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):

Congratulations on selecting Marketo for your revenue performance management needs! Now comes the hard work: integrating your Salesforce instance with Marketo.

The integration process requires careful planning, training, and action across a number of different departments. The purpose of this post is to guide you through this process with the experience of others who have done it before you. Marketo has excellent documentation on the precise steps you will follow for specific actions. We highly recommend downloading the documentation Marketo provides as well as working closely with your enablement manager for the best possible experience.

This is a general guide to preparing for your new Marketo instance, so please review this, then work with the Marketo documentation and your Marketo Engagement Consultant. If you need deeper advice, Etumos also provides Marketo Implementation consulting.

Implementation Steps Overview

Implementing Marketo is not just about the sync. For the sync to work as you want—and as Marketo advertises—it is up to you and your team to plan out the lead management system you want. There is a seven-step process to develop the lead lifecycle and then sync the two systems together.

1. Lead Lifecycle Planning
2. Marketo User SFDC Permissions
3. SFDC Changes in Sandbox (optional, recommended)
4. Marketo Sandbox Testing (optional, recommended)
5. SFDC Changes in Production
6. SFDC – Marketo App Installation
7. SFDC – Marketo Sync

Lead Lifecycle Planning

A successful first sync starts with careful planning. For many firms, this is an opportunity to revamp your lead lifecycle systems for the new era from data cleanup to automation of reports. Work with Sales, Marketing, and Technology to update your CRM so you can take advantage of the lead lifecycle automation Marketo offers.

If you simply sync Marketo with your existing CRM instance, you will likely have a tremendous problem in 6 to 12 months when you need to adjust your system to better handle inbound marketing. Consider a few possible changes to accommodate how marketing automation can improve the lead lifecycle:

Lead lifecycle progress – How are leads flowing through now and do you want to change that? For instance, Marketo can track your lead from Anonymous to Won and back again, which might be more than you’re doing now.

Universal Lead Definition – If you have not done so already, now is also the time to develop a Universal Lead Definition. Bring sales and marketing together to agree on what constitutes a Prospect, Lead, and Qualified Lead. Having a ULD will also help you as you develop your Lead Scoring System.

Reports – Decide what you want to report on so you can determine which fields you need. Fields such as Lead Status, Source, and Email Permissions are ripe for updates.

Lead Status and Lead Conversion Procedures: Will you need to adjust this and train Sales to change these fields at the right times? Changing this also means looking at your lead lifecycle and planning it out in advance, even if you don’t have Revenue Cycle Analytics. Statuses I like include:

• New – brand spankin’ new.
• Nurturing – sometimes this defaults if you are holding back leads.
• MQL – when you pass a lead to Sales.
• SAL/Working – some firms don’t bother with this.
• SQL – Qualified, but this should lead to Convert to Contact.
• Recycled – if a lead isn’t ready yet, Sales should send it back to you.
• Trash – not always useful because you should have Sales Recycle first or Junk should have been filtered automatically.

Permission marketing: Do you already have your subscription management fields in place? Do they make sense for the rest of the world? Some new fields I add are:

• Blog Email = Yes/No/Blank

• Roadshow Invitations - Yes/No/Blank

• etc...

“Blank” means that the lead hasn’t yet made a choice, and I shouldn’t email them yet. This human readable language ensures that everyone understands what this means instead of the typical True/False checkboxes.

Marketo User SFDC Permissions

For Marketo (and other systems), you’ll need a user license to facilitate the sync. Make sure you have one available and that the “user” has the right permissions to see the data you wish Marketo to see. Remember, you do not need to sync every field, just the ones related to inbound marketing, demand generation, and sales.

Do avoid using an SFDC System Admin account or a user linked account as that can cause confusion and security risks.

SFDC Changes in Sandbox (optional, recommended)

If you have a larger CRM and have a sandbox, use it. Test out everything before moving to production. Call Marketo Support to help you sync your sandboxes. Then take what you did in Step 1 and try it out. Make those fields changes, ensure the sync works bi-directionally, etc. Work with your SFDC Admin to refresh your Sandbox and connect it to your Marketo Sandbox.

Marketo Sandbox Testing (optional, recommended)

Ask your Marketo Sales Representative for a Marketo Sandbox instance. Ideally, you can keep it for several months. Take the time to test things like Lead Scoring, workflows, and smart lists. You could even test out things like Channel Tags. If you take the time to test out the plans you made earlier, you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Take notes and get reading for Production!

Cleaning Up Salesforce

Take this opportunity to clean up Salesforce as much as possible before the production sync.

Deduplication and Merging

While Marketo includes automatic deduplication by Email Address, it does not do this for records prior to your first sync or records which first appear in your CRM. Marketo highly recommends deduping records before your first sync to have the cleanest and fastest possible setup. Your SFDC Admin can recommend the best method for your business and budget. We recommend DemandBase, ReachForce, and RingLead.

Data Enhancements

You can also work with a firm like InsideView or Hoover’s to do the following:

• Account Hierarchy
• Enhance Account data like Industry, SIC, NAICS, or other blanks.
• Enhance lead records with missing Contact or other fields.
• Delete records: old records of non-customers; bad data; non-engaged leads; Left Company records.

SFDC Changes in Production

Once you are happy with the SFDC Sandbox adjustments, you can move those to Production. It’s a good idea to wait a few days before installing Marketo so your team can point out any issues you missed. You will also need to train Sales and Marketing on those changes.

SFDC – Marketo App Installation

Ok, it’s show time. You’ll follow the Marketo SFDC Integration instructions to complete the sync. I recommend doing this procedure starting Friday night or over a long holiday. The sync may take several hours to several days depending on your database size.

SFDC-Marketo Sync

Now that your sync is active, you can begin the hard work of setting up the workflows, Lead Scores, Templates, and Reports.

Activities and Tasks

Marketo can read, write, and create Tasks or Activities.

Marketo will sync certain actions it takes on a Lead as an Activity in Salesforce that will appear to Salesforce Users. This feature is helpful if you prefer to not use Marketo Sales Insight or if you wish to definitively record certain types of items on your CRM without relying on Marketo.

If your Lead Lifecycle program includes a service level agreement with Sales or if you want to automatically assign Tasks, you can also use the Create Task flow step using Tokens to assign any task to the record owner.

Automatic Activity syncing is controlled by the Admin > Salesforce Sync settings. If you are using Sales Insight, Marketo recommends turning all of the Activity Sync off to save bandwidth and space since Sales Insight will show the same data. It’s not a bad idea, especially if you have limited SFDC space.

You may, however, want to sync some of the Activities (such as Email Sent or Form Filled Out) to SFDC as a permanent record external to Marketo. Some salespeople also prefer the Activity History in SFDC. Just remember that the more Activities you sync, the more API calls and more Data you use in the CRM.

There is a lot to consider during the integration process. This article cannot cover it all, rather it should give you things to think about, and a framework for planning your new marketing automation system.

More Resources

• Scaling Your Marketing Efforts with a Centralized Submission Process
• Taking Lead Scoring to the Next Level
• How to Set up Marketo Behavior Lead Scoring Batch Campaigns
• Demographic Gating: How to Score and Quality Leads More Efficiently