Level 2

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Tips for newbie implementing and managing Marketo for the first time

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Hi all,

Our company is in the process of implementing Marketo, which is our first ever venture into the marketing automation world. We are still in the middle of setting up our instance and going through onboarding.

I have some experience in being an end-user of automation platforms at other organisations, but I'm brand new into an admin role and all the things that need to be done in order to get Marketo up and running. And I'm feeling slightly nervous about the responsibility and ensuring its success!

So my question is - thinking back to when you or your company first got started with Marketo, do you have any tips or advice to share? Things you wish you'd known? Things I need to watch out for?

Is there any documentation available which lists some of the ongoing 'housekeeping' activities which I should be thinking about? This is definitely one area which I'm unsure about.

Thank you so much in advance!

Lisa

Marketo

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Jay_Jiang

Level 10

Design a folder structure in Marketing activities that make full use of tokens. Tokenise as much as you can and anything that might change (e.g. your cname, your registered office address, your company phone number, your favourite football team - you get the idea...)

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Amy_Goldfine

Level 9

Oooh yes, look up Universal Tokens, they're great.

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Amy GoldfineMarketo Champion & Adobe Community Advisor

Josh_Pickles

Level 5

Grace is totally right - having a strong set of naming conventions goes a long way to make sure your instance is kept tidy and searchable.

The other thing I would add to that is documentation. We run a process where every program within Marketo has a corresponding brief that outlines stakeholders, intent and goals, visualisations, description, and changelog for us to refer to.

It can be a pain to keep on top, but it has saved us a lot of time trying to work out what happened to a program 2 months/years ago when something goes wrong.

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Liam_Darmody

Level 2

Your documentation sounds great and like something that I would want to implement. Do you happen to have a template that you'd be able to share?

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Josh_Pickles

Level 5

I don't have a version that I am able to share, but I can certainly summarise some of sections.

Campaign Info

Summary, measurables etc

Significant Dates

Changes & updates

Campaign Detail

List details, suppression lists, dynamic content requirements etc

Meeting Notes

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Grace_Brebner3

Level 10

Oh there are so many things, and this is such a good question to be asking.

To keep it short, the number one thing I would say is naming conventions. Decide on your naming conventions and get them on LOCK - make sure they're followed consistently and don't be lax on it. There's tons of stuff in community about naming convention structure (defs including a few rants from me), but this would seriously be my number one.

That and be very very selective about custom fields. Don't go creating them left right and centre

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Liam_Darmody

Level 2

Great insight. Why is selectivity about custom fields so important in your opinion? I'll look elsewhere in the community as you suggested, but wanted to know your thoughts.

LD

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Pamela_Lynn1

Level 1

Because you can't delete fields in Marketo. You will need to file a support ticket.

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