There were quite a few enhancements to the landing page UX — with the biggest callout being the removal of the toggle switch (in other words, the Classic Experience will no longer be available). 

Leverage inferred attributes in operational programs

Many businesses rely on inferred attributes to identify when GDPR or CCPA compliance is required. Inferred attributes allow you to remove fields on forms and can reduce friction, yet there are downsides. 

Inferred attributes aren’t able to accurately capture VPN data. Some legal teams may prefer keeping these fields on forms to avoid any compliance issues.

Why we care: Even if the best practice for data governance policies is to request the country of new people acquired, plenty of companies still rely on inferred data to trigger processes (lead assignment, consent management, etc.). If your company uses that data for any operational program, inbound leads from Dynamic Chat would be included in the operational programs.

Roles and permissions enhance security and control

Roles and permissions were added to Dynamic Chat, enabling admins to limit functionality based on selected user types. 

It sounds trivial, but controlling your team’s roles and permissions is undervalued. Many organizations experience issues resulting from team members having too much or too little access. 

Why we care: Security starts with providing the right access to the right people. Permissions can often be neglected, so this is a great step toward security and control. Allowing admins to assign roles provides a layer of security while still enabling your team to view past chats and data records.

Unlock the ROI of Dynamic Chat through enhanced reporting

Like Email or Engagement Programs, users can select a “Dynamic Chat” program that allows them to track the success and performance of their Dynamic Chat dialogue.

Reporting on the success of Dynamic Chat, in addition to that of other marketing programs, gives users a more comprehensive view of their marketing activities. In addition, users will be able to better gauge the ROI of Dynamic Chat to their business.

Nine additional languages are now supported 

Dynamic Chat users can choose from nine additional languages to display static chat content: French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. 

Marketo sunsetting Classic Experience on landing pages 

Classic Experience on landing pages is being sunset. The new experience offers increased functionality without toggling between the two views, offering a more seamless and integrated experience. 

Why we care: The new UX provides enhanced details for individual assets, particularly the versioning of the asset. This provides a clear ability to view the current live and approved assets while working on an update in a draft version. Users will also have the ability to see in one view key information and settings about each version of the asset (approved vs. draft). 

In addition, the “Used By” tab was enhanced this month. It now lists all assets using a particular landing page template or form template. 

Asset lists in Marketo instances that use landing page templates and global forms for all assets can be long and tedious. The ability to sort assets quickly can speed up an audit or troubleshooting process.

View the complete set of March 2023 Marketo Release Notes here.

This article is presented through a partnership between MarTech and Perkuto + MERGE, a marketing operations consultancy.

The post Marketo’s March releases: A manager’s guide appeared first on MarTech.

Most of us have felt the pressure of creating year-end presentations for the executive team. My colleagues on the MERGE business intelligence team, Tracy Smith, Senior Director of Business Intelligence, and Stuart Fern, SVP, Group Business Development Leader, shared their wisdom on the topic of creating year-end reports. 

1. Know your audience 

Put yourself in the executive team’s shoes. They allocated dollars to the marketing budget and at the end of the year, they expect a summary of the results. The C-suite wants to know: 

• Did you accomplish what you said you would?
• Were your channels and tactics effective?
• And if not, why?

Remember, the C-suite doesn’t need granularity. Keep it high-level. Tell the story of the “why” behind the metrics with as much objectivity as you can muster. Be prepared to explain where you fell short. 

For many organizations, the data presented at year-end meetings will be shared with the board. That’s another reason it’s crucial to keep the narrative at a high level. 

2. Focus on what matters 

What is the topline number your department is responsible for? SQLs? Total marketing-influenced revenue? That’s the metric you should highlight.

Consider your audience. What metrics resonate with your C-suite? What metrics will they want to share with the board? 

For example, if your CMO focused on CRM tools, emphasize the size of your database and how much it grew or how much revenue was generated per email sent.

Having a hard time determining which metrics to pull? (If you are, make agreeing on what’s important your number 1 item to fix next year!) Figure out where your team spent the most time and money and report on that. 

Dig deeper: Getting back to basics: Marketing ROI

3. Tell a story

If there’s one way to not impress the executive team, it’s presenting data and displaying charts and graphics with little to no context. 

Avoid that trap by crafting your story. Infusing a narrative into year-end reporting will ensure your message is understood by your audience. Eliminate pieces that don’t advance your story. Support your presentation with data, and ensure it can be understood when shared with people (e.g., board members) who may not be in the room. 

If there was a goal you didn’t meet — don’t shy away from this. Be forthcoming — tell the story of why you didn’t meet this goal and explain learnings you can apply next time. Be sure to communicate with your team beforehand to gain alignment and ensure there are no gaps in your story.

Dig deeper: For data storytelling, start with the story

4. Share the impact of external events 

Some things are beyond your control, so it’s important to share the impact external events may have had. Explain any gaps or spikes you experienced throughout the year. If supply chain issues limited your ability to ship products and reduced sales, the C-suite should be reminded of that. 

It’s also important to include an industry analysis. For example, marketing operations teams struggled with retaining talent due to the competitive market in 2022. Did this impact your team’s ability to execute campaigns efficiently? 

5. Document the sources of your data 

Always be prepared to back up the data you present with the source. You may receive questions on a single metric, so know exactly where those data came from. Credibility is crucial to the success of your presentation. Document the source of your data and eliminate discrepancies.

For example, your organization’s accounting system may include debits from returns, whereas the marketing team’s Google Analytics 4 does not gather this data. That’s why it’s important always to document the source! (And ideally, you’ll know the revenue measure the C-suite and board use. If you do, use that one.)

Dig deeper: 5 steps to make the most of your reporting and analytics

6. Build visualizations that support the narrative

Once you’ve settled on the narrative, you can begin developing your data visualizations. The good news is that you don’t need the latest and greatest data visualization tool to tell your story effectively. Google Sheets or Excel are great starting points if you don’t have advanced tools like Domo.

It’s important to remember that building data visualization takes time. Be patient and carve out enough time for several rounds of revisions. 

Dig deeper: What is marketing performance management and how can it help you?

The post 6 tips to impress the C-suite with year-end marketing reports appeared first on MarTech.

The October release continues a series of Dynamic Chat chatbot enhancements. Previous chatbot enhancements are here. The release of Dynamic Chat is discussed here. 

Dynamic Chat now supports Boolean logic, integers and floating point data 

Dynamic Chat audience targeting was enhanced by adding support for data types that will enable the Marketo chatbot to target based on scores and answers to yes/no questions. Support was added for booleans, integers and floating point data. 

Didn’t get that far in math class? Here’s a quick rundown:

Booleans enable the chatbot to determine whether a field is “True” or “False” and store that value on the record.  

• Why it helps: An organization may use the Boolean logic to ask questions that more accurately route customer calls. For example, if a prospect answers that she is in Canada and wants to speak to a salesperson — both are “true” in this case — her call could be routed automatically to the proper field office. This is known as “truth values” or “truth variables.”

Integer: Integers, commonly referred to as “int,” are whole numbers that can be either positive, negative, or zero. Integers cannot be a fractional number. Examples of integers are -2, 0, 2, 10 and 15.

• Why it helps: Integers could be used to identify highly engaged leads. By leveraging the Lead Score attribute, an integer data type, Dynamic Chat users could define the audience criteria based on their score. In this case, the chat would only appear for leads with scores that meet the Lead Score defined in the audience criteria. 

Float: Short for “floating point,” this is a number with a decimal point. Floats are typically used when more precision is needed.

• Why it helps: This feature will allow users to leverage more existing Marketo fields by syncing native and custom attributes across all three data types for better audience targeting. The data type can also be used to better target key accounts, something that all demand generation teams can appreciate. This increased level of precision will help create more meaningful experiences for both the visitor and the website.

Automated updates to meeting invites 

Scheduling meetings in Dynamic Chat will be enhanced for both web visitors and sales representatives. 

• For visitors: There will be an option to automatically include a Teams or Meet link in Google and Outlook calendar invites. This will be included in every calendar invite sent to visitors.
• For sales representatives: Reps will now receive an automated email notification whenever a meeting is scheduled with them. They will also receive any relevant information about the visitor’s chatbot communications. 

Why we care: Nobody likes back-and-forths, and this update ensures meeting links are posted to both the visitor’s and the sales rep’s calendars. 

It’s also a time saver for Marketo admins and sales reps. Admins no longer have the task of sending conversations generated by Dynamic Chat sessions to sales representatives, and reps won’t have to go into Dynamic Chat to view conversations. 

New roles and permissions announced 

Any Marketo admin knows the frustration of users having too much access to the platform. This can lead to things breaking and ultimately, more work for the Marketo admin. We were excited to hear Dynamic Chat is offering more granular permissions. These custom user roles will aid in governing the visibility and usage of the application. 

The custom user roles are:

• Full access: Designed for more advanced users, this role can take full advantage of Dynamic Chat, like publishing dialogues and editing the color scheme.
• Read-only access: Suitable for sales representatives, this role allows users to view information, but not make changes. This role is still helpful, as the user can view the audience criteria or stream designer.
• Restricted access: This user cannot view or access the Configuration or Integration sections.

Why we care: This update will make sales reps’ lives easier. They’ll be empowered to learn more about their prospects, without the assistance of admins. 

And since only admin-level access users can make revisions to the chat dialogue, unintentional changes will be minimized. 

Backend enhancements to Dynamic Chat 

Marketo will be improving the Dialogue canvas in Dynamic Chat (where the user builds out the chat stream) with the addition of a new feature that organizes the canvas into a clean and coherent format. All this is made possible with the click of a button through Auto Arrange. 

Prior to this update, the canvas was difficult to visually navigate. Now, the canvas can be organized in an organized, easy-to-read format. 

Why we care: We appreciate any update that saves us time. This update will be helpful from a usability standpoint, especially for those with more complex dialogues. Although this update is fairly minor, it will make it easier and more efficient for users to visually navigate their Dialogue Canvas. 

The Auto Arrange button can be found in the top right corner of the canvas (included as the last icon in the screenshot below).

What does it look like in action? Here’s a preview.

View the complete set of October 2022 Marketo Release Notes.

This article is presented through a partnership between MarTech and Perkuto + MERGE , a marketing operations consultancy.

The post Marketo’s October releases: A manager’s guide appeared first on MarTech.

More than half of respondents reported that measuring impact is a top operational weakness, followed by resourcing talent and alignment to goals and strategies. That’s why Perkuto + MERGE called some of the brightest minds in marketing operations to get their perspective on this issue. 

Perkuto + MERGE hosted a webinar with panelists Amy Goldfine, Darrell Alfonso, Brooke Bartos, Jessica Meyers and Paul Ferrer to dissect why measuring impact is a common challenge in marketing operations and how organizations can overcome this hurdle. 

1. Dirty data is a culprit 

Brooke Bartos, director of marketing operations and analytics at Invoice Cloud Inc., kicked off the conversation by explaining a common offender: dirty data.

Without data, you’ll have a hard time proving impact in marketing operations. But when your data is incomplete or outdated, it often does more harm than good. This is why data cleaning is a crucial task for all marketing operations teams. Not to mention, poor data quality costs organizations an average of $12.9 million every year, so you’ll want to make this a top priority.  

Once you’ve cleaned up your data, another area of consideration is data literacy. 

Jessica Meyers, director of marketing operations and technology at Tebra, weighed in by introducing another commonly overlooked area: data literacy. Once you’ve got the numbers to prove impact, you have to consider data literacy. Not everyone will know what your metrics mean, so being able to tell the story of data is what will really prove impact. 

Dig deeper: Data-first marketing: A strategy to stop wasting 30% of your budget

2. Lack of alignment between sales and marketing

What is your marketing operations team trying to achieve? What about impact — what do you define as impact? Take it one step further and make sure your definitions also align. For example, what defines an MQL? What about an SQL?

To address this issue, Bartos recommends aligning your sales and marketing teams. A biweekly, top-of-funnel meeting that discusses what’s moving the pipeline and what’s sitting on the shelf will help grow alignment between the two teams. When everyone is on the same page, it’s easier to define business impact and align with it. 

Darrell Alfonso, director of marketing strategy and operations at Indeed, echoed the importance of gaining alignment on terminology. There can be a lot of ambiguity on what these terms mean:

• What does a marketing-generated pipeline mean?
• What about marketing influenced pipeline?
• Is an MQL really qualified?

Make sure your team has this conversation and comes to a conclusion on what these terms mean.

“Marketing operations is like a pit crew in a race track — it’s a team effort and you can’t win without alignment of sales and marketing.”

Darrell Alfonso

3. Resourcing is a reoccurring challenge

Most of us in the marketing operations space are all too familiar with resourcing — or a lack of it. 

Amy Goldfine explained that most marketing operations teams are under-resourced and just trying to keep the lights on. 

Digging deep into your ROI, implementing a new tool, and capturing detailed data analysis all require time and money. Consequently, these are the two things that marketing operations teams don’t have. 

Goldfine suggests considering the opportunity cost — if you’re a small team, you might not have the bandwidth for this, and that’s okay. 

She continued by echoing the importance of alignment by defining how you are going to measure impact. It’s one thing to agree on what you are going to measure, but it’s a whole different story on how you are going to find that data. 

In other words, don’t underestimate how difficult it may be to collect this data. 

Dig deeper: How marketers can measure success

4. Lack of benchmark data 

Paul Ferrer, senior technical consultant at Perkuto + MERGE, emphasized the importance of benchmark data. 

Once you’ve secured alignment on how to measure impact, you may run into even more issues. This is because once you begin to analyze data, you need a benchmark to compare it to (such as past performance and industry benchmarks). 

It’s crucial to incorporate seasons into your performance — if you’re a clothing brand, your numbers may be skewed in November and December due to holiday shopping, so comparing July and December wouldn’t make the most sense. 

If your numbers are growing, it’s crucial that you ask yourself if those are meaningful numbers. Will those people engage with your content? 

Between cleaning up your data, conveying a story with your data, and gaining alignment on how you measure success, you’re one step closer to proving impact in marketing operations. 

Listen to the full webinar here. 

To read the full study on advanced Marketo users, download the report here. (Free to download. No personal information is required.)

The post 4 reasons why it’s hard to prove impact in marketing ops appeared first on MarTech.

Marketo introduced: 

• A new solution for preventing bots from form stuffing and other nefarious activities. It’s called on Google to help. 
• A forms permissions capability aimed at ensuring forms are properly reviewed and limiting who has permission to publishing/updating.  
• A slew of Dynamic Chat features that improve customer experience and make chat more useful.
• Enhanced access and permission controls for Sales Insights Actions users.

Limit nefarious bot activity with Google v3 CAPTCHA integration

We’ve all experienced it. On any given day, your database grows far more than normal. When that happens, it’s likely pesky bots targeted your Marketo forms, resulting in thousands of phony submissions. 

Monitoring your database (and you should be!) for bot-generated submissions has been a time-suck. 

To address the issue, Marketo is releasing a new integration with Google reCAPTCHA v3. reCAPTCHA uses a “risk analysis engine and adaptive challenges to keep malicious software from engaging in abusive activities on your website,” (e.g., form stuffing and fraudulent log-ins) according to Google.

This implementation of CAPTCHA scores form submissions on the likelihood of bot activity, Steven Vanderberg, Product Manager at Adobe Marketo, told us. reCAPTCHA v3 determines if the form was legitimately completed based on that score and flags those that received failing grades for further verification, e.g., a confirmation code sent by SMS. 

Bottom line: Legitimate users can log in, make purchases, view pages or create accounts. Fake users will be blocked. 

Your teams can create workflows that exclude suspicious leads from campaigns and automatically delete submissions from potential bots.

reCAPTCHA is free up to 1 million assessments per month and the integration was available on September 6th. 

Read more: Check out the article for a deep dive into this feature. There’s a video overview here. 

Ensure forms are reviewed before they’re made live with Form Permission Control 

(Almost) every Marketo shop has experienced it. An insufficiently trained user releases an updated form before it’s been reviewed. 

With Marketo’s Approve Form Permission capabilities, managers can decide which user roles can push and approve changes to form assets. 

Important: Existing roles that can approve changes will inherit that permission. Make sure to review permissions for each role in your company. 

Enhanced visitor routing, custom avatars among the Dynamic Chat additions

Dynamic Chat features continue to roll out. Functionality released in August will be available in the next 90 days.  

Advanced calendar routing rules are aimed at improving user experience. They let you route visitors to the appropriate teams and people when scheduling appointments from chat.

Your chatbot avatar can be customized to meet branding guidelines with the new Custom Chatbot Avatar feature. 

Ever want to shut chat off? Users can now enable (and disable) all dialogues at once with the global on/off switch. 

Sales teams can now use Dynamic Chat in their prospecting efforts. We chatted with Sreekanth Reddy, Senior Product Manager at Adobe Marketo, to dig deeper into what this means for users.

Book a meeting: Now, you can add your Sales team to Dynamic Chat as users. This way, they are able to connect their calendars to enable visitors to book meetings with them.

Routing: Users are now able to launch custom routing rules where you can use lead and company attributes to define criteria based on which sales representative is resolved for a lead.

Marketo Sales Insight (MSI): All interactions within Dynamic Chat are now able to be logged as new activities in MSI. Documentation of these new activities is also now available in the MSI panel in Salesforce CRM.

Sales Insight Actions

Marketo enhanced access and permission control in Sales Insight Actions last month. 

• Admins can set permissions allowing or preventing access to this feature. 
• Admins have the feature by default.

(Unfamiliar with Sales Insight Actions? It’s an integration with Salesforce that enables salespeople to interact with prospects armed with data from Salesforce and intelligence about recent behaviors from Marketo.)

Marketo Release Notes is presented through a partnership between MarTech and Perkuto + MERGE, a marketing operations consultancy.

The post Marketo’s August releases: A manager’s guide appeared first on MarTech.

We’ll also share the latest on Dynamic Chat, updates on email bot activity filtering and new API enhancements.

Veeva’s native CRM integration with Marketo

We’ve been digging into Veeva integrations with both Marketo and Salesforce, and now Adobe has pushed forward a native integration. For those unfamiliar with Veeva, read on. 

Veeva offers cloud-based solutions for life sciences, providing data, software services, and an extensive ecosystem of partners to support the most critical functions from research and development to commercial. 

More specifically, Veeva CRM is a communication platform built to assist sales professionals in developing relationships with key stakeholders. Through Veeva CRM, users can view important notifications, next best actions, and HCP profiles. 

Veeva CRM provides a centralized database of provider accounts and contacts to help sales professionals:

• Prepare for meetings.
• Send external communications.
• Access marketing collateral relevant to the deal.
• View communication history with prospects.
• Create reports to identify progress and monitor progress made.

Veeva CRM is built on Salesforce, meaning Veeva customers can access the Salesforce app exchange, native Salesforce integrations, and the Salesforce endpoint. This means Veeva CRM users are able to utilize Salesforce standard objects. 

Why we care. When data can be passed between systems in a low-friction environment, field sales representatives are able to contact hard-to-reach HCPs through automated Marketo programs. News, clinical support, and other valuable content can be automatically delivered. Most importantly, these messages can be delivered at the right time and place with greater visibility into the customer life cycle. 

Here’s what’s possible with a Veeva CRM integration with Marketo:

• Track and measure HCP behavior and interests in real-time, enabling relevant experiences that create differentiation through engagement.
• Follow-up sales call with automated messaging based on call content and responses.
• Launch campaigns to educate HCPs and create awareness for new products. 
• Launch cross-channel nurture campaigns
  • Sales can be alerted when an HCP is ready to begin sampling and prescribing the new product based on their scoring threshold.

The continued evolution of Dynamic Chat 

For those unfamiliar, Marketo has launched this new offering included in all Marketo Engage bundles at no additional cost. The phased rollout began earlier this year, and the goal is to have Dynamic Chat available to all customers in Q4 of this year.

As defined by Marketo, Dynamic Chat empowers users to drive engagement and conversions with interactive, personalized conversations for every web visitor.

Through Dynamic Chat, marketers can:

• Automatically collect submitted lead information. 
• Gain access to behavior metrics, such as:
  • Time on page
  • Time on site
  • Page scroll percentage (this helps gauge when chat dialogue should appear on the page). 
• Share impactful content via attaching PDFs to the chat. 
• Select the exact pages to have chat appear and deselect unqualifying pages. 
• Schedule sales meetings.

Users can either select one of the predesigned templates or create their own from scratch to get started. There are currently templates for lead generation, lead qualification, and event registration. 

Even better, marketers can customize the chat box to match their brand guidelines (color scheme and fonts). 

Why we care. The possibilities are endless with Dynamic Chat. There is the potential to simplify your martech stack and also take advantage of features like chat engagement data to generate relevant ads to get more ROI from your paid ad strategy.

Since Dynamic Chat is natively integrated with Marketo, all engagement and lead info will be pushed into Marketo in real-time. Not to mention, marketers can engage with both known and anonymous web visitors with personalized and qualifying conversations at scale. 

API enhancements 

There were a few announcements around form updates and API access for CRM-enabled subscriptions on the API front. We tapped into the knowledge of Perkuto + MERGE’s Senior Technical Expert, Paul Ferrer to learn more about these enhancements.

Expanded access for CRM-enabled subscriptions 

This is welcome news as it allows Marketo to be a single source for all data instead of needing to manage separate connections to Marketo and the CRM. This should simplify extracting information from external analytics platforms.

Form updates 

1. Support for “hidden” data types in Forms.
2. Support multiple comparison values for “isNot Form” via rules.
3. Allow setting of display and submitted values in select lists separately.

All three updates to the form field APIs greatly expand the capabilities for maintaining and creating your forms remotely. Hidden fields can now be added and updated, picklist values can be maintained consistently and we get additional logic options via API. All great news!

Allow setting of Disable Open Tracking on Create or Update Email

We’ll never say no to more options when it comes to managing assets via API. Programmatically disabling open tracking on emails will further enable you to manage email assets in bulk.

Bye-bye, bots 

Another highlight of this month’s release is the filtering of bot activity. Users are now able to prevent inaccurate email reporting and unintended sales alerts through email bot filtering.

Marketo announced two new attributes to email click and email open activities that will highlight bot activity. These attributes are labeled as “is bot activity” and “bot activity pattern.” 

We were also introduced to more sophisticated patterns that call out bot activities, which are: 

• Hidden link IPs/UAs: identifying clicks and opens generated from bots clicking the hidden link.
• Proximity patterns: clicks or opens happening at nearly the same time to identify bot activity.

Asset Expiration is now available 

Last but not least, we were excited to hear a key feature from Marketo Sky would be carried over into Marketo.

Marketo users are now able to set expiration dates on landing pages, deactivate trigger campaigns, and stop recurring batch campaigns. This means no more expired event registration pages with the ability to automatically unpublish landing pages. Control of asset deactivation can be assigned to specific user roles through new permission.

View the complete set of May 2022 Marketo Release Notes.

This article is presented through a partnership between MarTech and Perkuto + MERGE , a marketing operations consultancy.

Ever wonder how frequently marketing software is replaced?
Here’s the answer.

Download the 2022 MarTech Replacement Survey!

The post Marketo’s May ‘22 release: Viva la Veeva! appeared first on MarTech.

What we know

The biggest takeaway for marketers is that Universal Analytics (UA) is not compatible with GA4. This means users who rely on year-over-year metrics will need to act quickly to implement GA4 by July 2022, one year before UA expires. Although UA is set to sunset in July 2023, Google notes users will be able to access their data up to six months after that time.

• Unsure of what property type you have (UA vs. GA4)? Take a look at this cheat sheet, which walks you through how to identify which property you have. 

What is GA4, and why is Google making this transition?

GA4 is not an upgrade or the latest version of Universal Analytics – it’s an entirely new system of tracking metrics across the web and apps (UA could not provide cross-platform insights, so this is a huge upgrade). Google is transitioning to user- and event-based tracking, which means reports and performance dashboards in UA will no longer be available. This means major metrics that we’ve grown accustomed to, such as bounce rate, page hits, and sessions, will no longer exist. 

So, why the change?

Google is adapting to the privacy-centric world we live in. When UA was conceived in 2013, data privacy laws and browser privacy regulations were nowhere as stringent as they are today. GA4 is specifically designed to function without third-party cookies and instead, leverage machine learning and statistical modeling to collect data. 

This change comes with a host of benefits – from greater insights across touchpoints and data-driven attribution to enhanced engagement data. Users can look forward to new metrics to track engagement, such as engaged sessions, engagement rate, engagement time and more.

Implications for marketing operations professionals

We spoke to Mike Rizzo, founder of MO Pros, the community for marketing operations professionals, about how to prepare for GA4. He explained that the transition from UA to GA4 is complex, even comparable to a Marketo migration. Since GA4 captures data differently from UA, marketing operations teams will need to be able to explain the gravity of this transition to senior leadership so they can allocate time to learn GA4. 

Marketing operations teams are bogged down as it is, so it’s crucial for teams to begin designating time for training and education.

Rizzo continued by explaining that the impact of GA4 will be felt by marketing operations, demand generation, sales and senior leadership, to name a few. UA sunsetting puts tremendous pressure on marketing operations teams to reprioritize workloads and learn how to leverage this new tool. Just like marketing automation doesn’t run itself, neither will GA4. 

How to prepare for a seamless GA4 transition

We’re less than 90 days away from July 2022, which is when companies will need to begin making the shift to GA4 to have YoY data by July 2023. 

Here are three ways you can begin preparing for the transition. 

1. Your tagging structure will need to be updated

GA4 tags capture data in a new way, so users will need to rebuild all existing tags to comply with the new structure in GA4. For events that live within Google Tag Manager, users will need to create an additional tag tied to the same trigger to send data to GA4.

Since GA4 relies on a new dataLayer structure that captures ecommerce data, users have two options:

1. Reconstruct data laters on your site.
2. Use Google Tag Manager’s custom JavaScript variables to reformat your data.

2. Reporting will also need to be updated

Data capture in GA4 is based on the Google Firebase platform – meaning it’s optimized for collecting data from mobile devices and applications. Better yet, this also means the fields captured in reporting are more customizable. The not-so-great news is that it’s not aligned with the existing fields captured in UA. This means the reports currently powered by UA connectors or data flows will need to be rebuilt using GA4 data. 

The good news is that Google has provided a list of UA dimensions and metrics equivalent to GA4 dimensions and metrics. This list will help users recreate reporting in GA4, but Google does note that not all GA4 data will match UA data exactly. 

Since users will need to rebuild reports with GA4 data sources, it’s crucial to begin implementing GA4 to ensure you have YoY data by the time July 2023 comes. For those with data ETL and storage processes, you may be able to combine GA4 data with historical UA data to get a longer loopback window, but parity is not promised.

3. Allocate time for learning 

Despite the benefits associated with GA4, there will be a learning curve for users. For starters, the platform has a new interface that lacks many critical functions users have been accustomed to. For example, providing user control over features such as custom channel groupings and filters is unavailable in the GA4 administrative toolset. 

So, what’s the alternative? Users will have to set their filters via variables that leave the IP, domain, and other matching datasets up to the end-user in their tag manager. Setting custom UTM parameters for channel groupings is key for classifying campaigns from outside platforms.

GA4 cannot map custom dimensions, which is key for many users, especially GA360 customers who have 50 or more custom dimensions that they use for advanced reporting. What makes GA360 so great is the expansion of available customizations, so the fact that GA4 has these missing makes implementation that much more challenging. 

It is important to note that Google does have additional custom dimensions on its roadmap, but the fact that it’s missing during the transition announcement creates room for user error.

The post GA4: What marketers need to know for a successful transition appeared first on MarTech.

Last month, Perkuto joined more than 2,000 registrants across the globe to attend the Workato partner kickoff event. We gained insight into Workato’s product roadmap, technical updates, and new frameworks in addition to hearing how they will support partner growth. And a lot of those insights show just how critical these tools are becoming for marketers.

According to Vijay Tella, co-founder and CEO, Workato is converging the three most dynamic markets: iPaaS, full lifecycle API management, and robotic process automation (RPA) to solve for a market with too many specialized tools. 

iPaaS is having its moment

Massimo Pezzini, head of research, future of the enterprise at Workato, predicts that organizations will begin to slow investment in B2B gateway software, MFT (managed file transfer), and master data management (bottom right of the chart below), and increase investment in iPaaS, full life cycle API management, and data integration tools (bottom left of the chart). iPaaS will lead the way at a predicted revenue of $9 billion by 2025. 

So, how can we attribute the exponential growth of iPaaS? According to Workato, the two leading factors are versatility and ease of use; which makes iPaaS appealing for small to midsize organizations with fewer resources. 

What does iPaaS adoption look like specific to marketing operations? 

The 2022 Marketo Engage User Study, conducted in partnership with Adobe, found that only 17.7% of Marketo users are currently integrating iPaaS with their Marketo instance. We predict increased adoption in the coming year. Of Marketo users currently integrating iPaaS with Marketo, 44% are using Workato. 

To lead the charge for enterprise automation, marketing operations will need to accelerate adoption. 

Dig deeper: No code tools are transforming marketers into makers

Organizations continue to invest in automation

Not only are CIOs onboard with integration technologies, but they also consider them critical to achieving their business goals. Gartner revealed that 34% of CIOs in the U.S. plan to invest more in integration technologies, APIs, and API architecture. 

Massimo delved into five reasons why automation is crucial for business success: 

1. Reduce cost and increase efficiency by streamlining processes and minimizing manual errors.
2. Improve customer and employee experience by providing an integrated, consistent, intuitive, and conversational user interface. 
3. Enable business agility and change by incrementally reshaping legacy processes. 
4. Provide insights and situation awareness by streamlining and minimizing manual errors. 
5. Building differentiation via innovation by creatively assembling “commodity” systems. 

Building an effective automation strategy 

Technology is the last thing you think about when building an automation strategy, yet many organizations get this part wrong. Instead, Massimo suggested beginning with defining your goals, requirements, and other functional and non-functional requirements. Workato shared a framework for how organizations should be approaching their automation strategy. 

It will be interesting to see whether 2022 will indeed be a transformative year for iPaaS and the automation market as a whole.

The post Why the business automation market is poised to explode appeared first on MarTech.

Ensure confidence during crunch time

Whenever your team is stretched thin, we recommend prioritizing workloads. Take some time to evaluate which tasks can be pushed to the new year, and which tasks are crucial to complete in 2021.

Rank your team’s workload with a level of impact and effort rating. Focus on the projects with high impact; and even more so on the high impact projects that are low effort. Anything that is low impact and high effort, should be deprioritized to the new year.

So, how can you best plan ahead before you reach maximum capacity? 

We have one word: Prepare. 

The simple act of preparing and prioritizing workloads can help ensure your team is aligned and has a clear idea of what objectives need to be hit. 

At Perkuto, we apply these two tactics: 

1. Leverage frameworks

Frameworks will help your MOPs team produce predictable outcomes, which in part, allows your team to work more efficiently. When your team has a strong foundation to build and grow upon, your team will not only cut down on time, but also cut costs. 

Any solid MOPs framework should be what we call SCORE:

S – Scalable 

C – Cohesive 

O – Organized 

R – Reliable 

E – Efficient 

You’ll have to keep in mind that it takes time to save time, so be sure to make time to incorporate new processes and frameworks. 

2. Embrace automation

Embracing an automation-first mentality will allow your team to focus on hitting objectives and strategic work, which is crucial as you approach maximum capacity. MOPs teams can earn back time by automating tedious, back-and-forth tasks with platforms like Workato, Mulesoft, Tray.io, and Zapier.

These tools have the ability to effortlessly and programmatically transfer data from one system to another, and can automate tasks like: 

• List uploads 
• Manual deduplication 
• Data cleansing and normalization 
• Campaign creation
• Troubleshooting system integration/sync issues

Make the most out of your slow season

If you’re planning for a slowdown, it’s time to pull out that list of rainy day activities. 

Lacking inspiration? We recommend the following activities: 

Document everything 

Documentation is one of the most important things your MOPs team can do. Here’s why: during seasonal or unexpected volumes of campaigns, it’s documentation that will keep your team afloat. Documentation serves as the base work that anchors the architecture of what you’re building in Marketo (or any marketing automation or CRM platform for that matter), and it will also help your team improve efficiency. 

“Documentation serves as a knowledge transfer — it’s like authoritative team communication, outlining what was previously done and why. Despite the circumstance, having detailed documentation could be the life raft that saves your team and keeps things running smoothly.” Maude Bélanger, Director of Services at Perkuto.

We recommend documenting your lead lifecycle process, which typically begins when a person is a new prospect engaging with marketing and tracks them as they move through sales qualification and then towards a signed contract for a services engagement. 

If your team isn’t tracking how leads move through the sales cycle, start with a chart (as seen below), then continue delving into documentation with specifics.

Credit: Perkuto

Create a RACI chart for your team 

When projects go awry, we find the culprit is typically undefined project roles. No one ever intends to derail a project, but lines can get blurry when team members are unaware of what is expected from them, or they think they know what their responsibilities are. That’s where RACI charts come in. 

A RACI chart stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. This chart helps teams “streamline their processes by ensuring each team member and stakeholder understands their specific roles,” according to Lucidchart. When each team member has a clear picture of what responsibilities they own, the odds of the project falling off-track is significantly lower. 

Below, you’ll find an example of a RACI chart. Try filling this out for your next project, or even in a general sense to capture your team’s individual responsibilities.

Source: Lucidchart

Explore new marketing tech and partner opportunities 

Are you considering partnering with a consulting agency in the new year? What about adding new tech to your stack? Get the ball rolling ahead of time — the leading MOPs agencies are already booked a couple weeks, if not months out, and having an agency on retainer can be crucial in maintaining workloads as you approach your busy season. 

We also recommend evaluating your current MarTech stack — what tools could you eliminate? Are there any tools that could help your team work more efficiently? (We’re looking at you, IPaaS). Researching new marketing tech can be a drain on resources, so we suggest using your slow season to conduct preliminary research and schedule a few demos. 

Perform a data cleanse 

When was the last time you cleaned your database? 

Odds are, it’s probably time for your team to perform data cleanse. Ensuring a tidy database will “ultimately increase overall productivity and allow for the highest quality information in your decision-making,” according to Tableau.

So, how can you perform a proper data cleanse? Take a look at this chart from AIHR Academy:  

Conduct a mini-audit of your Marketo instance 

If you’re using Marketo, here are some key areas your MOPs team should focus on: 

• Administrative functions: 
  • Has anyone left your organization in the past several months? 
  • Are communication limits set up correctly? 
  • Are there any sync errors happening? 

• Channels:
  • Are all the Channels associated with the right Program Type?
  • Are there any duplicate or similar channels? 
  • Which channels are no longer in use?
    
• Users: 
  • How many users haven’t logged on in the last 90 days? 
  • Are there any users who have more than one role? 
  • Are there any users who could downgrade to a lower level without limiting any tasks they need to complete in Marketo?
    
• Naming and organization: 
  • Is the folder structure well organized?
  • Are you archiving old programs?
    
• Scoring programs:
  • Are there tokens being used for the program? 
  • Is there a naming convention that makes sense? 
  • Do the scoring fields make sense?
    
• Operational programs:
  • Do you have privacy and compliance programs in Marketo?
  • Is there a subscription and/or preference center in Marketo?
  • Are there bounce management campaigns in Marketo?

Summarize your accomplishments

What has your team accomplished this year? What are some wins, and what learnings would you carry into the new year? 

Consider creating a “Year in Review” that summarizes what your team focused on this year – for example, how many campaigns were executed? What was your median open and click-through rate? Not only is this great to share with your company, but your team can also use it to create some goals for the next year.

As you begin mapping out 2022, consider incorporating time in your team’s schedule to embrace new frameworks, processes, and automation. 

MOPs Rundown is presented through a partnership between MarTech and Perkuto, a marketing operations consultancy.

The post MOPs Rundown: Maximize your resources during a time of peak capacity appeared first on MarTech.