Marketo Summit 2015 – Here we come!

March 25, 2015 By Josh Hill

Will you be at this year’s Marketo Summit in San Francisco?

I will. Stop by and say hello!

Which Sessions Should You Attend?

This year I plan to visit the Champion track where several of my friends and top Marketo experts will share their operational experience to solve thorny problems. I highly recommend this if you are more on the Marketing Ops side or you need to solve those key questions and need some guidance.

If you are more on the executive or strategic side, or just starting to align teams, try the Executives and Strategy track.

The University on April 13: I recommend this for all new users and new customers. If you are experienced, then it is likely not worth the time or cash that you could spend on Sessions or consultants.

Also, if you are up for Certification, the Summit is a great time to take the exam because all of this is at the top of mind and people are charged up to talk Marketo. I’ll be there, will you?

The Tale of Two Lifecycles: Simplify Your Funnel Analysis

My session with Revenue Engine Marketing’s Jeff Coveney is custom made for those interested in building a trackable Sales Funnel. We cover two key methods: Revenue Cycle Model (RCM) and non RCM, but they work together to deliver the conversion numbers you need for your Board meetings. It’s going to be at 2pm on April 15 so come by if you are building an RCM. [Updated with new time! Mar 29].

Networking and Accelerating Your Career at the Summit

Remember the Summit is just as much about learning as it is about networking. Speak to the people seated next to you because you never know whom you will work with next! For me, the Summits have been a game changer for my career. If you are trying to break into demand generation with Marketo skills, or learn more about Marketo to get that job, this is one of your big chances to meet everyone who cares about marketing automation.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to chat: hello [at] marketingrockstarguides.com.

See you there!

History of Marketing in One Giant Image

February 19, 2015 By Josh Hill

The History Of Marketing In One Giant Image

In the past five years, marketing has advanced tremendously with technology enabling ever more refined data and behavior analysis. What was once theory or a rule of thumb is now provable fact for your audience in ways that would make Mad Men drool.

But it is good to review how we got here. Marketing, it turns out, goes a long way back to the Egyptians who first branded their cattle in 2700 BC. It is important to review the history of your chosen profession because some of the great “innovations” of today are often re-hashed versions of what someone did 100 years ago. The great thing is that the direct marketing techniques of the 1960s-90s are today’s growth hacking tools with improvements in speed, data collection, and audience targeting.

Take a look at this infographic I helped create with the folks at RingLead and my friends at Perkuto. Perhaps it will spark an idea or two for you too!

A Final Lesson in Logic for Marketers

February 18, 2015 By Josh Hill

In the past few weeks, we covered basic logic lessons for marketers and the finer points of Marketo logic operators. Beyond this, there is a whole world of logic and languages out there. I have seen a lot of “marketing operations” roles that ask for database programming skills. These are typically at very large firms with very large databases. The more you know about these database languages, the more valuable you can become.

Other topic areas and systems to consider to deepen your skill set include:

SQL (structured query language)
NoSQL
“Big Data”
Hadoop
MS Access Operators
Boolean Logic
SFDC Apex Code
Pentaho/Revenue Cycle Explorer
Tableau

If you prefer to stay more of a marketer than a programmer or business intelligence analyst, then just take a few moments to become familiar with the above topics. Know where and when to call in an expert, and you will be sure to become a rockstar.

Using Marketo Trigger Logic

February 10, 2015 By Josh Hill

Logic in Marketo is important for managing things like segmentation, but also triggered campaigns.

All orange triggers are considered to have an OR between them. This is an important and very powerful feature. If you have any Triggered criteria, you can only use ALL or ANY as options, but these operators only apply to the green filters. Multiple Triggers use the OR operator between them, such that any trigger will fire the campaign if the Lead matches the remaining Green filter criteria.

How would that work in Marketo though?

Single Trigger

In this case, if a lead matches this trigger, the flow will continue.

Two Triggers:

If either filter matches, the lead will qualify for the flow. In this case, the lead must Visit a Web Page AND be a Member of the Smart List, OR Change Progression Status AND be a Member of the Smart List.

Multiple Triggers and Filters

The lead must match any of the triggers, but also all of the green filters. So you could understand this one better by taking each orange trigger plus the green filter logic separate from other orange triggers.

Thus, the lead must match either of the Triggers plus both green filters to continue. Changing this to ANY, would mean that as long as either Trigger matched AND either green filter matched, the lead could continue.

See more details in my Marketo reference guide:

Logic Pitfalls in Marketing Automation

February 4, 2015 By Josh Hill

One of the biggest mistakes I see is with the Job Title field. Most firms allow a free text entry in Title because Title is a personal value that can vary widely.

Occasionally, a firm will use a Role field with fixed picklist values to help segment the database more clearly. The Role is filled in by the Lead, but sometimes is backfilled based on human work or automation. Of course, if a Lead lies on either Title or Role, then there isn’t much filtering can do here.

The mistake marketers make is with the operator “CONTAINS.” Inexperienced marketing automation users (and those without Boolean experience) will simply say:

Title IS “Vice President, Sr. VP, SVP Operations”

OR

Title CONTAINS “vice president, intern, VP, CIO” etc…

What happens when we do this?

Results from CONTAINS

Vice President

Sr. Vice President

SVP

SVP Operations

SVP Sales

Intern

Sr. VP International

Sr. Mgr, International

International Sales Mgr

Results from IS

Vice President

Sr. VP

SVP Operations

The solution is to be more specific with your operators and use boolean logic with several filters to pinpoint the proper group of people.

What you thought was a simple IS/CONTAINS problem, is easily solved with more filters, properly managed. Not that we have to exclude Negative Titles List.

You can do the same with Intern* vs. international and CFO or C-level. I will often use a series of smart lists in the same way:

(Smart List 1 = Exact Match “High Value Titles”

OR

Smart List 2 = Contains “High Value Titles”)

AND

Smart List 3 NOT IN Exact Match of “Low Value Titles”

That Negative List covers the wrong people, thus you can exclude them in case they get into your High Value List:

Right now, Marketo does not allow Regex or wildcards to do something like “Intern*” or include “intern*” but not “intern”.

Stay tuned for next week’s logic lesson…but you’ll have to sign up for email updates!

Disclosure: Perkuto provided access to a Marketo instance for this post.