How to Use the Javascript API for Marketo Forms

In this guide, we’ll show you how the Javascript API can be leveraged to improve the control and customization of your Marketo Forms.

Marketo Forms are a key component of effective marketing automation. By facilitating lead acquisition and streamlining the data collection process, they are pivotal for nurturing leads and driving conversions.

But Marketo Forms aren’t perfect. They are flexible in some ways, but inflexible in others.

With added control over your Marketo Forms through the Javascript API, you can stay compliant, enhance the user experience, execute background submissions, and much more.

What is the Javascript API?

For those who are new to the Javascript API, it is essentially a tool that enables communication between the user’s browser and your Marketo instance. And that last part is important to remember: Javascript does not run in Marketo. Instead, it runs in the user’s browser and sends information back to Marketo or brings information forward form Marketo.

If you want to learn more about the Javascript API, you can read the Marketo documentation here.

Benefits of Using Javascript API for Marketo Forms

We briefly teased these above, but the 3 main benefits of using the Javascript API for Marketo Forms are as follows:

1. Improved Form Customization

The Javascript API allows for extensive customization of form fields and behaviors, letting you tailor forms to meet specific compliance requirements or UI/UX design choices.

MktoForms2.whenReady(function(form) {
  form.onValidate(function() {
    var emailField = form.getValues().Email;
    if (!emailField.includes("@example.com")) {
      form.submittable(false);
      alert("Please use your company email address.");
    }
  });
});

 
2. Dynamic Modification of Form Fields

The Javascript API also allows form fields to change dynamically based on user inputs or other criteria (This aligns with the example we mentioned earlier regarding form field changes for USA and Canadian citizens).

MktoForms2.whenReady(function (form) {
  var countryField = form.getFormElem().find("select[name='Country']");
  var stateField = form.getFormElem().find(".stateField");
  var stateLabel = stateField.find("label");
  var stateSelect = stateField.find("select[name='State']");
 
  var usaStates = ["list of states"];
  var canadaProvinces = ["list of provinces"];


  countryField.change(function () {
    var selectedCountry = $(this).val();
    if (selectedCountry === "USA" || selectedCountry === "Canada") {
      stateField.show();
      if (selectedCountry === "Canada") {
        stateLabel.text("Province");
        stateSelect.empty();
        canadaProvinces.forEach(function (province) {
          stateSelect.append('');
        });
      } else {
        stateLabel.text("State");
        stateSelect.empty();
        usaStates.forEach(function (state) {
          stateSelect.append('');
        });
      }
    } else {
      stateField.hide();
    }
  });


  // Trigger the change event on load to handle pre-selected values
  countryField.change();
});

 
3. Programmatic Form Submissions

The Javascript API supports programmatic submissions, enabling background data collection and submission from third-party forms (some marketers use entirely different forms for unique styling options and features) to your Marketo form.

MktoForms2.loadForm("//app-ab00.marketo.com", "123-ABC-456", 789, function(form) {
  form.addHiddenFields({
    "hiddenField1": "value1",
    "hiddenField2": "value2"
  });
  form.submit();
});

 

Limitations of Using Javascript API for Marketo Forms

While the pros certainly outweigh the cons, there are a couple of limitations you should keep in mind when using the Javascript API for your Marketo Forms:

1. Implementation Complexity

Depending on your level of proficiency in Javascript and understanding of web development, setting up the API to work properly can be a challenge. There are a lot of moving parts and several things can go wrong.
For example, a common issue is when the API loads and runs on the web page before the form loads. When this happens, the API can’t find any field inputs and fails to capture data for your Marketo instance.

The reverse can happen as well (although it’s far more rare): The form loads fast on the webpage, allowing the user to fill out the form before the API has loaded to capture those field inputs.

2. Marketo’s Backend Infrastructure

Despite the API’s flexibility, it is still limited by Marketo’s backend rules. For example, Marketo requires all form fields to relate to a lead (their email address) with each submission being tied to a lead identifier.

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Now, let’s dive into some use cases we’ve put together to illustrate how Javascript API can solve common issues with Marketo Forms.

Use Case 1: Language & Compliance Based on Country

Problem: There is a need to comply with different data protection regulations and provide localized experiences based on the user’s location.

Solution: The Javascript API can detect user location using the “Country” field or URL parameters, then dynamically adjust text and form fields accordingly. This results in a much better user experience, as well as assured compliance with differing international regulations.

Code Outline Example:

MktoForms2.whenRendered(function (form) {
  var opt = document.getElementById("Opt_In__c"); //opt-in element
  var check = opt.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement; //checkbox element
  var text = document.getElementById("optin text").parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement; //text element in case there is no checkbox
  var uncheckedCountries = ["List of country codes that will display unchecked checkbox"]
  var precheckedCountries = ["List of country codes that will display prechecked checkbox"];
  var hideCountries = ["List of country codes that will hide the checkbox"];
  text.style.display = "none";
  check.style.display = "none";
  function unchecked() { //function that displays unchecked checkbox
    opt.checked = false;
    check.style.display = "block";
    text.style.display = "none";
  }
  function checked() { //function that displays prechecked checkbox
    opt.checked = true;
    check.style.display = "block";
    text.style.display = "none";
  }
  function hide() { //function that displays only the text
    opt.checked = true;
    check.style.display = "none";
    text.style.display = "block";
  }
  var select = document.getElementById("CountryCode");
    select.addEventListener("change", (e) => {
      if (hideCountries.includes(select.value)) {
        hide();
      } else if (uncheckedCountries.includes(select.value)) {
        unchecked();
      } else if (precheckedCountries.includes(select.value)) {
        checked();
      }
    });
})
MktoForms2.whenRendered(function (form) {
  var translations = {
    "en": {
      "FirstName": "First Name:",
      "LastName": "Last Name:",
      "Email": "Email Address:"
    },
    "pt": {
      "FirstName": "Nome:",
      "LastName": "Sobrenome:",
      "Email": "Endereço de Email:"
    }
  }
  // You can get the language from the country code as specified bellow and change the language of the form whe the county field changes
  var countryLanguage = {
    "US": "en",
    "UK": "en",
    "BR": "pt",
    "PT": "pt",
  }
  var language=countryLanguage
  var select = document.getElementById("CountryCode");
    select.addEventListener("change", (e) => {
      for (var labelTranslation in translations[language]) {
        // Identify each label element and change its text if it exists
        var labelElement = document.querySelector("label[for='" + labelTranslation + "']");
        if (labelElement) {
          labelElement.textContent = translations[language][labelTranslation];
        }
      }
    })
  // You could also get the language from a token (remember to define it in you program) and immediatly change the language of the form as below
  var language = "{{ my.language }}"
  for (var labelTranslation in translations[language]) {
    // Identify each label element and change its text if it exists
    var labelElement = document.querySelector("label[for='" + labelTranslation + "']");
    if (labelElement) {
      labelElement.textContent = translations[language][labelTranslation];
    }
  }
})

 

Use Case 2: Hidden Form Submission

Problem: There is a situation where a form submission needs to occur without any user interaction. This could be event tracking or other automated processes for data collection.

Solution: You can set up hidden form fields and trigger form submissions using the Javascript API. This allows data to be seamlessly collected from the background and then sent to your Marketo instance. Overall, this enables far more flexibility when it comes to data collection and submission processes.

Code Outline Example:

HTML

<form id="mktoForm_2095" style="display: none"></form>
<script>
MktoForms2.loadForm("//YOUR-DOMAIN", "YOUR MUNCHKIN", 123456); // You can get this in the embed code;
</script>

 
Javascript

document.getElementById('YOUR-FORM-ID').addEventListener('submit', function(event) {
  // Prevent page to redirect
  event.preventDefault();
  // Get URL Params
  var url = new URL(window.location.href);
  var utmsource = url.searchParams.get("utm_source")
  var utmmedium = url.searchParams.get("utm_medium")
  var utmcampaign = url.searchParams.get("utm_campaign")


  // Get Form Values
  var firstName = document.getElementById("FIRST-NAME-ID").value;
  var lastName = document.getElementById("LAST-NAME-ID").value;
  var email = document.getElementById("EMAIL-ID").value;


  var myForm = MktoForms2.getForm(123456); // Replace by your Marketo form ID
 
  var hiddenFields={
    "Email": email,
    "FirstName": firstName,
    "LastName": lastName,
    "Most_Recent_UTMSource":utmsource,
    "Most_Recent_UTM_Medium":utmmedium,
    "Most_Recent_UTM_Campaign":utmcampaign,
  }
  // Add hidden fields to the hidden form
  myForm.addHiddenFields(hiddenFields);
  // Submit the hidden form
  myForm.submit();
  // Submit the regular form
  document.getElementById('YOUR-FORM-ID').submit();
});

 
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Leveraging the Javascript API for Marketo Forms opens up a world of possibilities for improved customization and dynamic interaction.

As a marketer, it’s an important tool that’ll allow you to enhance user experience, ensure compliance, and streamline data collection processes – which will ultimately drive more effective lead acquisition and conversion strategies.

And while there are some limitations to consider, the benefits definitely outweigh them.

As we covered above, proper implementation of the API can be complex.

So if you need any help at all, reach out to us here!

How to Align Sales and Marketing

TLDR: Aligning sales and marketing teams is critical to achieving a better balance of lead quality and quantity. By fostering collaboration, creating shared definitions and workflows, and analyzing first-party data, sales and marketing can work together towards common goals and make data-driven decisions. By taking these steps, organizations can improve collaboration, work with a clearer sense of purpose, and ultimately win and keep more business.

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Sales and marketing want the same thing: Great leads that quickly turn into revenue.

Achieving the right balance of quality and quantity is a continual challenge. Even with a perfect ICP and stellar demand funnel, prospects ditch demos, opportunities fail to close, and customers churn.

What often happens when KPIs are missed? We typically see finger-pointing, defensive postures, blame games, knee-jerk reactions, and other behaviors that simply don’t benefit the organization.

Instead of declaring your teammate is underperforming, look at the data and the levers available to pull. Conjecture is not a reliable strategy for creating revenue. Double down on data and alignment to avoid the perils of blame and divisiveness.

 

“Conjecture is not a reliable strategy for creating revenue.”

 

If friction and missed KPIs are common in your company, this Tough Talks Made Easy is for you. You’ll learn how to get your demand gen back on track by fostering better sales and marketing alignment and implementing a strategy driven by meaningful data analysis.

 

Coming together

When sales and marketing work in siloes, internal dysfunction creates disjointed customer experiences. Sales can’t close the most suitable business for the company if marketing’s campaigns don’t resonate with the needs of these audiences. Likewise, marketing’s efforts to attract the best leads won’t fuel growth if sales’ outreach lacks personalization.

The North Stars of value and revenue should bring sales and marketing together to collaborate on strategy and goals.

Create shared definitions and workflows

First, both teams need shared definitions of common terms. For instance: what specifically qualifies a lead as an MQL, SAL, or SQL? Sales and marketing should also create an agreed-upon methodology for lead scoring, which involves investigating a few data points.

Based on the kinds of customers you successfully do business with, what budget, authority, and demographic traits suggest that a prospect is highly matched to your company? From past closed business, what behaviors at different stages in the buying cycle suggest they’re ready for sales to pursue?

Both sales and marketing have valuable perspectives and reports to share with each other.

Sales, for example, can tell marketing more about why opportunities have been won or lost, what prospects have felt or wanted, and why past MQLs haven’t matched their needs. And marketing can advise sales on the content types that are likely to appeal to the priority leads they’re targeting.

Share workflows and communication structures

Sales and marketing leaders can incentivize a cultural shift towards alignment by creating shared workflows and communication structures. Establishing SLAs together, for instance, makes sure that both teams understand each others’ accountabilities and the exact work that makes a lead progress through the revenue cycle.

 

“Lead with data-driven decision-making.”

 

Leaders of both teams should create shared KPIs and encourage a clear understanding of how sales and marketing’s individual KPIs contribute towards achieving overarching goals.

Taking these steps contributes to a higher quality of collaboration and understanding between sales and marketing.

At the heart of every good strategy, however, is knowledge of why your campaigns or outreach efforts are valuable to the people you’re targeting—because if that value is limited or unclear, the people you’re targeting may not match well with your business, and are unlikely to be sources of revenue.

To help with this, sales and marketing leaders must lead the way with better data-driven decision-making.

 

Finding trend lines

When sales and marketing leaders meet quarterly, they often bring data points to the table like:

📊business closed in the quarter
📊pipeline for the months ahead, and
📊lead volume.

Dig into first-party data

Less frequently do they dig into their first-party data from a forensic perspective, allowing anecdotal observations about customer trends to guide strategy. This is a significant reason why lead-gen efforts fall flat.

To determine who your ideal customers are, leadership should instead look at the data on your total addressable market for months and years past. Are prospects of particular company sizes, verticals, regions, or job titles more prone to churn or dropping off the funnel than others? Where in the funnel do they go?

From this analysis, you can answer questions such as:

✋Is your lead qualification criteria sufficient?
✋Are your target customer types and markets optimal for your business goals?
✋Do your sales and marketing teams need more training to reach higher-value customers?

Identify demographic and firmographic trends

Identify the demographic and firmographic trends within metrics like closed/lost rates, closed/won, open opportunities, and sales-accepted leads. By doing so, you can make a confident hypothesis about the customer types that are most valuable, sustainable, and receptive to your business.

 

“Steer decision-making away from hunches and towards clear evidence.”

 

This outcome justifies contracting the support of a data scientist to parse through your systems and establish the trend lines, but if your budget’s tight, marketing can lead the way. Even just pulling closed/won rates from your CRM, you can begin to steer decision-making away from hunches and towards clear evidence.

Once you’ve identified the prospect types to pursue as priorities, both sales and marketing should research and share insights on these prospects.

🔍What are the emerging and relevant trends in their industries?
🔍What concerns are likely to motivate them at their level of seniority, region, or company?

From this, you’ll get a greater sense of how to approach your target audience and what you can offer that truly speaks to their needs. This understanding should steer the direction of both marketing’s campaigns and sales’ outreach.

 

The result

When sales and marketing leaders invest in aligning their teams, everyone wins.

Creating communication structures for sales and marketing to share goals, set strategies, and refine approaches together based on first-party data analysis substantially improves how you work.

It leads people to work with a clearer sense of purpose, more effective collaboration, and more confident decision-making—all of which are conducive to winning and keeping business.

Do you need help to better align sales and marketing? Get in touch today!

 

How to Show Your Value in Marketing Operations

TLDR: Scope creep and burnout are exceptionally common in MOPs. Explain your role’s real value and demands so you get the credit you deserve.

The boom in marketing technology has seen marketing shift from a heavily creative discipline into a revenue engine. It’s increasingly capable of optimizing commercial performance and depicting high-level organizational impact. Marketing ops has assumed the responsibility to steer the ship, but recognition has yet to match the reality.

Does any of this sound familiar? Scope creep, burnout, loneliness. Then this guide is for you.

We’ll characterize the challenges of working in marketing ops so you can confidently speak to leadership about your role’s demands and the value you bring. Whether you want a new role or a helping hand, rewards or respect, it all starts with this conversation.

 

The many shades of MOPs

Few functions are as multidisciplinary (or as misunderstood) as Marketing Operations.

  • You’re the custodian of an ever-complex technology infrastructure that must surface clean, accurate data and sync correctly between solutions to support campaigns successfully.
  • You’re the analyst that reports on budgets and maintains the performance of systems and campaigns.
  • You’re the advocate for processes and products that increase revenue, reportability, and productivity.
  • And when things go awry, you’re the engineer that fixes integrations by hand to redeem sunk cost investments.

This list is getting long, and you get the picture. In a nutshell, marketing ops makes marketing work.

 

The big MOPs misconception

The big misconception is that you do this critical work by pushing buttons on platforms and taking orders.

Marketing operations is a highly strategic role at the crossroads of many different corners of the business. It takes an exceptionally well-rounded skill palette and a lot of effort to perform well in Marketing Operations. This fact goes underappreciated by the many departments with whom you interact.

The point to qualify for leadership: In MOPs, the magnitude of this invisible labor is extraordinarily high.

There is no other function in the business facing the pressure to:

  • resolve the age old question of marketing and sales alignment
  • learn the ins and outs of products and play the role of procurement
  • inherit impact reportage from senior leadership, and
  • build systems and dataflows in step with IT, data science, and legal.

 

Finding focus

Marketing operations is a constantly evolving space, with thousands of new tools entering the market every year. This growth causes expectations and responsibilities to pile up without a greater appreciation of the value MOPs provides.

You may have spent your first few months owning one particular platform or optimizing unused or ill-fitting tools, creating the impression that executional work is the sum of your job. Friction between sales and marketing might be particularly high in your workplace, where your rationale for qualifying leads and passing them to sales is often disregarded. 

Leadership might note that MOPs isn’t the only function challenged by the complexities of workplace tech (just ask IT). But while IT is typically a broader team with an established status, MOPs is often an island on its own, where a handful or even a single member of staff performs multiple jobs at once.

Your CMO or CFO might ask for numbers, but invisible labor in MOPs is difficult to quantify.

 

The source of out-of-scope work

Every organization has its unique mix of strengths and stressors. A slick data science operation can coexist with a chaotic procurement department.

Because of this, the main sources of out-of-scope work will differ between organizations. But here’s the common thread: as MOPs interfaces with many departments, they’re vulnerable to misunderstandings and dysfunction from all around the organization, inviting excess demands by design.

This is a consequence of a hiring drive in MOPs that has sought generalists for roles designed to do many different things. That many people in MOPs are spread thin, their skills poorly utilized and understood, confirms that this has been an unviable approach to hiring.

 

The silver lining

If you relate, there’s a silver lining: Slowly, the industry is catching up.

As MOPs shifts to a more specialist field, where expertise in particular areas like attribution is becoming more prominent, the case for a role with more focused responsibilities has rarely been so convincing.

If leadership wants to take advantage of your skills and retain your loyalty as an employee, it’s time to give your role the focus and recognition it deserves.

 

Work in progress

Most labor in marketing ops is invisible to others.

  • You build complex campaign infrastructure and surface Marketing’s contribution to revenue.
  • You fix the flaws in your tech stack and cut through the noise of new solutions to find opportunities.
  • You coordinate buy-in between teams for processes with leads, data, and product purchases.

This work takes more time and expertise than outsiders assume. As a result, MOPs are spread thin, applying a mix of skills to fulfill unviable expectations.

Despite the progressive energy of the MOPs space, there’s a poor understanding of what it takes to successfully hire and design these roles.

If you’re struggling with excessive invisible labor, it doesn’t necessarily reflect your professional abilities. This causes frustration for many people in MOPs and a look at the active MOPs communities will show that you’re not alone.

Explaining to leadership the true demands and value of your role is the start of you taking charge of your career direction and gaining visibility and respect around your organization.

For advice with defining your role or managing excess work demands, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

How to Use GPT-4o for Email Personalization in Marketo

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use GPT-4o for better email personalization directly within your Marketo instance!

The recent release of GPT-4o came with a long list of new features and improvements over previous models, but the ones most relevant to email personalization are its enhanced language understanding and improved natural language processing.

In short, GPT-4o understands context and nuance better than any previous architecture.

This means more accurate and engaging copy for your emails, enabling more personalization at scale without losing quality.

And the real value lies in integrating GPT-4o directly into Marketo, allowing us to utilize enhanced email personalization with more efficiency.

Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough on how to set it up.

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Step 1: Accessing ChatGPT-4o API

First, we need to gain access to the ChatGPT API. Start by heading over to the OpenAI Platform and log in or sign up.

Keep in mind, API access is not included in the ChatGPT Plus Subscription. APIs are billed separately, with a price breakdown provided here.

Once you register, you will receive API keys and the necessary credentials needed to integrate GPT-4o.

If you’re new to using OpenAI’s APIs, there is a comprehensive FAQ here.
 

Step 2: Refine Your ChatGPT Prompt

Next, we must craft an effective prompt for generating high-quality email content. If you don’t have access to ChatGPT-4o directly in your browser, you can use the previously acquired API right in Google Docs to test out different prompts.

To set up the AI in Google Docs, head over to Extensions -> Add-ons -> Get add-ons. This will open the Google Workspace Marketplace. Here, search for “GPT for Docs Sheets Slides” developed by Qualtir (as shown in the screenshot below).

Using this add-on, we can refine our prompt through trial and error using the ChatGPT API.

We’re going to need 2 separate prompts here:

  1. Email Body Prompt: This should include specific instructions regarding format and context to ensure the output is suitable for immediate use in Marketo.
  2. Email Subject Line Prompt: This will be for generating personalized subject lines. Make sure they are relevant to the content of the email itself.

Be sure to experiment and iterate until you land on an output that you’re satisfied with.
 

Step 3: Creating Fields in Marketo

Now, we need to head over to Marketo to create fields that will store the content we’re generating with ChatGPT.

We’ll need to create 2 fields, one for the email body and the other for the email subject line:

  1. Email Body Field: Create a “Text Area” field to store the email body content. This field type has a larger character limit of 65,535 characters – more than enough for your email copy.
  2. Subject Line Field: Create a “String” field for subject lines – this one will be limited to 255 characters.

 

Step 4: Creating Webhooks in Marketo

This is where the real magic happens. We have content ready to be pulled from ChatGPT through the API (Step 2), and we have a field to store the content in Marketo (Step 3).

Now, we’ll send the content from OpenAI to Marketo using webhooks. Once again, we’ll need 2 of them:

  1. Webhook for Email Body: Set up a webhook to request ChatGPT-4o. Then, in the response mapping, populate the email body field.

  2.  

  3. Webhook for Subject Line: Set up another webhook to request ChatGPT-4o. This time, in the response mapping, populate the subject line field with the content.

 

Step 5: Creating a Script to Hedge for Errors

There is always a chance that ChatGPT’s API will run into an error and return the value “N/A” in place of your subject line.

To hedge against this, we need to implement email script tokens that automatically catch these incorrect subject lines and stop those emails from going out.

Aside from that, there is another unique problem we ran into when it comes to line breaks in your email body copy:

Essentially, ChatGPT will send content with “
” tags to indicate line breaks. The problem is, When “
” exists, the JSON breaks and Marketo won’t be able to read it.

A workaround we came up with is to create another email script token that converts all “
” tags to “ is an arbitrary placeholder, you can use anything you want). Now Marketo will be able to read the content, and we can instruct it to turn those arbitrary “” tags back to “
” tags to reimplement the line breaks so the email is formatted correctly.

This is a bit of a tedious workaround, but it’s the reality of how these systems currently communicate with each other.
 

Step 6: Testing Phase

This final step is pretty self-explanatory but very important.

It’s essential that you test your emails rigorously to make sure everything is working properly before sending anything out to your list.

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The enhanced language understanding and improved natural language processing that GPT-4o brings to the table streamlines the creation of more engaging, contextually accurate personalized emails.

And integrating it directly into Marketo allows us to leverage these capabilities with even more efficiency and speed at scale.

Knowing how to utilize GPT and integrate it into your systems will only become more important as it continues to improve over the coming months and years.

If you need help with any of the steps above, or if you want to know more about how Revenue Pulse can implement AI solutions for you, reach out to us here.

How to Implement a New Marketing Automation
Platform

TLDR: If you’re considering a new marketing automation platform, learn the processes, goals, and challenges to plan around before you make a firm decision.

No matter your organization’s maturity, implementing a new marketing automation platform is a significant undertaking.

There’s a tendency for C-Suite to believe that getting off the ground with a new platform is as straightforward as flicking a switch. In reality, there are processes, goals, and concerns your marketing team should establish before deciding on a platform and continue to account for during the implementation process.

In this guide, we’ll break down the considerations and challenges that arise at different stages of the process. We’ll will help you talk with your CMO and encourage them to:

  • arrive at clear motivations for implementing a new platform
  • get a sound grasp of what the implementation process demands, and
  • establish realistic performance expectations.

 

Weighing your decision

As a growing business, making the leap to a marketing automation platform can provide powerful features and data management capabilities for scaling upwards.

For established organizations, the decision to implement a new platform can correct the course of a tech stack mismatched with your strategy.

A new marketing platform is a reasonable step forward if you’ve:

  • reached a point of momentum where you need to attribute the value and ROI from marketing activities, or
  • found it difficult to consolidate data from disparate sources and act on insights with your current platform.

Still, it’s crucial that leadership thoroughly understands the current state of your marketing machine and what you’re looking to gain by onboarding a new platform.

Beyond the financial cost of running a platform, the real investment here is time.

Once marketing activities, data, and integrations start flowing through the platform, it becomes increasingly difficult to untangle yourself over the years.

With that in mind, your CMO needs to have full confidence in your chosen platform’s trajectory.

While it’s challenging to predict how you’ll use the platform in five years, leadership should at least be able to identify how it supports your marketing team’s current and near-future ambitions.

Encourage them to set out how platforms with good momentum or established status in the market can help the marketing team to address its performance needs.

 

Getting off the ground

All tools come with a learning curve and marketing automation platforms like Marketo have particularly steep gradients to conquer. We wrote a whole post to help you explain Marketo to your CEO.

Besides pushing for additional help and support from the vendor, your marketing team should meticulously plan all that you’ll use the platform for.

Processes ultimately underlie every decision you make to get off the ground.

Make leadership aware that, before you really get up and running with the platform, your marketing team needs to clearly establish how to improve existing processes.

As an example: if your team has been sending lead lists manually to sales, marketing and sales need to agree on a point in the lifecycle where sales can take over before automating the handover.

 

Define processes centrally

Organizationally, your CMO should be prepared to define processes centrally.

Each member of your marketing team doing their own thing without a consistent methodology or shared set of definitions can scramble your reporting. When processes are disparate or data potentially missing, it’s difficult to verify the efficacy of your data or insights.

It can be as simple as standardizing fields and fonts in list uploads, but having your CMO advocate for clear and established ways of using the platform can help to preserve the integrity of your data and encourage clarity in the team.

Breaking down the sweeping task of implementation into smaller, achievable goals is crucial to see success from the platform.

You can make this argument to your CMO to incentivize them to work with the marketing team and define action items at various intervals of time, for example:

  • day 1
  • day 30
  • day 90, and
  • year 1.

These action items should be need-based yet realistic, so while leadership might have their eye on a new lead scoring model, you’d be wise to prioritize the likes of creating templates for emails and webinars and lead lifecycles for SQLs.

After you work towards your chosen milestones on Day 1, take stock of whether you met them. If not, it’s likely because the experience of using the platform is more complicated than you thought.

If your CEO’s expectations are still riding high, remind them that the demo viewed during the selection process presents a simplified version of using the platform, where the technicalities are already fine-tuned.

For your marketing team to develop a comparable level of efficiency, it’s going to take time using the platform to really optimize your processes and understand how to optimize different features.

 

Continual improvements

For the ways that a marketing automation platform can make your life easier and improve your performance, “automation” is somewhat of a misnomer.

There is always more work to do.

You’re never going to flip a switch and have everything run like clockwork, and years into using a platform, your marketing team will still be learning on the go.

Through consistent processes and realistic goal-setting, each milestone will see your Marketing team achieve more with your platform.

For any additional guidance with implementing a new platform, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

 

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How to Measure B2B Marketing Impact with Multi-Touch Attribution

TLDR: Marketing aims to invest in the campaigns and channels that offer the most significant returns. This doesn’t mean assigning credit so much as investment optimization. Discover why multi-touch attribution is vital for making those decisions.

Here’s a puzzle for you: Someone visits your website. Weeks later, a blog post shared on LinkedIn brings them back to your site, and they register for a webinar. Several emails down the line, this person becomes a customer. (Congrats 🎉)

Now, the BIG question is: What data can you take from that journey to optimize and accelerate future marketing engagements?

The prevailing view in B2B on attribution is to credit one single touchpoint for driving revenue. But we’re big advocates of multi-touch attribution because most customer journeys comprise multiple interactions with your brand. We’d love to be able to make it a ‘credit’ and ‘magic bullet’ conversation, but that’s not the reality of how customer journeys work.

What’s in this article for you? In this guide, we’ll help you explain to your team why multi-touch attribution is essential for accurately measuring campaign impact. You’ll learn the:

➡️ Types of multi-touch attribution models that allow marketers to tailor their strategies based on specific goals.

➡️ Importance of choosing relevant metrics besides cost-per-lead to help optimize campaign effectiveness.

➡️ Difference between single source and multi-touch attribution models.

 

Choose your attribution model

It’s important to note that single-source and multi-touch attribution methods have unique advantages and limitations.

The choice between them often depends on the specific goals and business circumstances. We outline the strengths of each below.

 

Single-touch attribution

 
What is single-touch attribution? Single-touch attribution associates pipeline and/or revenue to one touchpoint (e.g., an ad click or webinar registration) that a customer had with a brand before converting.

It helps you answer particular questions about campaign performance, for instance:

👉 First-touch attribution: Details which campaign sparked initial interest.

👉 Lead-creation attribution: Identifies which campaigns get people into your database.

👉 Last-touch attribution: Pinpoint which campaigns convert the most leads to opportunities.

Each method is effective at evaluating performance against KPIs, but no one interaction accounts for the sum of marketing activities that influence revenue.

A lead could have anywhere from 5 to 50 interactions with your company on their journey. Limiting your analysis to a single or handful of interactions means the vast majority of your activities have impacts that you’re not even measuring—and if you don’t measure it, you won’t optimize it.

 

Multi-touch attribution

 
What is multi-touch attribution? Multi-touch attribution associates pipeline and/or revenue to multiple touchpoints along the customer journey. It allows for a more nuanced understanding of how different touchpoints contribute to a conversion.

 

“It responds to reality because there’s no one correct answer for where to spend your budget.”

 

It responds to reality because there’s no one correct answer for where to spend your budget.

These models assign dollars across different touchpoints, and by doing so, the analysis leads to insights that a single factor can’t explain.

Revenue from pipeline or bookings or realized revenue are allocated based on percentages assigned with each model.

Define your motivation: Are you using these models to try to describe credit between marketing and sales, or are you trying to maximize your campaign operations? How you set up the model ultimately determines the data that comes out of it.

This means you need to set up the model to support the conversation you want to have after the fact. Whether it’s a conversation about optimizing campaigns, measuring ROI, or ascribing credit to specific teams in your organization.

Here’s a rundown of what insights some common multi-touch attribution models can tell you:

✅ U-Shaped: Allocates a larger portion of pipeline and/or revenue to the first touch and the lead creation touch and an equal allocation to all other touches.

✅ W-Shaped: Similar to U-Shaped but includes the touchpoint just before opportunity creation. All other touchpoints share the remaining allocation based on all other interactions a customer had with your brand.

✅ Full-Path: Allocates pipeline and/or revenue to all touchpoints in the customer journey. Full-path can be equally weighted or custom-weighted depending on the type and maturity of the full-path model.

✅ Sourced (or Even Weighted Up To Opportunity): Focuses on pre-opportunity creation touchpoints and equally associates pipeline and/or revenue to each touchpoint.

✅ Accelerated: Looks at post-opportunity creation at any marketing touchpoints that may have helped to close deals.

✅ Influenced: Allocates pipeline and/or revenue based on the entirety of the customer journey, including pre- and post-opportunity creation touchpoints.

✅ Time-Decay Allocates pipeline and/or revenue to all touchpoints in the customer journey, but the allocation percentage is weighted more for touchpoints closer to time of conversion and less to touchpoints that occur further away in time.

The takeaway for your marketing team: Both single- and multi-touch attribution have their place in your game plan, but multi-touch leads to various discoveries that help you double down on campaign success.

 

“As a marketer, you’re a revenue driver.”

 

As a marketer, you’re a driver of revenue. One of the most important decisions marketing makes for the business is to allocate campaign dollars to the places that give you the highest return on investment.

Your company’s invested in martech to make sense of the data, but if you’re making that call without multi-touch attribution, you’re spending in the dark.

Your marketing manager is probably focusing on cost per lead when making spending decisions.

If you pump more money into the sub-channels where you get cheaper leads and get more leads for your money. By that logic, organic SEO wins every time, then platforms with the next-lowest spend, and that’s where you’ll invest.

When you take a more gradual approach to the analysis and let lead data play out until you can calculate cost per deal.

Estimate revenue based on deal size, and you might see the picture shift.

Platforms like Google Ads and LinkedIn may be more expensive per lead but more efficient per deal, bringing in sales at much higher values than sub-channels with cheaper leads.

 

“Not all leads are created equal.”

 

This is where ROI really comes from—revenue vs spend—and it produces a different decision than if you’d focused on cost per lead. The lesson for marketing here is that not all leads are created equal. If you reduce spend based on leads, you could lose out on deals in the long run.

Multi-touch attribution takes figures from across your brand activity and tells you what’s creating deals and ROI. That lets you double down on your strategy and determine how to max out spending at multiple levels:

  • channels (e.g., social, display)
  • sub-channels (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook), and
  • tactics (e.g., whitepapers, webinars).

This is the essence of how attribution helps your marketing team succeed — from your CMO setting growth targets and strategic aims to your marketing manager running campaigns.

 

Drive better decisions

Multi-touch attribution connects the dots between marketing interactions and revenue, letting you accurately measure and spend on impact.

That understanding puts everyone on the same page about what campaigns really boost your bottom line, and it gives Marketing a more effective way to think about and surface value.

If you’re facing pressure to optimize right this second, just remember: this is an engine for long-term success. Take time to handle your modeling with care and collect the data you need as campaigns progress; you have more of both on your side than you think.

For any advice on succeeding with attribution, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

Contact us to start a conversation.

How to Ask Your
Boss for Help

TLDR: Asking for help shows you’re prepared to solve problems and get results, but it’s not always easy. Explore some of the arguments that can strengthen your case.

Let’s see if you can relate to the following scenario:

Your leadership has made an investment. That is the investment in you, your team, your colleagues and your tech stack. The challenge is that your team is SO successful that you make it look easy.

You’re like the surfer/musician/ballerina who moves so effortlessly that it’s hard to appreciate all the hard work that makes it possible. The outcome for many is that you’re drowning in work, requests, deadlines, and deliverables.

The solution? You need some help.

This blog looks at some of the arguments that can support your request for help.

This is not an exhaustive list.

Our team has worked client side and agency side. Not only does this give us empathy for your current challenges, but we understand how to position the rationale and benefits of some outside help.

Let’s get started.

 

1) Speed

The first and easiest argument is one of speed. You need someone fast.

Agencies can deploy resources faster than hiring. Depending on which market you’re in, and/or flexibility in remote work, it can take a long time to hire someone.

If you’re in the crunch with timelines coming fast and furious, this is one easy argument to get some help.

 

2) Experience and perspective

There are knowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns when it comes to MOPs.

Bringing in an outside perspective can give you experience in areas that you’re not familiar with or feel like you’re not optimizing.

For example, take attribution. We’ve seen all kinds of implementations that are not working, or worse, collecting dust. Attribution reporting to leadership can be extremely powerful. Getting expertise can improve your marketing automation’s performance by complementing your skills with others.

An outside perspective in the form of an audit is a place that we’ve seen pay instant dividends. Another benefit of an agency providing help is that you have the benefit of their consultants’ collective experience.

 

3) Time and volume

You don’t have the time to do everything.

This is a harder argument to make when your leadership doesn’t fully appreciate marketing operations.

However if your team can do 50 programs a week and there is a need for 100, the time argument can work. The smaller your team, the easier the argument that you can’t do everything.

Increasing volume is a better argument than time. Keep time in your back pocket. It is better as a supporting argument than a leading one.

Leadership sometimes can hear that everyone is busy and be perfectly fine with that.

 

4) Skill gaps

We’d like to be good at everything, but there can be times when you just don’t have the skills to execute.

We see this with analytics and dashboards all the time.

You can be a Marketo genius but are you also super savvy with Snowflake and Tableau? (If you are, contact me, we love unicorns like you!).

Your team might have some gaps that outside help can fulfill. The best part is that maybe you only need 15 hours a week in that role. A consultant can save the hiring of a full-time resource for part-time needs.

 

5) Test your needs

This one is straightforward. You may not be able to accurately estimate the skills and time you need with support.

If you start with a base number of hours, you can decide whether you need more time or build the case to hire your own resources.

 

6) Off books

This one is interesting but it’s more common than you would think.

Clients often look to consultancies to assist them for the simple reason of not increasing payroll/headcount.

This is a financial hygiene decision. An expense to a consultancy looks better than a salary in valuations.

You could do some probing to see if this argument would fly, but it’s generally one that your boss’ boss might be more concerned with.

 

7) Neutral/unbiased

A consultant can really help when there are tricky dynamics at play like introducing change within an organization.

The perception of a neutral/unbiased perspective can go a long way in bridging divides and finding common ground.

It could also just help you make your case.

If an outside audit gives weight to the point you’ve been making for months, this can really help move things forward.

 

8) Accountability

Possibly the best part of having outside help is their accountability.  They have timelines, deliverables and outcomes to get done for you.

They are responsible for creating a plan and executing it.

Need something done for the end of quarter? Done.

That type of accountability can go a long way in delivering what you need against your leadership’s asks.

 

9) Costs

This is always part of the equation. You will have to present the numbers.

Many of the points made above validate the costs you have to present. The magic is if you can equate the cost of help and the return on investment. ROI doesn’t always have to be dollars in business closed. It can be a better alignment between sales and marketing. It could be reducing the costs of dirty data. It can also be the costs of moving with speed and predictability.

These are just some of the arguments that you can make in building your case for help. It isn’t always easy to ask for help.

Some people see asking for help as a sign of weakness or failure.

We couldn’t disagree more.

Asking for help is a sign of wanting to get things done. Period.

As always, we’re here to help when you need it.

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How to Choose the Right Marketing Technology Stack

Scaling up your martech stack at a rate that aligns with your company’s growing needs can be quite difficult.

With so many tech options out there, how can you be sure you’re making the right choices with your investments?

You’ll want to avoid as much tech bloat as possible, while also ensuring your team has the proper tools they need to grow operations efficiently.

It can be a tricky balance, but I have some tips that will set you on the right path.

pink line

1) Size is your primary benchmark, not time

When looking to invest in new software tools, the most important consideration is the size – and future growth- of your company.

You might be thinking: when will we get use from this tool? One year from now? Three years from now?

This is okay, as long as size is the primary benchmark for these time-based predictions. For example, let’s say you have 25 clients now. How long will it take you to get to 50 clients, 100 clients, and so on?

Think of buying clothes for a child. You could buy the next 10 shirt sizes for them, but those shirts could be sitting in a closet for the next five years before they fit. Or, they might fit much sooner than expected and you need to go shopping again.

Similarly, it’s your responsibility to track the progression and maturity of your martech stack so you can keep developing it to meet your continuously growing needs. Doing so will require continual communication with leadership.

For example, they might have information about revenue projections for the next two to five years, certain KPI targets that have been set, and so on. All of these factors go into understanding your current and future needs, which will direct how you invest in your tools.
 

2) Tech for now or for later?

Now that you’ve established a reference point for what you’ll need and when you’ll need it, I recommend you future-proof your tech the best you can.

In my experience, it’s better to invest in tools that will last as long as possible to avoid the costly process of ripping out the entire system later.

For example, one option might be to spend $100,000 on a tool that you won’t fully use for another few years. But the alternative could be spending $50,000 on something you need right now, only to spend another $300,000 in a few years ripping out the entire system because it needs replacing.

This “rip and replace” process, however, will be a bigger deal for some tools compared to others.

To simplify things, think of your tech in two categories:

  1. Backbone tools, and
  2. Peripheral tools.

 
Backbone tools are the core of your martech stack, including your essential marketing automation tool such as Marketo, Hubspot, etc. These tools will be much more painful and costly to “rip and replace,” so you’ll want to grow with them over the long term.

In some cases, depending on your current budget and needs, you can invest in the baseline offering of a certain tool now.

Then, later on, you can upgrade and layer in added services and functions as necessary. These add-ons, which can be applied dynamically, are your peripheral tools – in addition to other things like data enrichment software.

As you can probably tell, there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to choosing the right tech.

Your needs will depend on many factors including your company’s structure, size, and projected growth. But as long as you’re constantly synchronized with leadership, and you plan ahead to future-proof your backbone tools with room for peripheral upgrades, I’m confident you’ll have an efficiently designed martech stack that can grow alongside you and your team.
 

3) Next steps

Once you’ve worked out which tools to invest in, make sure you’re absolutely clear with your boss about what a tech overhaul will involve. It’s going to take an ongoing time investment, thorough evaluation of your tools, and behavioral change from team members as they adapt to the new tech.

Effectively communicating all of this to your VP and CMO will increase the likelihood that they support your proposed changes. You can read more about how to explain your tech stack overhaul to your boss here.

You’ve got this — and if you need any help bringing in new technology, drop us a line.

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How to Analyze Marketo Data with ChatGPT

This blog post will show you how you can extract and analyze data from your Marketo instance using the example of email data so that we can answer the age-old question:

When is the best time to send emails?

The truth is that the best send time is not one size fits all because your email recipients are in different geographies and have different schedules. The best time to send an email to a person is unique to that person and in this blog post, we will show you how to use a person’s historic email interaction and ChatGPT to tell when is the best time to email them.

  1. Introduction
  2. Bulk Extract Vs Rest API
  3. Gathering Historic Email Activity
  4. Finding Best Send Time Using ChatGPT4
  5. Using the Best Send Time in Marketo
  6. What Marketo Data Is Next?

 

Introduction

There are two ways to extract the historic email activity in your database. Both of these methods will use the Marketo API so if you have not used the API before then you should check out the Marketo API Quick Start Guide to learn how to:

  1. Get your authentication credentials
  2. Make your first requests using the free Postman testing tool
  3. Transition from making requests in Postman to a programming language

As discussed below the best method for your Marketo instance will depend on the available capacity you have as well as the email activity you are looking to extract and over what time frame. Marketo’s data retention limits for email activity are as follows:

  • Email Delivered: 90 days
  • Send Email: 90 Days
  • Click Email: 25 Months
  • Open Email: 25 Months
  • Unsubscribed Email: 25 Months

Obviously the more email activities in your dataset and the longer the time frame you look over the more API calls or MB you will use to extract this data from Marketo.

In the project for this blog post, it was decided to extract email delivered and email opened data since the time emails are sent will affect when emails are opened, and giving ChatGPT this extra delivery information might give more accurate results than just sending open times alone. This meant that the “Email Delivered” activity limited the furthest we could look back in time at 90 days.

N.B. While the intention was for ChatGPT to use the delivered and opened times to make its decision, as we will see later on in the “Finding Best Send Time Using ChatGPT4” section it only used the opened times when doing its analysis and gave the most frequent hour of opening as the best send time. Therefore, you can only give ChatGPT a dataset of open times or you can refine your prompt to ensure that ChatGPT’s approach also factors in the delivered times and does a more advanced analysis.

 

Bulk extract vs rest API

The first approach uses the bulk extract API since this is the best method for extracting large amounts of data from Marketo. If you have not used the bulk extract API before then check out the Marketo Bulk API Quick Start Guide to understand the job workflow used to extract data from Marketo.

In Marketo, you will usually have a 500MB daily extraction limit unless you have paid for an increase in this limit. The limitation to using the Bulk extract API is that you may exceed this 500MB limit if you have a large database and lots of email activity. If this is the case then take a look at whether you have sufficient REST API call quota to use the REST API to extract this email activity.

The default REST API quota in Marketo is 50k API calls per day so see if this is enough for you to be able to extract the email data you need.

In order to help you determine which approach is best go to Admin > Web Services. Here you will see your REST API and Bulk API limits as well as your usage for both over the past 7 days. Clicking into the hyperlinked numbers beside “Requests in the Last 7 Days” and “Capacity Used in the Last 7 Days in MB” will show you day-over-day usage over the past 7 days.

Based on what these numbers show you will see whether you have more REST API or Bulk Extract capacity or if you are already very close to your limits with both then you might have to contact Marketo support to get an increase in capacity or reduce the number of calls or jobs currently being created to free up capacity.

Screenshot of Marketo API limits as well as usage over the last 7 days
API requests by user over the past 7 days
Bulk extract usage by user over the past 7 days

It is hard to predict ahead of time how many API calls or MB will be needed to extract the email activity history for your database so it will take some experimentation to find out how much you need by making some API calls or creating some jobs for a subset of your database or over a short time frame. Then once you have done these small experiments you can extrapolate the API call or MB usage expected for your entire database or time frame of interest.

 

Gathering historic email activity

Whether you intend to use the REST API or the bulk extract API you will need the activity IDs for the email activities you are interested in. To get these:

  • Make a GET request to the  Activity Types endpoint
  • Search the response returned to Postman for each activity and note down the id

Once you have these IDs check out the Github files linked below to see how to use these IDs in API requests to extract the email activity we are interested in.

Note that the code in all the Github files linked below is designed to be plug-and-play so that once you update the variables at the top of your code with your information then you should be able to run the code right away.

 

Using the bulk extract API

As mentioned in the docs the maximum time span for a job is 31 days so if we want to get data over a longer time frame e.g. 90 days, then we will need to create multiple jobs and then join the data from each job together. The Bulk Extract code uses a number of functions to do just that.

 

Using the REST API

The REST API code works similarly to the bulk extract code except here it is data from “pages” that are being joined together instead of data from jobs. Since only a limited amount of data can be returned in a single REST API request, the data is paginated and we must loop through all the pages to extract all the data.

To begin a request is made to the paging token endpoint, specifying the start date in the past that we would like to extract data from. The paging token that is returned is then used as the starting point for a while loop that makes requests to the activities endpoint to get the activity data from each page.

As the while loop is iterating, the data returned for each page is added to a list and then this list is converted to a dataframe and saved as a CSV.

 

Processing the data

Once all the data over the desired timeframe is gathered some processing of the dataset is done to remove bot activity and tidy up the dataset to make it easier to process later. You can see how the data is gradually transformed by going through the leftmost tab to the rightmost tab in this sheet. You can see the code used to do this processing here.

 

Finding best send time using ChatGPT4

By far the easiest way to find the best send time for each lead ID is to use the “Advanced Data Analysis” option with ChatGPT-4. In order to access ChatGPT-4 you need to have a paid subscription. Then to enable “Advanced Data Analysis” from the chat screen:

  1. Click on the 3 dots beside your profile image and name at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen
  2. Click on “Settings & Beta”
  3. Click on “Beta features”
  4. Turn the toggle beside “Advanced Data Analysis” on

This “Advanced Data Analysis” feature allows us to upload our CSV of email activity and ask ChatGPT to give us an output file containing the best send time for each lead id. To analyze a file with ChatGPT-4:

  1. Click on the “GPT-4” tile at the top of the screen
  2. Click “Advanced Data Analysis” in the dropdown menu that appears
  3. Click on the plus icon to the left of “Send a message” to upload your file
  4. Enter your prompt

Based on my testing and with the prompt I used below, I found that the best format for the input data was grouping the email activity by lead ID and email as shown in the Group by Lead & Email tab. Note that the times returned from the Marketo API are in UTC time and we need to ask ChatGPT to give us the output time in the same timezone as our Marketo instance.

 

"Given the data which contains the delivered and open times for the emails received by each lead please determine the best time of day to email these leads to maximize the chances that they will open future emails. Note that the times are in UTC time. Provide the output in a table containing 2 columns: 1 for lead Id and 1 for an optimum send time in CDT where the times should be to the nearest hour as a digit from 1-24."

 

Once you enter your prompt and the input file ChatGPT will start analyzing the data and print out the methodology that it is using to transform and analyze the data as it is going along.

As shown in this chat using the above prompt ChatGPT actually does a very simple analysis to get the best send time where it returns the hour in which someone most frequently opened emails. If this is all you are looking for you do not even need to use ChatGPT for this, you could use Python code or Google Sheets formulas to compute this best send time for yourself.

Therefore if you want ChatGPT to do a more complex analysis and take the email delivery times into account for its analysis then you will have to refine your prompt and ask ChatGPT to make adjustments in subsequent messages as you see the approach it is taking with the analysis.

As I show you can ask questions based on the input or output data, for example, I ask ChatGPT to give me a pivot table of best send times so I can see how the best send times are distributed across the output dataset. I also asked ChatGPT why so many lead IDs were missing from the output dataset and it answered that leads with no open times were not included in the output.

Once you are happy with the analysis that ChatGPT has done you can then ask ChatGPT to export the output dataset as a CSV. Next, take a look at the “Using the Best Send Time in Marketo” section to see how we can get these send times into Marketo and start using them to optimize our email open rates.

 

Using the best send time in Marketo

You might have noticed that the Marketo API associates the email activity with leadID so that the output dataset of best send times is for lead IDs. However, if we want to do a list upload to Marketo to populate the best send time for these leads we need to have the best send time for each email address instead.

 

Uploading Best Send Times to Marketo

In order to get these best send times into Marketo for each lead follow these steps:

  1. The first step of getting the best send time for each lead into Marketo is to go to a smart list that contains every email address in your Marketo instance e.g. using the “Email Address” is not empty filter.
  2. Then go to a view or create a view that contains only leadID and Email Address
  3. Export this view with these 2 fields only
  4. Return to the ChatGPT-4 window where you have the chat with the output dataset containing the best send time for each lead ID
  5. Attach the exported dataset from Marketo containing the leadID and email address and then ask ChatGPT to join the best send time dataset with this dataset on lead id (as shown in this chat) so that we get an output dataset containing lead ID, Email Address, and Best Send Time
  6. Download this dataset as a CSV
  7. Upload the CSV of Emails and Best Send Times to a static list in the “Group Lists” folder in the “Database” section

 

Sending emails at the best send time

Once the best send time has been uploaded for each email address you are then ready to build a smart campaign to send emails to each person at their unique best time. Being honest building the flow for this smart campaign is a pain because it consists of 24 “Send Email” steps and 23 “Wait” steps.

Example of a Wait and Send Email action pair in a Marketo flow

The smart campaign is scheduled to run at midnight on the day that we want the email to be sent. Therefore the very first action is to send the email to anyone whose best send time is “0”. Then we wait for 45mins with the wait ending at 1am before sending the next email to anyone whose best send time is “1am”. These actions are then repeated for each of the remaining hours in the 24-hour clock.

 

A/B testing email performance

So long as you have this smart campaign nested within an email program in Marketo and you have the email selected in the “Control Panel” you will still be able to see the email performance in the program “Dashboard”. But what if you want to A/B test to see how sending at the best send time performs compared to sending to everyone at the same time?

In order to A/B test performance of the best send time:

  1. Create a smart list containing your usual email send criteria along with an extra “Best Send Time is not empty” condition
  2. Export this list with a view showing “Email Address” & “Best Send Time” only
  3. Ask ChatGPT to split the list of emails with best send times into 2 (as shown in this chat) so that each list has the same distribution of leads for each send time.

Then upload these 2 lists to Marketo and then use the smart campaign outlined above to send to one list at their best send times and then a second smart campaign (or the email program) to send the email to the second list at a particular time e.g. 10am CDT as is so often recommended.

A/B testing best send time in a business intelligence tool

Then either using a Business Intelligence tool that has access to your Marketo data or using the bulk extract or REST APIs to extract email activity and then using Google Sheets or Python for the analysis:

  • Pull the email activity you are interested in (Opens, Clicks, Unsubscribes) filtering on the email ID that we conducted the A/B test for
  • Join this activity data on the lead IDs from the 2 lists exported from Marketo that were involved in the A/B test, giving 2 output datasets
  • For each dataset, you can now get counts for each email activity, plot them, and compare the counts to see whether sending at the best time improved performance

 

What Marketo data is next?

Analyzing email activity from your Marketo instance is only the start. For example, you send lead activity information to ChatGPT and ask it to highlight the leads that are most engaged and you could then send these to your sales team. The sky is the limit!

Now that you know the power of the Marketo API you should take a look at the Marketo API Crash Course so that you can learn how to use both the REST and Bulk Extract APIs for so many different automation and marketing operations use cases.

How to Connect
the Dots Between
Strategy and Technology

TLDR: Strategy defines your outcomes, tools help you achieve them. Connect the dots between strategy and tech to influence decisions with tools that contribute positively to your goals.

Each year brings a flood of new tools onto the market. So how do you know which is right for your business?

Strategy and technology ideally work in lockstep. One defines your outcomes, the other helps you achieve them. But this relationship gets tangled when your goals aren’t strongly defined.

In this guide, we’ll cover how to connect the dots between strategy and technology. You’ll learn tips for:

a) having a productive discussion with your superiors that links goals and tools together, and

b) framing the conversation to relate your needs in MOPs back to the strategy.

 

Strategy is your foundation

Martech is going through a vendor boom that shows no signs of slowing down. As tech evolves to address more capability gaps, it’s tempting to see the purchase of a shiny new solution as a way to gain a competitive edge.

But tech doesn’t solve problems or set purpose by itself.

Without addressing a clear need for your business, any new tool is like a Ferrari without a racetrack. Powerful, expensive, and wasted.

Strategy is the foundation for all the actions you take, goals you work towards, and places you invest as a business. The outcomes that leadership targets should cascade downwards into a series of smaller goals and define the kinds of tech you consider bringing on board.

Your CMO’s top priority is continuous revenue growth. Your Marketing Manager might want to achieve that by increasing qualified leads. In that case, a solution might be a lead management tool that improves your grasp of lead behavior. The insights from which lets you tweak the customer journey in the right places to bring in more leads and create growth opportunities.

Bottom line: Whatever piece of tech you choose must complete a clear throughline between top-level strategic priorities, relevant performance targets further down, and tools with the capabilities to achieve those aims.

That alignment is how you frame the relationship between strategy and technology for your boss. Leadership wants the tools you use in MOPs to support their aims—this isn’t possible without a thorough sense of purpose.

Ask your boss to share:

  • definitive priorities per quarter and year (and their boss’ too)
  • how particular performance targets contribute to them, and
  • the need a new piece of marketing technology should fulfill. I.e., are we trying to reduce costs? Increase growth? Work more efficiently?

With that understanding, you can advise on the right piece of tech for your circumstances.

And, if you need help defining your strategy and best practices for a technology platform, we can help.

 

Take a need-driven approach

Any decision your business makes on tech acquisition needs thorough involvement from MOPs. As the person likely to manage a new tool, you’ve got a window into the current strengths and challenges of using your marketing technology stack.

Make your case to leadership: You have the knowledge to assess whether a solution is truly the right fit for your needs. Here’s where you explain the evaluation process.

Your boss might be insistent or excited about getting a tool on board, but you need to know how the capabilities and quirks of a particular technology suit your business before you buy it. That’s going to take time.

How to buy time: Gather feedback from users and internal teams, explore trials and demos, and assess how well a tool integrates with your stack and fits your business model—these steps are all crucial for your business to make the right decision. In other words: they’re time well-spent.

Sometimes, the answer isn’t a new tool at all. If leadership wants to achieve a particular outcome, encourage them to think about how you can accomplish the same ends with your current stack.

Are you utilizing all the features of your toolset? If there’s potential to meet performance goals by using the same tech in different ways, that’s a cost-effective way to bring tech in line with the strategy.

Bring the message home: Allowing MOPs time and space to make a thorough evaluation of what technology offers your business, and really taking that assessment on board, increases your chance of spending only on the tools that advance the achievement of your strategy.

 

Speak strategic language

If you want to ensure your leadership team is on the same page as you about how strategy and tech support each other, you’ll likely have to play ‘translator.’

People at various levels of a business speak in different languages, so when approaching your boss (and their boss) about tech, frame the gritty tech details in the context of big-picture strategic objectives.

Is your reporting taking too much time? Are your processes and systems not syncing as well as they should? Could your data insights be faster or more sophisticated?

When you speak with your boss, clarify how those issues impact the top-level outcomes—revenue, growth, productivity.

Position your day-to-day tasks as part of the broader strategy, and it’ll send an important message to leadership: making tech decisions that benefit your work directly feed the overall goals of your business.

Choosing the right technology for your circumstances, and aligning your strategy and tech together, takes some important conversations.

Whatever guidance you need, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

 

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