Marketo BP Expert cheat sheet

Workspaces partition marketing assets (programs, landing pages, emails, snippets); partitions partition CRM records and person data. A person exists once per partition, so the same email can appear in multiple partitions as separate records.

User roles (Admin, Marketing User, Standard User, Limited User) control permissions; role plus workspace membership determines what a user can view and edit. API-only users must be assigned an API role and never log in interactively.

Program statuses are defined per channel in Admin > Tags > Channel. Each channel has a type (Email, Engagement, Event, Nurture) that determines available statuses and whether the program can be used for scoring or success attribution.

Custom fields on Person objects are created in Admin > Field Management with a data type (string, integer, date, boolean, score, currency, reference). Changing a field's type after data exists requires a data migration.

Communication limits (Admin > Communication Limits) set a per-person cap on emails per day and per week; a send exceeding the cap is queued or blocked depending on configuration.

Field-level permissions restrict which roles can view or edit sensitive fields such as score or revenue fields.

Smart Campaigns and programs run in a designated time zone set at the subscription level; individual users can override display time zone but not execution time zone.

Sandbox is a separate subscription instance used for testing; changes do not sync back to production, so assets must be recreated or promoted manually.

Duplicate rules: Marketo dedupes on email address within a partition by default; CRM sync dedupes on the CRM's configured unique field (commonly email or a CRM ID).

A Smart Campaign with a Merge Leads flow step merges two person records; the winner's field values are retained unless the loser's fields are explicitly chosen. Merges are irreversible.

Normalization flow steps: Change Data Value with a formula such as {{lead.Email Address:lowercase}} and trim functions reduce duplicates before sync.

Data Value Changed triggers fire only when the value actually changes; use it instead of a generic form-fill trigger to avoid redundant processing.

Null vs empty: a cleared field becomes null, and filters like 'is empty' match null values; constraints on numeric fields treat null as zero in some scoring contexts.

Program Member custom fields store per-program data (e.g., attendance, score) without polluting the global person record.

Data hygiene cadence: run periodic Smart Campaigns against bounced, unsubscribed, and inactive records; suppression lists should be updated before each major send.

Lead ownership: CRM owner sync is controlled by the sync user; changing owner in Marketo requires a Change Owner flow step and appropriate CRM field write permissions.

A segmentation is a named set of segments (e.g., Industry: Tech, Finance, Other). A person belongs to exactly one segment per segmentation; segment membership is evaluated at send time.

Segmentations are used in email dynamic content and in Smart List filters ('Member of Segmentation'). A person with no matching segment falls into the default segment.

Static lists are fixed snapshots; Smart Lists are dynamic queries that re-evaluate continuously. Use static lists for one-off sends and Smart Lists for ongoing targeting.

Smart List filters combine with AND across rows and OR within a single filter's multiple values. Nested filters in advanced mode allow explicit boolean logic.

Suppression lists (Marketing Suspended, Unsubscribed, Email Invalid, Black Listed) are applied automatically at send; a person on any of these will not receive the email.

List membership can be used as a flow step (Add to List / Remove from List) and as a trigger (Added to List).

Targeting by engagement: use Engagement Score or Program Status filters to build audiences for re-engagement versus cross-sell campaigns.

Segment membership changes do not retroactively alter past email sends; dynamic content is resolved at the moment of send.

An Engagement Program contains streams (nurture tracks) and content (emails with a cadence). A person can be in only one stream at a time.

Cadence options: daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly. The program sends the next available piece of content in the stream at each cadence interval.

Stream transitions are performed with the 'Change Engagement Program Stream' flow step; transitions can be triggered by status changes or scoring thresholds.

Content can be marked as 'Exhausted' when all pieces have been sent; the program then pauses or repeats depending on the stream's 'repeat' setting.

Engagement Score is a separate score that accumulates per engagement program; it is distinct from the lead score and can be used for stream transitions.

Pause and resume: pausing a stream stops sends for all members in that stream; resuming continues from the next scheduled cadence.

Nurture best practice: seed each stream with enough content to cover the cadence interval; a stream with fewer pieces than the cadence window will stall.

Program status for engagement programs uses channel 'Nurture' with statuses such as Engaged, Paused, and Exhausted.

Authentication: SPF authorizes sending IPs, DKIM signs messages cryptographically, and DMARC policy tells receivers how to handle failures. All three should be configured on the sending domain.

A hard bounce is a permanent failure (invalid address); a soft bounce is temporary (mailbox full, server busy). Marketo marks hard bounces as Email Invalid and blocks future sends.

Unsubscribe processing: the default unsubscribe link updates the Unsubscribed flag; a custom unsubscribe page must post back to Marketo to register the opt-out.

Sending limits and throttling: Marketo enforces a per-day send cap per subscription; large batches should be split across time to avoid ISP throttling.

Deliverability metrics to monitor: bounce rate (hard + soft), unsubscribe rate, spam complaint rate, and inbox placement. A complaint rate above ~0.1% is a red flag.

Email templates vs. emails: templates define reusable structure; edits to a template do not propagate to emails already created from it.

A/B testing in email: test subject lines or content on a sample, then send the winner to the remainder; the test sample percentage is configurable.

Preheader text, plain-text version, and image-to-text ratio affect rendering and spam scoring; always include a plain-text alternative.

A form's 'follow-up page' setting determines the post-submit destination; 'Stay on page' shows an inline thank-you and does not navigate.

Form prefill uses known person data when the visitor is cookied; hidden fields can capture UTMs, referrer, and campaign tokens.

Progressive profiling shows different fields on repeat visits; it requires a form with multiple field sets and a 'number of fields shown' rule.

Munchkin tracking code must be present on all pages to cookie visitors; the cookie associates anonymous web activity with a known person after form fill.

Web Personalization and RTP use the Munchkin cookie and segment data to serve dynamic content; without the cookie, personalization falls back to default content.

Landing page domains: a branded or custom domain requires DNS CNAME configuration; SSL must be provisioned for HTTPS.

Form validation: required fields block submission; hidden fields are not validated. Use field-level validation rules for format checks.

Bot filtering: enable reCAPTCHA or honeypot fields to reduce spam form fills; spam fills inflate lead counts and scoring.

Lead Score is a numeric field; scoring campaigns add or subtract points via 'Change Score' flow steps. Scores should be bounded to avoid runaway values.

Behavioral scoring (email opens, clicks, page visits) and demographic scoring (title, industry, company size) are typically maintained as separate campaigns for auditability.

Lifecycle stages are modeled as a channel (e.g., Lifecycle) with statuses such as New, Engaged, MQL, SQL, Opportunity, Customer. Status changes drive reporting.

A person's lifecycle status is a single value; transitions should be governed by a defined model (e.g., MQL requires score >= threshold AND a qualifying behavior).

Smart Campaign execution modes: trigger (runs on qualifying event) vs. batch (runs on schedule against a Smart List). Trigger campaigns process each qualifying person once per event.

Campaign queue and throttling: limit concurrent executions and use wait steps to prevent overwhelming downstream systems or the CRM.

Success attribution: a program is marked successful when a person reaches a success status; success is reported per program and rolls up to revenue.

Score decay: use scheduled batch campaigns to subtract points for inactivity so scores reflect recency.

Email Performance report: delivered, bounced, opened, clicked, unsubscribed, and spam complaints. Open rate = unique opens / delivered. Click-to-open rate = unique clicks / unique opens.

Program Performance report aggregates members, successes, and revenue per program; success rate = successes / members.

Revenue Explorer (RCA) uses revenue cycle models to attribute pipeline and revenue to programs; attribution models include first touch, last touch, and multi-touch.

Lead Performance report tracks lead flow through lifecycle stages over time; use it to spot conversion bottlenecks.

Campaign Inspector shows why a person did or did not qualify for a Smart Campaign; useful for debugging trigger logic.

Person Performance report shows a single person's activity timeline; useful for support and sales enablement.

Dashboards and subscriptions: reports can be scheduled and emailed; subscriptions respect the recipient's data permissions.

Data freshness: reports are typically near real-time for email metrics but may lag for CRM-synced revenue fields.

The CRM sync user must have appropriate permissions in both systems; field-level permissions on the sync user determine which fields can be read or written.

Field mapping: Marketo fields map to CRM fields one-to-one. Unmapped fields stay in Marketo only; mapped fields sync bidirectionally subject to sync rules.

Sync direction: by default, the most recently updated record wins on a field-by-field basis; conflicts are resolved by timestamp.

Sync filters limit which records sync (e.g., only leads with a certain status); records outside the filter are not synced and can cause data gaps.

Custom objects sync requires a defined relationship to the person/account and a sync-enabled custom object definition.

API rate limits: REST API has per-day and per-second limits; batch endpoints are more efficient than individual calls for bulk operations.

Webhooks and LaunchPoint services extend integrations; webhooks are triggered from Smart Campaigns and can post person data to external endpoints.

Sync errors appear in Admin > CRM > Sync Errors; common causes are validation rule failures, picklist mismatches, and duplicate records in the CRM.