I recall in the past that someone told me its better to do merges in SFDC vs Marketo but I don't recall the reasoning. We are running into challenges now where SFDC sets the score with the winning record but then when it syncs to Marketo is sums (aka doubles) the score.  Trying to figure out a workaround as this is causing false MQLs to trigger to sales. Any insights? ... View more

Pam, thank you so much for posting this, I have been dealing with a database lag issue for about 6 months - seems to be twofold; 1) slow to right form submit field values to database up to 10 minutes lags impacting my smart campaign triggers/flows like you mention above and 2) slow to update Marketo UI.  Both issues are intermittent where I see a lag of 10 to 20 minutes. When I create a support ticket or #1 they tell me to add a wait step and this is expected behavior.  Regarding #2, here's an explanation from support, which I totally appreciate the time spent to explain however I don't feel it is acceptable to have intermittent lags that take up to 20 minutes or to have to add 10 minute wait steps for form data to write to database.   I've been using Marketo for over 10 years and never had this problem until recently. I think there must be a reason for this to happen recently and requires a fix.  We can't be the only folks experiencing this.   Explanation: There are two main processors we use in Marketo. One of them is faster to write to but is slower to search from, this is used for things like the Lead detail pages, and the other is slower to write to but is much faster to search from, this is used for things like our Smart Lists. Whenever activities are processed in Marketo, they are written in both places. First, they are written to the one that writes faster and then to the one that writes slower. In this way, they can only be written to one at a time. When the activity makes it to the person's activity log, the Flow Step shows as processed, i.e. when the box shows as Completed. Yet, the activity may still be writing to the second database which is why the activity is not always showing when we load the Campaign Results. However, once this data is indexed and written here, it is much faster to search for which is one way we optimize things like Smart Lists. For context, this is in no way meant to be a comprehensive breakdown on how the different processors work, it is only meant to serve as a high level overview, to help shed light on the perceived lag. Beyond this, we would not be able to discuss the infrastructure further as it is proprietary. But it is in this way, that we would see this behavior as expected. There is not a benchmark or expectation for how long it takes for the activity to write to this database. ... View more

Hi Justin, now that I have "digested" the above post I have 2 questions: 1) How is adding the formula field to the Bizible Person object different from using a combined Bizible Touchpoint and SFDC fields report? (not sure if you have enough context here, I can pull in the Lifecycle MQL date and the Bizible Touchpoints) 2) You mentioned:   Notice that is different than the question, "What channels are people likely to interact with immediately before they become MQL", which would be a different report and solution.  I would like to answer 3 questions about MQL: 1) What channels are effective at bringing in new people who are likely to reach the stage of MQLs? 2)  What channels are people likely to interact with immediately before they become MQL? 3) What are the top 5 channels or top 5 campaigns influencing MQL creation?  So we can do more of those. Would love to hear your approach.  Obviously the ultimate goal is to look at ROI attribution however we want to drill down at the MQL level as well. Thank you, Lorie   ... View more

Thank you Justin, this is very detailed and super helpful!!  Appreciate your feedback.  Have a great weekend. ... View more

We are having issues too, I was wondering why I'm suddenly seeing "unknown" for inferred fields.  Hoping they can fix sooner than later. ... View more

Thank you Amit ... View more

I would love to learn more about the custom field for tracking MQL sources, you mention it is a custom formula field.  Is there documentation on how to do this.  Currently we added the MQL lifecycle field to the Cohort funnel and not sure it is setup correctly. Lorie ... View more

Hi Sanford, I'm doing some troubleshooting where leads are being created from Marketo forms without company name and failing to sync to SFDC because they are missing Company info.  I'm looking into the form and Company is a progressive profiling field and should show up, it did when I tested it.  For some reason a very  small % of those form submits are missing Company (we label it church name).  You mention in this thread that some  can turn off java script... any other suggestions to try to help troubleshoot.  It appears to be intermittent.  Landing page here. ... View more