Marketers are now expected to test web pages as a matter of course. Testing pages, however, often requires special configuration of websites to properly handle rotation and tracking of options. One of the reasons you selected Marketo is the system natively handles landing page testing using a feature called Testing Group.

AB testing is native to the landing page system. You can create Test Groups in Design Studio or in a Program.

What I talk about when I talk about AB testing

In case you are unfamiliar with AB testing, here’s an overview. Feel free to skip this section and move on to the juicy core of getting it done in Marketo.

While I hear much talk about performing AB testing by marketers, not as many of us are doing these tests back at the office. Let’s change that right now, with this chapter. First, let’s review what AB testing is.

AB Testing of Landing Pages:

1. The comparison of two or more pages that are randomly shown to visitors with the goal of discovering which page has more conversions (form fill outs or purchases).
2. The system designed to build, attract, and report on emails and pages.

In a complete testing system, you can AB test the email, the page, and the thank you page. Some marketers recommend an additional offer on the final page. The best follow up offers tend to be a demo or additional content sign ups, but could also be upsells for other products.

If you need further ideas, I recommend visiting KISSmetrics or WhichTestWon.com.

Key Components to Setting Up a Test

Let’s get started!

• Programs must have local assets to have a Test Group.
• Page needs to be unapproved to be listed as an option to add to the Test Group
• Clone design studio pages to a Program first, then add to Test Group.
• Watch Your SEO!
• Know what you plan to test before you begin.
• Keep a log or a local report that reports on just these pages.

Step 1: Create a Page

Remember to set the URL slug properly so your Test Group URL makes sense for SEO.

Step 2: Place an Offer on the Page

I trust you can come up with page copy.

Step 3: Convert the Page to a Test Group

Right click on the page icon, choose Convert to Test Group. This step also creates the Test Group URL based on the original URL, so make sure you got this part right in Step 1.

Step 4: Clone Page A to Create Page B

Right click and press “Clone.” This is what you get:

Step 5: Modify Page B

Modify the page in whatever way makes sense for your test. Remember – only change one thing about this page to have a true AB test.

Step 6: Add Page B to Test Group

You need to do this from the Test Group: click on Edit Test Group Members and this dialog appears. If nothing appears here, try unapproving the B page.

Step 7: Approve the Pages in the Test Group

Step 8: Approve the Test Group

The Test Group URL will not work until you approve the entire Test Group as a separate option. The individual page URLs will be active, if you happen to know their URLs.

Step 9: Test the Test Group URL

Now copy the URL listed on the Test Group level to use in emails or on other pages. Remember to test this in a couple of browsers to see how it functions and ensure it displays the intended page variations.

Step 10: Declare a Winner and Create Test Page C

Depending on your setup, it make take several days to a couple of months to have enough visits to statistically validate a winner. Marketo only displays Visits and Conversions (Form Fill Outs), so you will have to use Excel or a rule of thumb to determine this. I would allow at least two weeks before deciding a winner, assuming you have enough web traffic.

More from the Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketo

Stay tuned – the Marketo Guide is going to be available soon!

There are more details available in the full chapter below:

As an administrator of Marketo, or any marketing automation system, you have power to do many things. The wise use this power carefully, delegating some of it to trusted marketers.

Security and Users of Marketing Automation

Administrators must decide on the Roles and Users to be allowed access. If you have ever administered a CRM or another critical system, you should treat Marketo the same. Marketo contains confidential data on your customers and prospects, including their email addresses – a valuable commodity on the black market. I recommend the following roles and users. The table is particular to Marketo, but the idea is applicable to other systems as well.

Be sure to keep a list of current and past users so you know the internal staff and contractors who have or had access. When someone leaves your firm, you should deactivate their account immediately. In Marketo, deactivating a user means deleting the user, however, you can simply remove their Roles as well.

Sometimes I recommend adding a “Null” Role that has no permissions. If you move a user to this Role, then you can still see their login and change history. If you remove the user, their creation history is lost and you will no longer know who edited various assets.

Field Security

To protect your data, I recommend using field blocking to ensure existing data is not overwritten inadvertently. Marketo permits this field level security on any field. Simply go to Admin > Field Management, then choose the field you want to secure. It is a one at a time feature, so it can take a while if you have a lot of fields to secure.

Integration with CRM/Salesforce

The Administrator is also responsible for connecting the marketing automation system to the CRM. Often this is Salesforce. Be sure to keep track of the sync’s health on both sides of the CRM-MA system. Marketo provides Notifications to warn of issues related to data and the sync. Maintaining a good sync also means representing the system during project meetings. If another group makes a CRM change, it could impact the sync and data flow.

Administering Marketo

If you are a Marketo admin, or studying for the Marketo Certified Expert exam, you can use this helpful guide. This chapter is a part of the Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketo. It’s now free for you to use and share. It’s licensed under the Creative Commons 4.0 License, so remember to Share and give me proper attribution.

There’s more to running a marketing automation system than I’ve described here. Be sure to download the Administering Marketo guide. Enjoy!

When people begin using Marketo, they very often ignore the Analytics section for awhile. This makes sense because there isn’t much data there the first month or two. But then the Director or the CMO comes by and asks, “How are our leads doing this month?” So what do you do when the reporting system hasn’t been setup yet?

Here are my best tips on how to get it done.

Naming Reports Well

Nurture Leads 1

Capterra

PDF Downloads May 2013

Web leads by Webinar Campaign – US – Past 6 Months

Email Performance by Webinars – Global – Past 90 days

Fast Ways to Get at Marketo Data

There are several ways to find data fast for the inevitable spot request.

Table of Report Features

I noticed Marketo didn’t have a nice table describing the options on each report. Here is one I created to make selecting a report faster:

Constraining Reports to Achieve the Cross Tab

A lot of new users ask about creating cross-tabs or pivot tables. The Short Answer is you don’t without RCA or Excel.

A better answer is to use Drill Down, except that this only works in “Leads by” reports

• Lead Performance
• Leads by Month
• Leads by Revenue Stage
• Leads by Source

When you create a Lead Report and then select a row to Drill Down on, you are asking Marketo to create a new Report with a specific Time Range and then Smart List. A new report is created and you can then save it.

It follows that you can use Smart Lists on the reports that offer this option to achieve the same result as Drill Down. Smart Lists constrain and cross tab the report without using a pivot table.

You can also achieve a similar result with Custom Columns. The column is simply based on a Smart List that previously exists outside of the report. It says “Of the leads who qualified for this report, how many of them are also in this smart list?”

First, go to the Setup tab of your Lead Report.

Wow. That’s powerful.

A Word About Program Costs, Tags, and Revenue Cycle Analytics

If you aren’t filling in your Program Costs or using Program Tags, then you might be setting yourself up for a big RCA failure. Even if you don’t have RCA now, you could in the future. If you aren’t using Program Costs now, then when you turn on RCA, a lot of the tools will tell you nothing useful until you start putting in those Program Costs.

Program Tags are setup in Admin > Channels. These aren’t required, but you can make use of them to segment your Programs by Region, Marketer, etc. Worth a look.

MRG is now on Facebook – follow me for more tips and special offers.

The Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Analytics Chapter

Need more tips? This is now free for everyone:

Presentation to the Netherlands Marketo User Group (Jan 21, 2014):