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#KREWECHATS Episode 5: Workspaces and Lead Partitions

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So it seems like all the cool kids are using (or at least know about) workspaces and partitions, but there’s not a whole lot of information to help out those of us who are in dire need of seeing them in practice. And as we all know with Marketo, there are about a billion different ways to go about doing something and still get it done correctly. Today, we’re hoping to get into at least a little bit more use-case detail about both workspaces and partitions, when it’s best to use on or the other (or both), and hopefully get into more detailed Q&A.

Some questions we asked included:

What are workspaces and how do they differ from lead partitions?
What’s a use case (ie: why would you want a lead partition)?
Can anything be shared across partitions?
So let’s say a lead exists in two partitions and proceeds to fill out a form. Does their information get updated in both partitions?
Can partitions sync to multiple SFDC instances?
How do you deal with shared data?
How do companies standardize on naming, program statuses, etc considering the other division might be around the world operating as different businesses?

Important Reading:

Workspaces vs Lead Partitions: http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Understanding+Workspaces+and+Lead+Partitions
How to Create a Lead Partition: http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Create+a+Lead+Partition
Assign Lead Partitions to Workspaces: http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Assign+Lead+Partitions+to+Workspaces
Assigning Lead Partitions with Assignment Rules: http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Assigning+Lead+Partitions+with+Assignment+Rules

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Dory_Viscoglio

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As always, Dan pulls out a phenomenally detailed response to a complicated problem. You should join us on a krewechat sometime, Dan!

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Dan_Stevens_

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Great episode guys! @Rachel Egan, you had a question around alerts/notifications - specifically to notify you when Marketo uses the lead in one partition, but should be using the lead in another partition. We do something similar today.

As a result of our purposeful duplicates process (which we are soon enhancing to minimize the dupes created) - which we do today when Sales enters a contact record in CRM (we're on MS Dynamics). When that happens, that lead is assigned to our "Duplicate Contacts" partition (which is hidden from all 23 country workspaces) and then a duplicate lead is created/assigned to the appropriate country partition. The reason for this is so that contact (lead) can run through our lead lifecycle all over again and eventually be synced to CRM as a new MQL (and eventually converted/qualified into an opportunity, at which case, we merge the new contact into the existing contact).

The issue we see often - due to how Marketo determines which lead is the "active" lead - is around program membership. Let's say we have a lead in the Duplicates partition; and another in the US partition. When that known lead tries to register for an event, Marketo may prevent that lead from registering in the event program in the US workspace since the lead in the duplicates partition is considered the "active" lead. Even though all leads in the Duplicates partition are hidden from all workspaces, if there's any update to those leads in that partition (e.g., sales updates opportunity info in CRM, which then syncs back to that lead - since that lead is tied to the contact record in CRM), Marketo will still use the lead in the Duplicates partition as the one registering for the event. And therefore, will not become of member of the program or qualify for any of the smart campaigns in that program (e.g., send out confirmation email). When that happens, we've built a separate smart campaign to listen for when that happens. When it does, we're notified of this and then take the necessary action:

we make a minor change (add +1 to their lead score and then immediately subtract -1) to the country lead record to make it the "active" record in Marketo.
we then manually add that lead to the country events program.

Here's what the smart campaign looks like: