Channel / Program Status Best Practices - Part 2

Brian_Law_MKTO
Marketo Employee
Marketo Employee

Here is a summary of recommended statuses and steps for the most common channels.

I recommend numbering your statuses and adding “Success” to the success status. It will make it clearer and easier for everyone to understand which status is success.

Channel

Program Type

Statuses

Step

Email Send

Email

1 Member

2 Engaged - Success

10

20

List Import

Default

1 Member

2 Do Not Use (Hide step)

10

20

Online Advertising

Default

1 Member

2 Engaged - Success

10

20

Operational

Default

1 Member

2 Do Not Use (Hide step)

10

20

Nurture

Engagement

1 Member

2 Engaged - Success

10

20

Seminar

Event

1 Member

2 Registered

3 No Show

4 Attended - Success

10

20

30

30

Tradeshow

Event

1 Member

2 Visited Booth

3 Engaged - Success

10

20

20

Web

Default

1 Member

2 Engaged - Success

10

20

Webinar

Event

1 Member

2 Registered

3 No Show

4 Attended – Success

5 Attended On-Demand - Success

10

20

30

30

40

The step in a channel is to prevent you from accidentally allowing a record to go backwards in status. If you make a mistake and need to set a record to a previous step this can be a problem. If you never make any mistakes then let the steps be progressive. If you are prone to making mistakes then consider making many of the steps the same like my example above. Remember if you remove a record from a program to fix the membership status you will reset the membership date.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Marketo will automatically set a record to the first program status when a record fills out a Marketo form on a Marketo landing page or when a record is imported directly into a program. If you have multiple program statuses you have to remember to set success for that program. If you are concerned that your team will forget to set program status I recommend only having only one program status for your channel.

Example:

Channel

Program Type

Statuses

Step

Online Advertising or Web

Default

1 Engaged – Success

10

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16 Comments
Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks for your response, Brian!

I'm still struggling, however, because we are relying on SFDC for reporting and want to use the "Member Status Update Date" for the most recent download. I was contemplating on using more statuses, but that seems redundant. Thoughts?

Brian_Law_MKTO
Marketo Employee

Hi, one option is add more program statuses. Each time a record downloads the content the record will need to flow through a smart campaign to change the status to the next one. Another option is to use a smart campaign to remove the record from the campaign. wait and then re-add the record.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the suggestions! We've contemplated on whether or not to add more statuses, but with the option to use a smart campaign to remove the record from the campaign, wait and then re-add -- would that reset the member first associated date in an SFDC campaign call down report?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Brian Law In the instance that this has exactly happened and you have these misdated program membership updates made currently but representing old and now irrelevant activities per lead, what are steps you can take to de-confound its effect on reporting?

Archiving and excluding from reporting was my first solution, but isn't a viable one because we use the historical data.

Malik_Zafar2
Level 4

What's the purpose of hiding a field as shown in the List Import channel?

micheleprather
Level 1

This is so helpful!! thank you! Would love to know if anyone also created a "Social" channel?