You’ve just landed a new marketing operations role and been handed the keys to your Marketo Engage instance. Where do you start?
Having inherited many Marketo instances over the years, I’ve learned to check the foundations first, because they have the biggest impact. Stability is key.
Privacy and consent
Start here, because getting it wrong can have a significant financial and reputational impact on your company. Are you compliant in each region you market to? Getting this right protects your company and means you can keep emailing prospects and customers with confidence.
Lead handoff
Lead handoff matters for two reasons. First, you want every lead worked as quickly as possible, because it shapes how that person sees your company. Second, the handoff process is one of the biggest factors in sales and marketing alignment.
CRM sync errors
When Marketo and Salesforce aren’t syncing properly, you lose both context and trust. Go into the admin console and find the errors that happen most often. A handful of high-volume field mapping issues are often behind thousands of failed syncs, so fixing those “global” errors first has an immediate impact.
Deliverability
Some deliverability problems aren’t an overnight fix, but it’s important to get the basics right. Check the technical foundations first: SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
Beyond the technical setup, look at settings that are easy to miss, like communication limits. Are they too lenient? Also audit how “operational” emails are used. If they’re being used for marketing content, you risk burning your sender reputation.
What can wait
There are other important areas to look at, but these are the ones I prioritise first. Good program templates to clone from are definitely best practice, for example, but they’re not as business-critical as complying with privacy laws.
If you want to get the most from the instance you’ve just inherited, I offer in-depth Marketo audits carried out by an Adobe Certified Master. Get in touch to request yours.