark side and ending up twisted and evil like this father, Han and Leia’s son Kylo Ren is struggling to live up to his grandfather’s terrible legacy as a master of the dark side and fights against the good within himself. Aside from telling a continuous story, Disney also paralleled key visuals into their movie that the old ones shared. This includes everything from the style of the opening crawls to familiar characters and scenes. Take a look at the opening crawls from Star Wars Episode VII (latest installment) and Star Wars Episode IV: Or what about when Han boarded the Millennium Falcon, blaster in hand with the same scoundrel grin he has always had (queue Star Wars theme song), backed-up by his sidekick Chewbacca who hasn’t changed one bit (and who we still can’t understand). Marketing Lesson: Consistency is critical because it’s a solid element that allows fans to connect with you, associating new messages with all the feelings they already affiliate with your brand. And with such a huge fan base like Star Wars’, this is definitely a key thing to incorporate. In fact, when these consistent elements appeared on screen at my showing, the audience even clapped and cheered it on. 2. Innovation While Disney had to keep certain things the same, they also needed to add their own flavor to show that they can not only reproduce the same type of film, but contribute to it. Just take a look at BB-8, Disney’s take on an R2-D2 type of robot. R2-D2’s machinery has aged and is pretty old-age, but BB-8’s is much more innovative with its spherical shape that allows it to move swiftly. Even its noises have changed, sounding much more high-tech than R2-D2 static, satellite-sounding noises. Personally, I think one of the best decisions that Disney, or J.J. Abrams, made was learning from the mistakes of the prequel trilogy and not overusing technology for the sake of technology. Just because something is old doesn’t make it obsolete (think light sabers or The Millennium Falcon). For The Force Awakens, they went back to the basics like shooting on real film, building sets on location, and utilizing practical effects and costumes. CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is definitely used, but it is used appropriately and doesn’t pull the viewer out of the story, which is what special effects are for and why the revolutionary techniques used in the originally trilogy were so effective—because they served the story and weren’t added just for spectacle. The new film has improved greatly on the types of special effects that were pioneered by George Lucas and his team when they created the first films and combined with today’s state-of-the-art CGI. This blending of new and old is exactly what the new film is about and carrying that over to how the movie is made, looked, and felt is a big part of its well-received success. The first trilogy had no CGI. The prequel trilogy had WAY too much. This trilogy has started off with just the right amount. Marketing Lesson: From the evolution of the droids, to the streamlined Stormtrooper uniforms, to the very methods used to bring the story to life, Disney has mixed the right amount of the past with the present to create an innovative evolution of a familiar universe. Take a cue from them and give your audience something new to keep them hooked. Otherwise, it’s just the same old, same old. 3. Adaptation The times they are a-changin’. The last Star Wars movie was released in 2005, which means it was filmed at least a year before that. Being that a decade has passed since the last film, Disney had to adapt to our current culture. So what does this entail? For one, did you notice that the main protagonist in this film is a female? While women like Princess Leia or Queen Amidala certainly took the stage before, the spotlight was typically on the main characters—be it Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi. This time, Rey is the star of the show, and we watch her confidence grow as she overcames her fears to take down the dark force. When we first saw Rey, she had been left on the planet Jakku on her own, scavenging and selling things to survive, and certainly doesn’t fit a typical heroine stereotype. Even Finn’s commander is a female and perhaps the first female Stormtrooper ever. Not to mention that we get our first black Stormtrooper played by John Boyega. This was such a controversial casting decision that the hashtag #BlackStormtrooper was born to handle the debate. Again, this is a sign of Disney not only adapting to the times, but doing it in a way that felt natural in the Star Wars mythology. Long gone are the days of clone troopers and faceless minions. These modern Stormtroopers are tragic militants, stolen from their families as children, and indoctrinated in the beliefs of The First Order. Some have doubts, some do not, but we finally we get to see one of the faces behind the mask. And he just happens to be reminiscent of another likeable hero who started off working against the Rebels, in both character and color—Lando Calrissian. Like Lando, Finn’s is just another well-developed character who continues the theme of redemption that runs throughout the Star Wars storyline. Marketing Lesson: As Disney has proven, it’s important to keep up with new technology, emerging trends, and cultural norms to offer your audience new, engaging products and content. But this doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel each time. Go through your existing archives and recycle successful, old assets by tweaking it to make it more current. Do, or do not. There is no try. Disney did it. J.J. Abrams did it. And you can do it. Whether or not Disney’s take on Star Wars matched George Lucas’ vision, The Force Awakens is a successful continuation of the Star Wars story that resonates with the fans. Disney’s careful treatment of the core elements that made Star Wars such a beloved franchise provides the generation that grew up with Star Wars that familiar feeling of seeing old friends again, while its updates resonate with the current generation of fans-to-be to carry on the Star Wars legacy for years to come. With strategic marketing through consistent and innovative branding, adapting to new generations of people and technology, you too can awaken your fans and build a brand that carries on for ages. Here’s to your legacy! http://events.marketo.com/summit/2016/

A good doc to keep near your desk or on your desktop.

The original press release can be found here. 250ok and Marketo Breathe New Life Into Email 250ok strengthens partner integration with Marketo with addition of Email Informant and Reputation Powerpack to take email campaigns to the next level SAN MATEO, Calif. – July 20, 2016 – Marketo, Inc. (NASDAQ: MKTO), the leading provider of engagement marketing software and solutions, today announced that 250ok, a leading provider of deliverability services, has strengthened its partner integration to make email deliverability smarter. As part of this enhanced collaboration, 250ok will offer its full product suite, including Email Informant and Reputation Powerpack, to make email more engaging, intelligent, and effective for Marketo customers. "We are extremely excited to continue to expand our relationship with Marketo,” said Tim Moore, vice president of Customer Solutions, 250ok. "With Marketo’s partnership to offer our full product suite, including Email Informant and Reputation Powerpack, customers will possess unparalleled visibility into the data driving the success of their email programs." According to a study by Deloitte, Americans collectively check their smartphones upwards of 8 billion times per day and continuously check email. Despite the volume of emails people read and send daily, the vast majority of messages get lost in filters. Up to 85 percent of incoming email is considered abusive, and mailbox providers often apply aggressive measures to deter spam and protect customers. As a result, senders need more sophisticated tools to understand when emails deliver and when they do not. Addressing this challenge, the enhanced partner integration between 250ok and Marketo will allow proactive management and insights that will help optimize future email campaigns. “250ok has been at the forefront of innovation for one of the oldest forms of digital communications. Its ability to continually reinvent the medium is testament to its years of experience and dedication to combining scalable technology with intelligent solutions,” said Kiersti Esparza, director, cloud platform technologies, Marketo. “This partnership with 250ok exemplifies how Marketo works closely with partners to continue to innovate and offer the best, integrated products and services to our customers.” Americans spend up to 6.5 hours a day on email; here’s how 250ok and Marketo are improving the experience: Email Informant – Responsible for delivering more seamless emails, this offering provides: Engagement Analysis: Offers insights into who read your email campaign and for how long, drilling down to the individual recipient, device, and platform. Trend Discovery: Highlights which links or calls-to-action perform the best. Allows companies to optimize emails around peak hours for recipients and utilize 250ok’s data to gain insights on the best and most engaged subscribers. Device & Browser Tracking: Provides data on which devices and clients matter most by tracking devices, clients, and browser usage across an entire mailing list so companies can optimize future campaigns. Reputation Powerpack – An industry first in the world of communications, this offering provides: Unprecedented Granularity: Upon analyzing billions of messages, this offers the analytics required to identify issues while providing the level of detail marketers need to take corrective action. Enhanced with SNDS & Signal Spam: Companies can automate SNDS & Signal Spam reporting to track spam traps and complaint rates at Hotmail, Outlook.com, Laposte, Sfr, and Orange. Comprehensive Analytics: Quickly detect fraudulent mailing activity and identify which IPs, email addresses, and domains are sending the most unauthorized mail. To learn more about Marketo products and solutions that can help you build personalized, long-term relationships with your customers, visit https://www.marketo.com/solutions/. To learn more about the company, visit https://www.marketo.com/company/. About Marketo Marketo provides the leading engagement marketing software and solutions designed to help marketers develop long-term relationships with their customers - from acquisition to advocacy. Marketo is built for marketers, by marketers and is setting the innovation agenda for marketing technology. Marketo puts Marketing First. Headquartered in San Mateo, CA, with offices around the world, Marketo serves as a strategic partner to large enterprise and fast-growing small companies across a wide variety of industries. To learn more about Marketo's Engagement Marketing Platform, LaunchPoint® partner ecosystem, and the vast community that is the Marketo Marketing Nation®, visit www.marketo.com. About 250ok 250ok is the preferred choice for email deliverability services and analytics by forward-thinking brands. Trusted by some of the world’s largest senders, we cut through big data noise and provide actionable, real-time email intelligence. Fortune 100 companies to small businesses use 250ok to monitor deliverability, sender reputation, DMARC, and customer engagement. Follow @250ok on Twitter or visit www.250ok.com. ### Media contact: Stefanie Gordish, sgordish@marketo.com

Product Name Comments RoboHead: http://www.robohead.net/ Teamwork  https://www.teamwork.com/ Rebooth https://redbooth.com/ Wrike http://www.wrike.com Kapost: https://kapost.com/  LaunchPoint Partner Trello Trello Percolate Percolate | Complete Marketing Software for Global Brands Smartsheets Template Gallery | Smartsheet  LaunchPoint Partner Asana Asana is the easiest way for teams to track their work · Asana Producteev is created by Jive Which one do you use? Take the Poll.

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From Heidi Bullock is the Vice President of Demand Generation at Marketo. She has over 13 years of B2B marketing experience in high tech companies. Her expertise includes product positioning, brand strategy, product marketing, and demand generation. Now is a great time to be in marketing. Not long ago, if you were asked at a cocktail party what you did and replied, “Oh, I’m in marketing,” you were almost guaranteed a response like, “Wow, you’re the one that works on all the fun logo-covered fleece vests!” Historically, this misconception was largely due to the inability of marketers to demonstrate their impact on the business, i.e. showing the efficacy of campaigns and knowing where to invest (or not)—and clearly understanding the process the buyer takes when evaluating a product or service. But times have changed. Thanks to technology—especially marketing automation—we now have tools that help us understand the digital footprints of our buyers—how they like to be communicated with, the frequency, the message, gain visibility into which programs drive real business results and which don’t, and even ultimately help us predict buying preferences. With such powerful inputs available, marketers today are uniquely situated to understand all facets of their customers and the journey they undergo. One function that has originated as part of this new data-driven era is the role of the demand generation marketer. This role and organizational function is dedicated to driving demand and ultimately revenue. In many organizations demand generation is often associated directly with acquisition, but a better and more modern wa to think of it is as “transformative demand generation,” and this is where marketing executives need to focus. If you align your team around this concept, you’ll gain better insight into all areas of the customer journey—not just the early stages. Transformative Demand Generation Transformative demand generation is comprised of three key criteria: Having an agreed upon, shared model, set of definitions, and goals for aligning marketing and sales efforts. Creating a shared revenue model with clearly defined stages, conversion points, definitions, and service level agreements (SLAs) is critical. This is your blueprint for what marketing and sales are responsible for. A good model should be customer-centric and should model the customer’s journey.  There should be clear handoffs between marketing and sales, and ideally you can put SLAs in place to ensure consistency in response times. By doing this, you can clearly assess the health of your business, identify bottlenecks and respective fixes, and begin to predict your business outcomes.  There needs to be an ongoing focus on the model and an emphasis on iteration as learnings come in—but this is great way to make sure both teams are aligned. A focus on driving revenue first and foremost—and throughout the ENTIRE customer life-cycle. This lens must be used across all marketing programs—throughout the journey, from acquisition to retention. You should have a clear way to evaluate if a program makes sense for the business. Now a large brand initiative may be more complex to assess, but it is still important to understand. This starts with identifying goals and determining when you will measure impact, and when (what are the different points in time?).  There are times you go through this exercise and it becomes abundantly clear that a program does not make sense to continue. That learning is equally valuable. Here is a simple example: Your team may be considering a tradeshow and the goal is for acquisition. If the event costs $20K, the organizer tells you there will be 300 people attending. You estimate that the team can scan half the people, and you estimate that 30% will have the right demographics. At that rate, you are spending over $400 / lead.  That may be fine for your business—or not—but the point is you need to KNOW and then use that knowledge to evaluate the opportunity—and all opportunities with this lens. Being data-driven to measure and iterate to make the best decisions for the business. This one goes without saying—but you can’t manage what you can’t measure. The key here is being laser focused on the right things to measure for your business. It’s helpful to have a mix of performance metrics (answering how did you do?), diagnostic metrics (what’s working, how can we improve?), and lastly leading indicators (these should help you forecast how you will be doing). A key part of your planning process is to identify up-front what decisions you need to make to drive company profits, and then build your measurements to capture the right information. This means you should measure things not just because they are measurable—but rather because they will guide you towards the decisions you need to make to improve company profitability. 3 Key Benefits of Transformative Demand Generation When done well, transformative demand generation provides marketers the ability to do these 3 things: Align with sales and other key stakeholders within your organization. By establishing an agreed-upon model upfront, definitions and goals—both marketing and sales efforts are pointed in the same direction. Make the right investments for driving the desired business outcomes. It is critical to identify goals for programs (whether it’s a brand campaign or retention) and estimate upfront if your investment makes sense to achieve your desired outcome. Be forward looking—and forecast what will occur. You should be able to discuss not only what just happened, but also what WILL happen. This is one of the most critical thing marketers can do to build credibility. Today’s demand generation has fundamentally shifted. It should no longer be thought of as simple acquisition or the team that focuses at top of the funnel and only generates volume. Transformative demand generation has the power to drive revenue throughout the entire lifecycle of a buyer. Applying transformative demand generation principles will ensure your marketing organization has a framework to align with sales. It sets a new standard to employ tools to attribute, predict, plan, and benchmark campaign performance. You may start to see that half of your programs are not worth the investment—but instead of being disappointed, be glad that you know and are able to identify the gaps. Ideally, the team should be able to predict the future revenue impact of marketing dollars invested. Marketers—from executives down through the practitioner level—that work within this framework will be able to drive and show the impact across the entire buyers’ journey. These are the marketers that will succeed and, of course, have respect.

By: Johnny Cheng Posted: August 3, 2015 | Marketing Metrics I’m baaaack! It’s me, Johnny, with your next blog from the Marketo Institute! This time around, we’re going to take a look at conversion rate. Conversion rate is one of the most important marketing metrics. It’s a metric that lead generation marketers—from practitioners all the way up to CMOs—are measured on. And that’s because today marketing owns just as much of the pipeline as sales does, and conversion rate is a great indicator of pipeline health—starting from the marketing end of the funnel. Let’s start at the top of the funnel and look at conversion rate by acquisition channel. This will help answer the age-old question of channel performance. For every dollar, what percentage would you allocate to which acquisition channel? Easy! The one with the highest conversion rate, win rate, and velocity. What Is Conversion Rate? The conversion rate, in terms of demand generation, is the percent of “contacts” that successfully go from one stage of the funnel to the next. Conversion rate could identify with any activity such as clicking a call-to-action and going from a “name” to a “lead”, or reaching a certain lead score and going from a “marketing qualified lead” to a “sales qualified lead”. But the ultimate conversion rate every demand gen marketer is measured on is lead to opportunity. Converting an interested customer into a buyer is what marketing is all about. Now, let’s dive into the data! Channels That Convert The chart below represents average conversion rate (from lead to opportunity) by acquisition channel across all Marketo customers. The darker shade of green indicates where leads converted at a higher rate. The first column shows the acquisition channel where leads are sourced. The second column shows the average conversion rate percentage of each channel. The third column shows normalized conversion rate to highlight relative standings (e.g. Paid Marketing converts 2x Events). So what does this data tell us as marketers? Looking at the results, here’s what stood out to me: Referral: The power of “word of mouth”. Bah, I guess that old cliché saying was right. Referral is by far the highest acquisition channel for conversion rate (almost 4x the average.) In fact, some of the largest, fastest adoptions (Gmail, Dropbox, Zappos) can be credited directly to “word of mouth”. Takeaway? Build a great product, build a great experience, tell the world, ask your customers to tell the world (maybe even reward them)—and you’ll profit. Inbound: Content is king. As Bill Gates predicted in an article written in 1996: “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet”. Almost 20 years later, this couldn’t be more true, especially in the digital marketing era where choice of content is in the hands of the consumer. Imagine a popup ad (outbound) versus a funny infographic you chose to look at (inbound). Data clearly shows that people who choose to interact with your brand naturally convert higher (28% more than paid marketing). What are your doing to build content to support your customer’s journey? Not sure? Well, for one, it’s time to take a cue from me and start writing those awesome blogs! Prospecting: Mining for leads. This one is a bit surprising. Leads sourced from prospecting convert at a third of overall average. But this goes to show you how old-fashioned prospecting such as door-to-door or cold calling just doesn’t work well compared to other sources. It isn’t uncommon these days for me to hear about companies with 60-80% of their leads sourced from marketing. It’s much more efficient to have sales do what they do best: selling, not cold calling. Email and Nurture: Emails have the lowest conversion rate. Wait…what?! Don’t fire your email marketing team. This is showing conversion by acquisition channel, which means if your lead source came from emails and nurture, you’re doing something wrong, or you’re just desperate, or…you’re a spammer (which also explains the bad conversion rate). And as we’ll see in an upcoming Marketo Institute blog, emails and nurture both have amazing ROI for multi-touch attribution after you’ve acquired the lead. Now, It’s Your Turn Let’s use this analysis as a comparative exercise. Take a look at your conversion rate, broken down by acquisition channel (or first touch attribution, if you prefer.) How does it stack up against the Marketo average? Are there channels that are much higher or lower by comparison? Here’s what you could possibly see: “All my conversion rates are way higher than average”. Congratulations! You’re doing a great job! Take the day off. Well, unless it’s high because you have no lead scoring in place, in which case—get back to work. “My conversion rates are all over the place”. This could be due to several factors, first and foremost is the industry. When I sliced and diced the data by industry I saw some interesting things. I saw that the real estate industry’s highest conversion channel is events, which makes sense if you think about open houses being the main source of leads. Or that the non-profit industry’s highest channel is prospecting, which also makes sense if you think of all of the donation calling. Another reason your conversion rates could vary is resources and timeframe (urgency.) Certain channels are just more resource intensive (dollars or people) and can greatly differ in time-to-value. An example would be if you have a sizeable budget but need to meet an immediate spike in leads this quarter, you’re probably not going to rely on inbound content marketing. Another example would be if you have an incredibly strong partner ecosystem or reseller program, you’re going to focus more resources on those channels. “All my conversion rates are much lower than average”. Conversion rate alone isn’t a good indicator of marketing success. This is where you’ll need to look at other data sets. Align your conversion rate with win rate and velocity by channel. Hopefully you’ll start seeing some positive patterns in the data. If, for example, your conversion rate is low, but your win rate is phenomenal, it could just mean you have a very conservative marketing handoff or stringent lead scoring system, which is OK. Another scenario could be that your leads have extremely low velocity so they are sluggishly moving through the funnel, taking years to convert and realize value. But if all of the data indicates poor performance then you should take a look at your funnel. Be extra careful of this common pitfall: casting too wide of a net top-of-funnel, hoping to play a numbers game, but lacking focused programs, activities and content to drive the leads through the funnel. This is doubly dangerous because you end up wasting extra resources pulling in bad leads (ones that would never convert), while leaking out potentially good leads due to the lack of attention and touch points. Notice something in the data that stood out to you? Let me know in the comments below.

What is Purple Select? Purple Select is Marketo’s new customer advocate program made specifically to recognize our rock star customers for personal achievement, company success or just sharing the purple love. Now you have the opportunity to engage with Marketo based on your schedule, and be rewarded for it! By completing advocacy activities within the Purple Select Platform, you can showcase your experience and knowledge to gain positive exposure across the Marketing Nation and beyond. Your engagement will provide you with access to exclusive opportunities to grow your personal brand and propel your career in the in this fast-paced marketing network. Purple Select vs. Community...what's the difference? Purple Select is a program to enhance, showcase and grow your advocacy for Marketo, whereas the Community is a place to connect and engage with your peers and learn Marketo and digital marketing best practices. The Purple Select Group on the community will be a private space for Purple Select advocates to network exclusively with each other. Engage. Influence. Stand-out. Grow. Regardless of where you are in your journey, we have created a program that enables you to get involved from day one. Think you have what it takes to be on team purple? Let’s get started! Fill out this form to join! Please note, the blank form will re-load once you submit. If you have questions about your application, email customermarketing@marketo.com. Loading... To learn more about the new and enhanced features of our new Community view ​

Presentation on leveraging Demand Generation to build a great customer marketing program. Enjoy.

By: Johnny Cheng Posted: December 30, 2015 | Marketing Metrics Just like the saying goes to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, it’s important to keep tabs on what your peers are doing as a good benchmark of your own results. While your email campaigns may be hitting all of your marks, you may want to set your goals higher for 2016 based on how other companies in your space are doing. After posting my earlier blog around email performance, in which I revealed which types of email perform the best, I received a ton of requests to break it down by industry so marketers can compare the performance of their email campaigns to those of their peers. The numbers are in and the wait is over! Refresher on Email Types In case you’ve forgotten the three types of email campaigns, here’s a recap from the original blog post: Batch Emails: Also known as “batch and blast”. These types of emails don’t have any “intelligence” built in. Instead they just gather a list of contacts and send them the same email. A great example of this is your company newsletter—it goes to everyone, no matter what. Nurture Emails: This is a series of targeted emails based on personas (e.g. by industry, role, or use case). Nurture emails are primarily used to lead prospects through the sales funnel and warm up leads for a sales handoff. A nurture email offers something different to a person based on where they are in their buying journey. If they are just learning about you, your nurture email might offer a fun, light infographic versus a buyer who has engaged with you many times and consumed your content might get a webinar invitation to a live demo. Trigger Emails: These are personalized emails that are delivered based on prospect actions. Some range of email “intelligence” is built in based on behavior (think of it as a two-way conversation of listening and speaking). An example of a trigger email would be this: a prospect visits your events webpage and then, based on that activity, receives an email invitation to an event in their area. Email Performance by Industry Here’s the email performance for the three types of campaigns across all industries. As you can see below, batch campaigns performed significantly better in Healthcare and Life Sciences and Travel, Recreation, and Leisure. Nurture campaigns, on the other hand, performed the best in Energy, Healthcare and Life Sciences, and Transportation and Storage. Trigger campaigns prospered across several different industries, with the highestaverage click rate across all types of campaigns. This data represents average click rate for the 3 email types across all industries. Per the legend on the right, the green shades indicate the relative click rate performance (0.2% – 23.5%). Only industries with statistically significant averages are shown above. What We Learned This chart speaks for itself, but there are definitely some cool data points that stand out. Here’s my take on why certain email types do better or worse for certain industries. But I’d love to hear from readers of that specific industry (I’m looking at you…) to give their opinion. 1. In General–High Performance Trigger Emails I know I sound like a broken record, but despite its proven success at Marketo and beyond, there are still plenty of email marketers that don’t realize the potential of trigger emails. So I’m going to say this one last time (no promises)…personalized messages based on behavior are much better than batch and blast. In fact, they’re 3x better on average. They are an important customer touchpoint so spend that extra time and effort to create those triggers campaigns! 2. Energy–The Power of Nurtures The Energy vertical has the highest nurture email performance of any industry, at a whopping 12.4%! That’s as high as some trigger email metrics. It makes sense if you think about how an energy utility company communicates with their customers. Do you get regular emails around your energy usage, ways to save energy, and updates to policies? Those highly relevant targeted emails are nurture programs at work. Below you’ll see a similar example from a water department. 3. Travel–Brochures for Everybody! This one is really interesting. The Travel, Recreation, and Leisure industry has the highest batch rates, but the lowest nurture rates. Their batch programs perform almost 40x better than nurtures! This is most likely due to the nature of the travel industry. Interest in travel traditionally happens by time of year and less dependent on the individual. Nurturing a customer every month probably isn’t as effective as blasting your entire database with beach excursions right before summer or a trip to the mountains right before ski season. 4. Healthcare–You’re in Great Shape The most well rounded email performance award goes to Healthcare and Life Sciences. They excel in every type of email campaign. I think this is due to two main factors. First is how technologically advanced healthcare has become in the past few years. The overnight shift to the digital era definitely shows in their marketing efforts. Second is the wide range of use cases that each email type solves for this specific industry. Patient doctor office visits? Triggered emails! Ongoing preventative care tips and tricks? Nurture emails! Hospital announcements and newsletters? Batch emails! You can see that different types of emails serve different purposes, but I hope that digging into this data gave you some ideas on how you can use email more effectively for your organization. Notice something in the data that stood out to you? Have suggestions on what data to dive into next? Got follow up questions for me? Leave your comments below

I wanted to share a step-by-step on our solution to track multiple landing pages with a Person Attribute Field while using one generic form, without relying on URL UTM parameter. I hope this will be helpful to anyone looking for a solution. This solution was pieced together through some research from different sources and some trial and error. Feel free to share your thoughts or comments on it! Let's begin. [Problem] We have multiple landing pages linked to different campaigns and different assets to download. We wanted to use one generic form for all of those landing pages, and capture a Person Attribute Field to track the campaign, we didn't want long UTM parameters following our URLs or multiple forms so we built it into the page instead. [Solution] Populate a Hidden Field on your form through HTML code embedded into your Landing Page to capture campaign information. An alternate solution which doesn't use Person Attribute fields –  you can also use the "Add Constraint" option on the Fills Out Form trigger to select any form and the web pages you want to capture for the campaign, as shown below. If that's all you need, this simple solution would suffice. Step 1: Setting your Generic Form Field In your generic form, add a new Field and select the Person Attribute you're going to use to track the landing page. For our form, I used the "utm_campaign" Person Attribute because we're already tracking through that field. You can choose to use any Person Attribute that is appropriate for your Marketo instance to track campaigns. The Label doesn't matter, set Field Type to "Hidden", and set Form Pre-fill to "Disabled". Edit the Autofill, set Default Value as "utm tracking missing" (or anything similar of your choice, we'll get into why later) and Get Value from as "Use Default Value". If you don't set a default value Marketo defaults to "null" which will block changes to that field for this form. Once you're happy with your other fields, save your form. Step 2: Populating the Hidden Tracking Field through your Guided Landing Page HTML In your Design Studio, find the Landing Page Template you're using for your Landing Pages, and edit it. Note this step is only for Marketo Guided Landing Pages*. In your head section, place the following Marketo String with your meta tags (more information on Marketo Strings here). This will allow you to easily adjust the landing page campaign later as you create more pages. Find where your Marketo form div is located, and insert the script code following the mktoForm div as shown below. This script will change your hidden "utm_campaign" field to the value indicated on your landing page. "utmcampaign"** is your Person Attribute Field name, and ${hiddencampaign} points to the Marketo String you set up. Save your Landing Page Template and you are done with this step. *Note: You can also do this step with embedded forms on non-Marketo pages using the code for setting Hidden Fields on this page. Note that you'll skip setting the Marketo String Syntax and input your desired Person Attribute value directly into the script as Marketo Syntaxes cannot be used on non-Marketo pages. **Note: You'll notice that the HTML form.vals "utmcampaign" is different from the displayed Person Attribute "utm_campaign" in your form editor and Marketo record. Sometimes the actual SOAP API value used by the backend is different from the Friendly Display value in Marketo, I will include steps on how to check the SOAP API value in the appendix at the end of this tutorial. Step 3: Create your Landing Page Once your HTML is set in your Landing Page Template, create or edit your Landing Page using that template. Set your generic form from earlier, and in your right-hand elements bar you should see a section for Variables, where you'll see the "Hidden Campaign Field" you created using the mktoString meta tag. Type in the campaign name you want to track with there. I chose "Example Campaign" for the purpose of this tutorial. Once you're happy with the rest of your landing page go ahead and save it. Your landing page form will now populate the "utm_campaign" Person Attribute for the Person with "Example Campaign" once the form is submitted. Step 4: Set your Trigger Capture Campaign Now that all the client facing elements are ready, you can create your Trigger Smart Campaign to capture and update the Person record. In your Marketo Program, create a new Smart Campaign. I've named mine "Campaign Capture" for my own organization, but you can name it whatever you want. Description is up to you, or just leave it blank. Once it's created, go to the Campaign's Smart List and add the Trigger Filter "Fills Out Form", and indicate one or more forms that feed into this campaign. Now add a Filter for "utm_campaign" and set the value to the "Hidden Campaign Field" you indicated on your landing page, in this case "Example Campaign". Insert any other Filters you want to exclude or include People that come through the program, and make sure to adjust your Smart List Rule Logic accordingly. Once you're happy with it, move onto the Flow step and set your form fill success actions. For this tutorial, we've opted to "Change Program Status" to Responded and "Send Email" confirming form success. Now "Activate" your Trigger Smart Campaign and you're ready to go! Step 5: Error Reporting No process is without errors, so now we'll set up a simple error reporting Trigger Smart Campaign to notify you when your campaign capture process fails at the form step. You'll recall that in the form, we set the Default Value for our "utm_campaign" as "utm tracking missing". This is so that in the event the HTML code in your Landing Page fails to populate the field with a value, the form sets this as the "utm_campaign" Person Attribute. To catch this error and notify myself, I set up a new Default Program with our "Operational" channel settings and named it "Tracking Error Notification". Inside it I created Smart Campaign and and an Alert Email (information on creating Alert Emails using the specific Alert Token). In the Smart Campaign Smart List, insert a Trigger Filter for "Data Value Changes", Add Constraint "New Value" set it as the default error value, in this case "utm tracking missing" Now all that's left is to create a Flow Step to "Send Alert" (information on how here). Now you'll receive an email alert anytime the utm_campaign field fails to populate through the Landing Page form. *EDIT: A commenter recommended that the error message be cleared so that multiple exceptions can be flagged, which would be a great step. To do so, add a "Change Data Value" flow step for the Person Attribute, in this case "utm_campaign" and set the new value to "NULL", which will clear the "utm_campaign" field after the alert is sent. You're done! Now for all future Landing Pages with this generic Form, just remember to populate the "Hidden Campaign Field". I hope you've found this tutorial helpful. Cheers, Lawrence Mien Marketing Operations TigerText The Very Short Appendix So you've set your hidden Person Attribute field and indicated it in your HTML code, but the Person Attribute is still not populating correctly through the form. The issue may be that the Friendly Display Person Attribute field name is different from the SOAP API Person Attribute field for HTML. If you don't have Marketo Admin access, or don't feel like exporting the full field list, here's how you can check it: Publish or preview your Landing Page and go to it in your browser. Right-click at the bottom of the form (on Chrome) and hit Inspect. This will pull up the righthand side development panel to show you the HTML. Find the where the Marketo Form HTML is located and expand the mktoFormRow where the hidden field is. In the highlighted section below, you'll see that the SOAP API name of the Person Attribute is "utmcampaign" and not "utm_campaign". Simply drop this correct SOAP API Person Attribute name into your code back in Step 2.

Written by Sanjay, our CMO It’s been just over a month since I spent four days in Las Vegas for our annual Marketing Nation Summit, and I’m still excited about the time I had with more than 5,000 attendees and some of the best minds in the business. The chatter in the halls was infectious and often lasted well past my bedtime as attendees swapped ideas and traded war stories about what they were doing to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing digital world. I was fortunate to have an opportunity to offer my own ideas about the challenges to tomorrow’s marketers in the Day 2 keynote address, where several marketing icons joined me on stage. The program captured the theme of “Tomorrow’s Marketer.” The future of “what” As Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo (my employer), said during the Summit’s opening keynote, marketers now play on a bigger stage, so the expectations for both content and success are high. As Ken Wincko, the CMO of PR Newswire, noted during his Day 2 talk, credibility follows only when your customers trust you. That means marketing to moments that matter and delivering exceptional customer experiences take on increased importance. Consider the following: Trust equals credibility. Credibility is shaped by the accumulated expertise of every person in an organization who interacts with current or prospective customers. By the end of this decade, most boards will be asking their organizations to create metrics that measure how well they fare when it comes to customer trust. Great marketing is about serving, not selling. The question will be how well you know your customers’ wants and desires. Invest to foster customer advocacy. Great customer experiences will need to be contextual, empathetic and inclusive. In tomorrow’s marketing world, it’s vital to adopt a holistic approach that can engage your customers no matter the channel they choose. The future of “how” When Gary Briggs started his career in 1985, marketing had little idea of what worked and what didn’t. In 2016 we’re awash with data on our every campaign.Briggs, now the CMO at Facebook, rightly noted that consumers nowadays spend more time than ever on multiple devices, and while their interactions may be more fragmented than before, they are also more measurable than ever. A couple of points to keep in mind: We’re at the dawn of the era “of people-based marketing.” Use this measurable information to bolster your ability to tell a great story and get people to interact with your business. Marketers now have an opportunity to understand consumers at a level they never could previously. Take advantage of the ability to communicate with them like never before. The future of “who” If the chatter today is around decoding millennials, Wunderman CMO Jamie Gutfreund offered an astute reminder that the next generation is coming — Generation Z. This group, she noted, has become a proxy for all consumers. By 2020, it will make up 40 percent of the global population, and it is a picky bunch. (I should know — I have two of them at home right now!)Generation Z doesn’t like the way the world is going and has little confidence or trust in brands, governments or politicians. Consider this when marketing to these unconventional consumers: Trust is the new currency. It is a challenge to capture this generation’s attention, loyalty and confidence. They don’t only judge individual products but also take a broader look at the companies behind the brands. These digital natives, who are growing up with technology, are the ones who will decide whether or not to engage with you. And they will immediately head elsewhere if they believe you’re lying to them. This is the “optimization generation.” Gutfreund told us that Generation Z prefers to rely upon themselves and wants things to work well. If you want to cultivate a relationship with them, you’ll first need to understand their passions, values, issues and needs to communicate that you really get them and aren’t just interested in trying to sell a new widget or service. They have higher expectations, so disappoint them at your own risk. The future of “you” That leaves me with the fun stuff: the future of YOU in tomorrow’s world of marketing. What is the organization and talent profile required to succeed? You need special types of marketers to navigate this new world, and you can’t narrow your criteria to the same old experiences and personas. We’ve seen some of the most successful marketers come from backgrounds as diverse as zoo keeping and biology and teaching. These are not people who are classically trained four-P marketers, but these are people who had the right intrinsics for this new world. Marketers need to be intellectually curious and possess the grit and determination to power through whatever challenges you throw at them. Look instead for intrinsic traits to find the people with the right stuff. In a world where data drives everything that we do, marketers need to adapt and be analytical. Find these people and bring them into the profession — they will soar. At the same time, look for people who love customers and have a gift for storytelling. After all, this is marketing. You’ve heard me refer to them as the “Da Vincis” — the unique individuals who are talented across a variety of interconnected disciplines. They are in short supply, so don’t let the opportunity slip when you find one, and also strive to cultivate these traits within yourself. There’s no single marketing playbook anymore, and you and your people will need to be creative, analytical and strategic. Straitjackets and narrow specialties don’t work anymore. And finally, take no sh*t How should future Da Vincis behave in this marketing world of tomorrow? Very simply: Take no sh*t. Our Day 2 keynote ended with an inspiring performance by singer-songwriter Rachel Platten. Her inspirational hit “Fight Song” became popular after she had already been demonstrating grit, determination and passion…for 14 years. She faced a lot of naysayers and a lot of challenges, but kept at it until her talent and commitment paid off tenfold. It’s a life lesson to keep in mind. The fact is that tomorrow’s marketers will never get all the recognition, credit and popularity they deserve — at least not at first. So count on resistance from entrenched thinking — you’ll be in pretty good company. But remain determined and persistent, and you’ll overcome any and all obstacles. You will soar. This post originally appeared on Marketing Land on June 30, 2016.