Planning and organizing events is a major undertaking and typically a large part of your marketing spend. By leveraging marketing operations and running Marketo event programs only helps ensure success and data on ROI. If you are planning a virtual or recurring event, this post can help, too. But you might also want to read, How to Setup Recurring Webinars in Marketo. Here You should also check out Etumos’ How to Build Your Next Marketo Event Template. It does a great job of deconstructing each aspect of an Event program and ensures the program is scalable.

To me, an Event serves two major purposes:

1. Bring like-minded people together to network.
2. Bring your company’s story and people to life.

The old saying goes that “people buy from people they like and know.” What better way to establish “liking” by running an in-person event, shaking hands, and handing out some food or small gifts? What better opportunity do you have for salespeople to have a fairly “captive” audience of several companies at once, rather than one by one?

The caveat is that events like this are relatively expensive compared to other Channels and Offers you have in your arsenal. Thus, ROI is often critical to continuing the program, yet often hard to ascertain. As a marketer, you have an excellent tool with Marketo to improve ROI tracking on events (This was one of my early drivers to buy Marketo for event tracking!). As a marketer, you also have a responsibility to spend that money on prospects that will have the greatest impact on Sales. Let’s be real: students and junior staff are often not targets for these events.

Using Marketo, we can manage a great deal of this responsibility in an automated fashion while collecting the right data to prove our event works (or doesn’t). Before we get too far into the details, let’s define our event types.

Roadshow Events

I define these as Company Owned events that are an Offer to see our staff and like-minded industry people in a private setting. Often these are at a restaurant, hotel, or private venue with a company expert, salesperson, and sometimes an industry expert. Industry experts or other panel members can be paid an appearance fee. I often find non-commercial organizations are happy to either host or provide their experts at no cost. Remember, everyone likes publicity especially if you do the work for them.

The format can range from

• Company Expert speech.
• Third party expert interview of Company Expert.
• Small Panel with local industry group or a Consultant.
• Customer Interview of some type.

I find many firms get into trouble by making the Roadshow too much about them, or too much Sales and not enough insight. The buyers who are willing to trade 2-3 hours are usually in a later stage, higher level staff. You may not get the SVP or C-level, but you will get their direct subordinates.

If you really want the top executives, try inviting that person to speak at the event!

Tradeshows

These are third-party owned platforms that are a Channel and sometimes also an Offer. The company pays for space and a speaking slot and we get a wider reach, but less 1-1 time. Many firms will work to generate secondary Lunches (Roadshows) around the Tradeshow or invite key people to VIP Meetings.

It’s important to distinguish between Roadshows, Tradeshows, and any ancillary minor events for tracking purposes, creating “Event in a Box” and creating Program Templates in Marketo. Each event type may be run differently and paying for a Booth vs. paying for a hotel meeting room are different kinds of activities to track separately.

Checklist of Marketo Items to Run an Event

Marketo Docs site contains a fairly good overview of some of the Program components you may use with Marketo. That’s only a start because each event you run will be different than the ones I run. To get a sense of the principles and Statuses involved, here is how I think of these Programs.

Here is the basic workflow for any event requiring Registration.

Building this out in Marketo can be done in a Program Template to clone for each event. Marketo has pre-built Program Templates you can Import. Be careful because those are useful for understanding, but not always right for your systems.

Roadshow Events Program Channel Design

Roadshows will follow the above workflow. Roadshow Program Channels can cover a variety of event types like:

• Dinners
• Lunch and Learns
• Breakfasts
• Tradeshow Special Registration Events

You will need some components and Program Statuses. I suggest learning how to manage Program Channels and Statuses first.

Required components

• Form
• Page
• Invitation
• Confirmation
• Reminder
• Statuses and Confirmation Flow
• Post Event Assets and Flows

This is a typical setup, however, each event team has slightly different needs. You may want to tokenize all the flows and emails and pages, or you may not. There are a lot of advanced considerations to make this a true “event in a box” template. I suggest Etumos’ Edward Unthank’s tokenization posts for help.

If you have worked with basic autoresponder campaigns for whitepapers, the principles here are exactly the same, however, the information you convey will be different. But the Program Statuses become MUCH more important to a successful event since you need to monitor Registrations and Attendees very closely.

 

 

 

 

Standard Program Statuses and Campaign Setup

Each campaign flow in the Template will have a setup similar to the outline here. Sometimes it is a good idea to preschedule Reminders and Thank Yous, but be careful! I’ve seen a lot of missends when using auto-reminders.

Basic Smart Campaign Triggers for Registration

The single critical step is to get the Registration campaign flow working. In this example, we trigger off the Form+Page combination while excluding Competitors from receiving a Confirmation. It is very important to Change Program Status to Registered as well as send a follow-up email with an ICS Calendar button.

If you prefer to Waitlist people and cherry pick attendees, you can do so. Just make sure your copy and thank you pages are clear that the person should expect a final confirmation. And use the Status of “Waitlisted”. You will have to manually adjust each Waitlisted person to “Registered-Confirmed”.

Tradeshow Program Templates

Tradeshows aren’t much different in most cases. However, the use of Program Statuses will be different to ensure clearer attribution. Remember that Tradeshow attendees will be Scanned at Booth, Get a Demo, or Ask for Follow Up. You may have separate Dinners and VIP meetings to be managed in a separate Program. And you may also get pre and post-showlists.

Here is just one example of how to handle Tradeshow attribution.

Other Neat Tips and Tricks for Running Amazing Events

Refer a Friend and Get a Prize – most referrals wins.

I’m not the biggest fan of this tip, yet it’s pretty cool idea and could be repurposed in various ways. To increase the number of Registrants, offer early Registrants an Offer Code/URL that they can share with their colleagues. If the Colleagues registers, the Original Referrer gets credit for the Registration. If the Registrant and the Colleagues all Attend the Event, the person with the highest number of Referred Attendees wins a prize.

The execution involves a bit of javascript and two fields: Registrant Code and Referral Code.

On the Thank You Page, the unique URL is generated for the Registrant, who can then copy/paste it. If you are very slick, you could send the Confirmation email with that URL as well (be sure to turn off Marketo Tracking though!).

The challenge is in downloading and matching up the Referrer and those who signed up later with the Code. A bit of vlookup can help with that.

My personal experience with this is mixed. I’m not a big fan of bribing people to show up; I’d rather rely on the content to be the draw.

Charge a Fee to Increase Attendance Rates

This is my Number 1 tip that I know works: charge a small fee to register for the event. This works very well with higher class events with premium speakers that can offer a future insight into an industry. The fee can be about $35-75. Any more than that and you are essentially running a tradeshow. (Could be a great way to test early tradeshow concepts!).

In Marketo, you will need to choose a couple of paths to operationalize this.

Option 1: pass Lead to EventBrite and waitlist

In this option, we allow the person to Register and change their status to Waitlisted – Not Paid. Then the Form Redirect goes to an EventBrite page (or similar service). The lead then pays using a credit card.

Each day you will download the paid list from EventBrite and then manually go to the Program > Members and change Status to Registered – Paid for each person you accept.

One other reason to collect payment is that you will self-fund expansion of your event programs. Positive ROI keeps these alive.

Option 2: integrate with Payment Service or Event Tool.

In this option, you integrate with a payment tool or event service to ensure a seamless experience for the lead and automatically move them from Waitlisted – Not Paid to Registered – Paid.

For either option, you should have several Statuses such as:

Program Status	Definition
Invited	Sent an invitation
Waitlisted – Not Paid	Pending payment
Waitlisted – Error	Issue with payment or other
Registered – Paid	Paid and confirmed
Registered – Guest	Unpaid guest
Attended	Showed up
No Show	Did not show

Waitlisting

As you saw above, you can use Program Statuses to manage the RSVP process. At many events, we want to block Competitors or certain people from showing up. Perhaps some events are Customer Only and we need to ensure a prospect isn’t slipped in. All you need to do is adjust your Registration trigger to Change Status to Waitlisted.

You can still provide a Thank you Page and Confirmation email where you explain their RSVP is pending review and they will receive a confirmation with the date, time, and location information. Be sure to set up a daily Scheduled Smart List to the Event Manager to review the requestors.

At Show Automatic Emails or SMS

While mostly used at large Tradeshows, you can also use triggered emails and SMS to welcome guests to the event once they Attend. There are a few ways to manage this (Marketo Login required).

Essentially, you decide on a set of messages to send each day or in a 2-3 hour span to drive traffic or engagement at a large event.

Keep in mind that the setup time involved is high. Be sure you want this experience and have enough events or Leads opted in to make this worthwhile.

Progressive Forms

I never see this enough – use Progressive Profiling on event forms. Most of the time you are inviting people from the existing database. Use this opportunity to ask one more question to improve targeting and Registration rates.

Sales Agent Credit or Source Credit

Firms will sset upcompetitions between Salespeople for most Registrations. You can also do this with a nice temp field and a URL parameter that uses a hidden field.

go.company.com/page.html?sales-agent=joe283

temp field: salescredit

Add this as a hidden field to your Registration Form.

This works well for tracking third party partners who may want to know how well they did, or how much you need to pay them per lead.

Capping Registrations

A longstanding request of marketers is to cap registrations and automatically stop accepting new registrants. Marketo itself can’t do this natively, however, there are some tricks people have shared over the years:

• Webhook
• Zapier+Webhook
• Waitlisting (simplest, but you need to pay attention)
• Third Party Event Platform

Additional Resources:

• How to Build Your Next Marketo Event Template
• Understanding Tags
• iPad Adapter
• Event tools on Launchpoint
• Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Running Events

Get Planning!

Need help getting your next event off the ground in Marketo? Etumos can help.

From time to time, Marketo and SFDC do not always agree on the sync of particular records. For many systems, this is a minor irritation that is resolved automatically. However, you will see Notifications in the upper right corner and you may be curious about these errors. And for high volume instances or complex SFDC setups, these errors can build up over time, creating data issues.

I have compiled a list of error codes you may see along with suggested courses of action. Each SFDC-Marketo instance is a bit different, so not every suggestion will work and you will need to be an SFDC Admin or discuss some of these with your SFDC Admin.

These are all SFDC errors that block Marketo from fully syncing the data. In many cases, Marketo will try later and the data will sync. But you should investigate the Notifications and list of leads so you can fix the problems to reduce data issues.

Using Notifications in Marketo

Most users should be able to see the Notifications Log in the upper right corner. Here’s how to use it:

1. Click on the button.
2. Sort by CRM Sync
3. Review past 7 days or so of errors. Errors before that are likely either to be repeated recently or they resolved themselves.
4. Note issue in a log.
5. Click on smart list “more”.
6. Look at a few of the lead’s Activity Logs.
7. Add a special SFDC View to your smart list: [FIELDS]

Error: Locked Row

This indicates someone else is editing this record. Marketo will resolve normally. Essentially, SFDC blocks all other users from editing a record when someone clicks “Edit” on the record. Since Marketo syncs every 5 minutes, this error resolves by itself.

However, there could be times when this repeats for the same records. If so, you will want to investigate further because the data fields will gradually be out of sync.

Error: Field Validation

In SFDC, you can set a field to have Validation Rules. This means that SFDC will only accept certain values or formats for that field. When Marketo attempts to send data values that do not conform to SFDC’s expectations, SFDC will throw an error and tell Marketo to stop. For any of these SFDC Sync Errors, you can view more information by going to the Lead’s Activity Log:

You can also see some of this data in a smart campaign by going to Smart Campaign > Results and using similar filters.

In my experience, Marketo does push the sync of all other fields, just not the field in question. It’s important to investigate the source of the bad value on Marketo’s end to fix it. Possible sources include:

• Form data
• Bad list imports
• Data management flow that’s out of date

Regardless of the Source of the error, you want to pinpoint it, stop it, and correct it. This may mean manually editing a few records.

Another consideration is whether this Validation Rule is still important. You could just turn it off.

Error: Apex CPU Limit

Something caused SFDC to use up Apex cycles (too many Apex triggers) and it can’t process the incoming data. This can happen for many reasons, but often because you sent SFDC too many records and SFDC has too many triggers to process.

You will tend to see this when your SFDC Org is older or very complex.

Notice: Change in SFDC Picklist Values

If you’ve been using Marketo for awhile, you probably received an email (as an Admin) warning you that an SFDC field has a new Picklist and you should be careful to fix any workflows or Marketo Forms to  be in compliance.

What the notice doesn’t explain is that, barring Validation Rules, Marketo can accept ANY value into that field and sync it to SFDC. While you won’t see that new value as a picklist option within SFDC, it will appear as the Lead’s current value.

Marketo’s picklist options when you are in a Smart List or flow will only show the values both systems have in common. Thus, it’s a good idea to maintain a separate list of accepted values and stay in touch with the CRM/SOPS team on data changes.

The ideal steps to fix this are to:

• Know the changes.
• Map the Old Values to a New Value in a sheet.
• Update the Marketo Forms to only display New Values.
• Run a data correction flow or upload to overwrite (re-map) the Old Values to New Values.

It is important to coordinate this kind of change because it is easy for such values to become out of sync across systems and cause segmentation problems or Lead Routing errors.

These are the most common Sync errors I see on a daily basis, but there are more and if you are the Marketo Admin, you should establish a regular process to log these errors and get them fixed.

In the last few weeks, a few of you have approached me about learning Marketo to become Certified.

In the past 7 years, I have helped many of you learn Marketo and even some of you become Certified whether through the blog, live sessions, or working together. Marketo Certification is a great badge of honor to have, demonstrating your expertise and extended use of Marketo to do more than just send a lot of email.

But do you really need Marketo Certification to be in B2B demand generation?

Before you say “Yes,” consider a few questions:

• What is your goal as a marketing professional?
• Do you want to become a marketing operations professional?
• Would you like to become a marketing automation/operations consultant or expert?
• Do you want to become a brand or advertising expert?
• Do you enjoy running events and creating experiences for people?
• Do you like taking tests?
• Do you enjoy high volume data analysis?
• Do you like using tools like Google Analytics and advertising systems?
• Do you like doing keyword and SEO analysis?

The list can go on. Your answers will help you determine what you should do next.

In my experience, not everyone needs to become a Marketo Certified Expert because not everyone is going to become (or want to become) a Marketo Admin. What many people need, though, is to learn Marketo to do their job effectively day-to-day. If you learn Marketo well enough to pass the MCE, then that’s gravy.

For example, how many marketers are SFDC Certified? How many salespeople are planning to get SFDC Admin certification? Email certified? MS Office certified?

Right. You know the tool well enough to do your job effectively. And if not, you ask people for help…or even take an online course to fulfill a specific need. When you aren’t sure how to do a formula in MS Excel, you Google the question. You can do the same with Marketo.

Marketo (and other Marketing Automation Platforms) are such a part of the landscape now that it is common to have had some work experience with one of the tools.

Now, I do see many job descriptions for demand generation and campaign managers that list “Marketo Certified” as a preferred requirement, or even a requirement. The hiring manager does this in the hope that a Certified person will require less training and ramp up time to be effective in the job. I get it, I do. But I’d urge both marketers and hiring managers to consider the day-to-day role and if knowing the ins and outs of the Admin panel is necessary to be a successful event marketer.

Yes, know Marketo. Know it well enough to do your job faster.

Marketo Certification Tests

This past Spring, Marketo modified the testing options and the test itself to be more of a “practical” that tests your application of Marketo the tool to real Marketing Operations and Campaign scenarios. Instead of simple feature memorization, the questions tried to present scenarios like

• Someone asks you to help them setup a Webinar: what do you do?
• Data isn’t flowing over here, where should you look?
• How do you gate a Whitepaper?

After passing the Core test, you can then pass shorter specialization tests covering key topics for Marketing Operations and Marketo Admin level skills. The fact that Marketo went this route shows that not everyone needs to know the entirety of Marketo’s capabilities to be a successful Marketo user.

In the past, I’ve said most people need six to 12 months of daily Marketo use to be able to take the MCE with minimal study and pass. Marketo says about 1 year or 1000 hours of use is a good bar for preparing for the Exam. The new exam still covers key setup and Admin areas as well as basic Design Studio questions, so you may need to study the Docs.

Remember, the entire test is based on the Official Documentation. Memorization will help, but connecting the dots in your head through real life pointing and clicking is going to make this Exam much, much easier.

Phases of Learning Marketo and Marketing Operations

Quite a few readers have asked about becoming Marketo Certified through using my Marketo Guide, videos, or personal training. I’ve posted some thoughts on training in the past. Certification doesn’t happen overnight or in two days of live training. It does happen over time through diligent use, good questions, and reading what others have discussed on the Forums. So, if you are fairly new to Marketo and think, “I need to get Certified or no one will hire me!” Take a deep breath and plan out your path to Marketo Greatness.

1. Learn more about Marketo and how it thinks of the Lead Lifecycle.
2. Read some of the introduction docs.
3. Consider an Introduction Course focused on tasks Marketers do with Marketo.
4. When you get stuck, pose the question to the Nation Search Bar.
5. No clear answers? Ask the Marketo Nation.
6. Search Google and YouTube for Marketo specific questions.
7. Do the work. (6 to 12 months).
8. Prepare for the Exam.

Now, if you don’t have access to Marketo today, you may think learning Marketo is a bit harder. It all depends on how you learn. There’s also a catch with the MCE: you need to be a Marketo Customer or Partner. Previously, this was not a requirement. To me, this is limiting because there are freelancers, consultants, job seekers, and a few dedicated studiers who want/need to take the Exam without additional active user requirements.

For agencies who are hiring junior (read: cheaper) professionals in the hope of training them intensely to become MCE or Marketo Certified Consultants (MCC) in a short period, I recommend caution. I’ve come across people who were Certified but lacked a true understanding of Marketo, marketing, and how to think through the problem before pressing buttons. Doing rush training and testing in under 6 months isn’t right for every person.

Who does need Marketo Certification?

If you love figuring out process charts, workflows, data connections, and building out the infrastructure to support the Customer Experience, then becoming Marketo Certified may be worth it. Becoming Certified is a key step on the path to becoming a Marketo Admin and marketing operations professional.

For marketers not planning to go down the martech/mops route, an MCE is a helpful, third party validation of your abilities. It’s great to check that box if you want to.

But if you are just starting to learn tools like Marketo, Certification isn’t your first goal. Your first goal is to become proficient in using Marketo for your daily job. Demand gen campaign managers, event marketers, and creative developers do not need to know the whole system or become Certified quickly. On my team, I have several marketing automation specialists. Some are Certified, some are not. I don’t expect the page developer to become Marketo Certified because I know he understands how to make Guided Pages. Other specialists will become Certified–in due time–as they become comfortable with Marketo and grow in their roles.

The marketers I work with often know aspects of Marketo to do their jobs or some level of self service. They know when they need an expert’s help and their managers do not expect them to be Certified because it’s not their primary role to be a Marketo Expert. Hiring Managers – this is a message for you! Your event team doesn’t need MCEs to be successful. Yes, they should be able to run an event in Marketo and speak with your MOPS pro. They do not need to know the ins and outs of Multi-touch Program Status Success.

Ultimately, the choice is up to you.

Image Credit: flickr scubasteveo

I’ve seen more and more questions about Workspaces and Lead Partitions in Marketo recently and want to provide a framework for helping you decide if the overhead of managing these is worth it. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Workspaces are a special feature that must be enabled and paid for. Even Enterprise instances will require a separate payment or request to activate (usually).

What is a Workspace?

Think of a Workspace as a desk or play area for marketers. Workspaces mostly cordon off assets and Leads from other marketers. The most basic way to think of it is a Master Folder area. Remember how good naming and organization can help keep a Marketo instance clean? A Workspace is a next level up in the Tree. In fact, everyone has a Default Workspace at the top of the list. Most of us have just one Workspace that’s effectively invisible.

Workspaces can “see” Lead Partitions. Again, most of us have one Workspace with one Lead Partition. But some of us need to have some marketers use a separate play space as well as see different kinds of Leads.

Remember that a Workspace is more akin to a “space to do marketing activities,” while a Lead Partition is a division of your database that requires a deliberate action for a Lead to move across barriers to a different LP. Lead Partitions do not live inside a Workspace, even if that is effectively what happens in many cases. Here are some diagrams to help.

Rules for Workspaces

Please be sure to read the official docs for more details. Workspaces are as powerful as they can be frustrating when the rules aren’t followed. Here are a few of the key rules to understand.

• Assets can be shared between WS. This is a great way to share Templates, but it has limitations.
• Default WS usually has access to all LPs and this is recommended so you can setup a central system to manage global leads. (There are some cases where you may not want to).
• WS can see more than one LP if desired.
• WS users and assets and campaigns can only see the Leads for the LPs it has access to. (This is critical! A lead will not trigger a campaign in a Workspace that has no access to it).
• Segmentations can be shared, but only 20 can exist in the entire instance.
• Filling out a Form in a WS means the Lead can only be in that WS/LP combination (see rules).

Best Practices with Workspaces

• Center of Excellence: share master Program Templates in a Center of Excellence WS with an empty LP. Give access to all marketers to clone over Programs from this space.
• Design Studio: share master assets in a Shared Template folder in the COE.
• Default WS: ensure that Default has access to all LPs and has a central LP routing system in addition to the Admin Lead Partition Router.

Workspace Features and Functions

Workspace Assets can only act on Leads which it can see

This means that if you have a smart campaign, Form, smart list, etc…it will only react to Leads in the Lead Partitions accessible to that Workspace. Global triggers should live in the Default or Global Workspace that has access to all Lead Partitions. For example, if you have an EMEA lifecycle system, and a Lead lives in the Americas, the EMEA lifecycle won’t process that Americas Lead, unless the EMEA workspace can see the Americas Lead Partition.

Sharing Assets Across Workspaces

It is best practice to manage Asset sharing with a Center of Excellence WS where you can place Globally used Program Templates, Smart Lists, and other Assets like Email or Page Templates. Other users will come in and clone or reference these. One of the big pain points here is if the Sharing rules aren’t quite perfect (like forgetting to share the folder to all the Workspaces.

People also get caught up when they use a shared Segmentation or Smart List. The rules may be global, but the data returned will only be for the Leads visible to that Workspace. If your Workspace can only see one LP, then it will only return leads from that LP.

Sharing Segmentations Across Workspaces

A neat way to manage data is Segmentations. You can have 20 across the instance, and it is usually ideal to build Segmentations in the Default Workspace, then to share them across all Workspaces. Share Master Segmentations across all WS, however, save at least 10 for local WS use. It is helpful to name Segmentations with the WS name in which they originate, so most will look like:

Default - Language 
Europe - Country

What is a Lead Partition?

A Lead Partition is a section of the Marketo database. A simple, but inaccurate way, is to think of a Lead Partition as one database table, separate from other Lead Partitions. If you have more than one Lead Partition (LP), you effectively have several databases that are mutually exclusive. In reality, the LP isn’t a separate database, but the system treats it almost that way.

Rules for Lead Partitions:

• A lead can exist in only one LP at a time.
• Cannot have email address dupes across the system (Marketo throws an error)
• Can move a Lead between LPs.
• An LP can be seen by more than one Workspace.

When creating the WS/LP for the first time, you should create the Lead Partitions first, then the Workspaces.

Lead Partition Routing System

When you first setup WS and LPs, you should also setup the central Admin Lead routing tool. This works a little bit as a backup, however, please do not rely on it. It works ok if you are routing leads based on Country or a specific field that will be available on the initial Form or creation. Thus, it becomes a two step process to ensure leads get to the right Partitions.

Option 1: leave everyone in the Default LP for routing by a smart campaign.

Option 2: route by the same rules in Admin and Smart Campaign

Either should work, although I find the smart campaign is more effective. In a thread with Marketo Champ Dan Stevens, we discuss some of the ways to consider a central routing for Leads as well as caveats with WS Asset and LP access.

List Import and Data Processing Considerations

Leads are deduped in Marketo by email address. A lead can exist in one LP at a time. On a List Import, Marketo will throw an error if it sees that a lead has a dupe in another LP that this Workspace does not have access to. It will NOT attempt to move the Lead or update it. You can see the errors on the little post-import error box by downloading the error list.

Typical Use Cases

When should you consider a Workspace+Lead Partition as a solution to a problem? There are several primary use-cases as well as a few needs that may prompt this conversation.

• You want to prevent campaigns of Type A touching Leads of Type B.
• Put up walls between Teams, Countries, Divisions, or Groups.

I urge you to think through it carefully because Workspaces cost money and cost a lot of time to build out and manage. It absolutely can be worth it when done well.

Multi-Country Regional Division

Let’s say your firm is in 30 countries and divides up work by Americas, EMEA, and Asia. But you have Marketing and Sales Teams divided by Region, not individual countries. In this case, you may just want Region or Country Workspaces depending on the size, rules, or importance of the Country. Ideally, this mapping is Regional Marketing Team : Regional Divisions to keep the system well-governed. The challenge if you wanted to have a single Country, single Team matrix with more than 20 or 30 countries. Marketo can do this, but it becomes unwieldy eventually. If there are that many countries, it may be best to use Regional Marketo instances divided by Country Workspaces.

Multiple, but separately run Business Units or Divisions

Another common option is to use one Marketo instance across the firm, but each BU gets a separate WS and LP. This setup is usually ok as long as the data systems run well and there’s little cross-sell to worry about.

Multi-Brand Cross Sell: Most of the Nation threads on Workspaces is when people divide up BUs with Workspaces, and then want to cross-sell but retain a single Lead record and have the different brands communicate to that person. In this situation, you may want to use a single LP with multiple Workspaces. You may also just want to keep one WS+LP and not trouble yourself with the extra work. As long as you can identify records effectively and work with counterparts at other brands, cross-sell can be managed without overwhelming the Lead.

Restrict Access to Data: Country

With all the different privacy rules around the world, some firms may need to restrict data access to marketers only in that Country. Of course, the data itself may reside in the US, EU, or another data center, so Lead Partitions do not resolve the physical location question, only the access levels. If your legal team truly needs physical location separation, you should discuss this with your Marketo Account Manager and SalesOps. You could buy separate instances instead, but there are likely issues with that too.

Restrict Access to Data: Prospects vs. Customers vs. Partners vs. Employees

It is possible to compartmentalize data by Record Type (Lifecycle Type) and Marketer Role. You could even add Employee information as part of your Internal Comms strategy (although I don’t recommend it).

When separating out records by Lifecycle Stage or Type, it helps to be able to clearly identify the record. You can use fields or Account fields to help identify Prospects vs. Customers. Firms that also have Partners or Channels should setup clear rules not just with Account Type=Partner, but Record Type ID (in SFDC) as well as properly managed child relationships. That way, as soon as a person is identified as belonging to a Partner, they can be shifted to the correct Lead Partition and away from those aggressive acquisition marketers. 😉

Some firms also want to keep marketers in each group out of each other’s hair as much as they want to separate those communication types. A solid WS+LP setup is one way to prevent toe stepping or mis-sends. We’ve all had those moments where that smart list filter didn’t save as NOT IN “Customer List” and we send a 20% discount to every client. (oops). With a WS for Customers, it becomes nearly impossible for Demand Gen to send an email to a Customer because they simply don’t have access. It’s only as foolproof as your data governance, of course.

To properly compartmentalize access and data, you would then provide only Acquisition Marketers in Japan with access to the JP-Prospects Workspace. Their activities would not be able to access Customers or non-Japan data. This is easily done in Admin > Users. As you can see, the major pitfall here is we have 15 Workspaces and we’ve only covered a few company locations. What happens when we add APAC or Middle East & Africa?

A variation on this use-case is to divide records by Record Type or Persona. For example, a healthcare firm might use separate WS/LPs for Patients, Doctors, and Distributors. Think through your scenarios very carefully before implementing because it is very hard to course correct once data is flowing.

RCM and Multi-Workspace Systems

Depending on your Use Case, you may have one or more Revenue Cycle Models per Workspace. When you have multiple RCMs, you thus have multiple campaigns running and managing the Lead Lifecycle. This can add overhead to your instance’s ability to process data. It’s not always a big deal, but the only way to watch this is from the Default WS that can see all of the campaigns running. You may also need to spend more time turning off old things to keep the instance humming.

Fortunately, the WS can only see the Leads in the LPs you have access to, so it becomes very much a separate Lifecycle, which you can tailor to each Country or Use case. In RCE, you will be able to divide the data by WS or Partition, or just by the individual Model very easily. There are a few tips:

• Lead Lifecycle/RCM – do your best to use the same or similar setup for each WS. It’s ok to have different MQL thresholds, but the process your marketers follow should be similar enough to compare Regional performance.
• Add Fields: add a Lead Partition and Model Name field to your database and sync it to SFDC. This can help track back issues later as well as divide up data more easily.
• Add WS Tag to your Programs – will help you divide data later in RCE.

Caveats and Pitfalls

Dealing with the Cross Partition Dupes and possible solution with a Custom Duplicate Rule. As a rule, it is difficult to deal with Dupes in this situation. If you are going to use WS/LPs, then be fairly certain the Leads won’t come in from multiple forms in different Workspaces. You can get around this with Purposeful Dupes and the Custom Rule.

Workspaces and LPs do not allow multiple SFDC Instances. Marketo is a 1-1 relationship with SFDC. You can use SFDC’s own Partition rules such that the Workspace in Marketo aligns to the Partition in SFDC. A good example is Workspaces by Region or Country where SFDC doesn’t allow individual users to see or work with other Regions’ records. Marketo itself isn’t really impacted as long as the Marketo User can still see everything. Only your LP rules will route the leads to the matching Partitions in Marketo.

Subscription Centers – usually you should do this Globally because if someone unsubscribes, they unsubscribe across the entire instance. Dan Stevens wrote a little about this. What I’ve done in the past is put the Subscription Center in the Default WS, which uses Dynamic Content to display the Form in several languages based on the Language Segmentation. It’s critical that this Form lives in the Default-Global Workspace that can see all data. If not, it will be unable to properly update records. Even if you decide to keep a Subscription Center locally, you should still offer a Global version on your Global website or as a backup.

Problems with Cloning and Sharing Assets: whether you use the COE or not, this can be a frustrating area to handle because if an Asset tries to reference an Asset it can’t see in another Workspace, you’ll get an error. Make sure your folder sharing rules are correct and be ready to just paste a Template back in somewhere.

User Access: Once Workspaces are live, you must go into Admin > Users to adjust each person’s access. Most users should have access to a single Workspace. Some may have several Workspaces, or even different access levels to different Workspaces. Only Admins or Local Admins should be granted high level or multiple Workspace access. You may even want Read Only access.

Adding WS naming to your organization – makes a big difference. I always recommend adding a Workspace code to all Programs and Assets. This will be useful when using RCE that sees all Workspaces as well as ensuring naming references are consistent to avoid confusion. Marketo still requires every asset to have a unique name across the Instance.

WS-REGION-TYPE-DATE-NAME

Too many WS and LPs.  As a global admin, it may become difficult to manage by yourself. Have strong local admins who understand how to manage their WS without you.

Removing Workspaces and Partitions – during setup, really plan this out. To remove a WS/LP is a big pain because you have to remove all of the Leads from the Partition as well as all of the Assets. It takes a lot of time. If your instance is old, it may be worth just deprecating that WS/LP by changing its name.

A lot of people ask about WS/LPs too early in their understanding of Marketo or their firm’s journey into marketing automation. The feature solves a particular, large scale problem and is not for everyone. Here are some examples of when not to use it:

• Less than 1MM records.
• Small marketing team or few international marketers. Foldering should be enough.
• The data concerns can be solved with Folders or New Fields to clearly demarcate records. For example, people often ask about multi-brand instances. Many situations can be resolved with Product Interest field or Brand Owner field along with some rules of engagement for communications.

Resources

• Global Rollout slides 
• Thinking through Workspaces
• New Lead, Different Partition
• Smart Lists and Workspaces
• Official Docs

And a special thanks to Perkuto for access to their Sandbox.