Marketo Engage Digital Marketer cheat sheet

Workspace partitioning: a partition is the top-level data boundary; each partition holds its own leads, and leads cannot be shared across partitions. Workspaces sit inside a partition and control asset visibility and user access.

User roles vs. roles: a role bundles permissions (e.g., Access Analytics, Access Marketing Activities); a user role assignment is scoped per workspace. A user with no role in a workspace cannot see its assets.

Field management: custom fields are created once and can be made visible in one, several, or all workspaces. Changing a field's workspace visibility later does not migrate existing values.

API-only user: create a dedicated API user with the 'API Only' role rather than using a person's login, so token-based integrations are not broken by password or MFA changes.

Communication limits are set per workspace and per channel (email, web, push, SMS), with daily and weekly caps. A lead that hits the cap is not sent the asset; check 'Blocked' counts in email performance.

Smart Campaign execution: trigger campaigns fire per qualifying activity; batch campaigns run on demand or on a schedule. Qualification rules (once per lead, every time, once per interval) determine repeat firing.

Engagement programs use streams, cadences, and a program status of Engaged/Paused. A cadence set to 'stream' advances leads on a fixed day interval; 'paused' holds them until manually resumed.

Sandbox: a separate instance refreshed from production; changes made in sandbox do not sync back to production. Verify sync direction before testing any data change.

Deduplication keys: Marketo dedupes on email address by default. If a custom dedupe field is enabled, both email and the custom field must match to treat two records as the same person.

Acquisition date is written once, at lead creation, and is not updated by later activity. Use it for cohort reporting; use 'last activity' or a smart list filter for recency-based segments.

Smart list logic: filters inside one smart list are ANDed; separate smart lists added to a campaign's Smart List are ORed. Use 'Not In' and 'Is Not' carefully-null values can behave unexpectedly.

Constraints on filters: 'in past X days' uses the instance time zone; date fields store a date, not a time, so time-of-day filters do not apply to them.

Static lists are snapshots for imports and one-off sends; smart lists are dynamic and re-evaluate on every campaign run. A lead removed from a static list stays removed until re-added.

Lead scoring: score fields are numeric and additive. Use 'Change Score' flow steps and score tokens in campaigns; negative scores are allowed and are useful for disqualification signals.

Data hygiene: merge leads keeps the earliest acquisition date and the most recently updated field values; the surviving record is chosen by the merge, and activity history is combined.

Segmentation: a segmentation is a named group of segments based on a segmentation field (e.g., Industry). A lead can be in exactly one segment per segmentation, and dynamic segments update automatically.

Email assets: an email can be local to a program or global. Editing a global email changes it everywhere it is used; local emails are versioned per program.

A/B testing on emails splits the audience by a percentage or fixed sample size, tests subject line, from-name, or content, and sends the winner to the remainder after the test window.

Engagement program streams can contain emails, calls, and other steps; the stream order and cadence determine timing. A lead can be in only one stream of an engagement program at a time.

Program statuses are defined per channel (e.g., Email channel: Sent, Delivered, Engaged, Converted). Status changes drive success attribution and revenue reporting.

Send limits and throttling: 'Send Email' flow steps respect communication limits; use 'Send Alert' for internal notifications that should bypass marketing caps.

Tokens: {{my.token}} is program-scoped, {{lead.token}} is person-scoped, and {{company.token}} is account-scoped. Unresolved tokens render as the token name in the delivered email.

Deliverability: a hard bounce is a permanent failure (invalid address) and sets Email Invalid = True; a soft bounce is temporary. Marketo suppresses invalid addresses from future sends.

Program success: a success is recorded when a lead reaches a program status marked as success in the channel definition; the success date feeds multi-touch attribution.

Lifecycle model: stages are defined by a lifecycle field (often 'Lifecycle Stage') with values such as Anonymous, Known, Engaged, MQL, SQL, Opportunity, Customer. Stage progression should be driven by campaign flow steps, not manual edits.

Lead lifecycle transitions are often automated with a 'Change Data Value' flow step on the lifecycle field; use smart list filters to gate progression (e.g., only MQLs with score >= threshold).

Lead score thresholds: scores are not lifecycle stages. A common pattern is a score-based smart campaign that sets MQL when score crosses a value and lifecycle is Engaged.

SLA and routing: use 'Assign to User' or 'Assign to Partner' flow steps plus round-robin or territory logic; owner changes should be logged for reporting.

Interesting moments: a score-based or behavior-based record of notable activity, used for sales alerts. They are not the same as activities and do not by themselves change lifecycle.

Lead-to-account matching: associate leads with accounts via the CRM sync or a custom object; matching rules should be defined before enabling sync to avoid duplicate accounts.

Disqualification: keep reasons in a dedicated field and use a 'Remove from Flow' or status change rather than deleting leads, so the history remains reportable.

Sync behavior: when a lead is created in Marketo and synced to the CRM, the CRM record type and owner mapping determine visibility. Test with a single record before a bulk sync.

Trigger types: 'Lead is Created', 'Fills Out Form', 'Visits Web Page', 'Clicks Link', 'Email Bounced', and custom activities. A trigger fires the flow for the qualifying lead only.

Flow steps execute top to bottom; a 'Wait' step pauses the lead in that campaign. 'Wait until' a condition can hold a lead until a date or event, with a timeout step.

Choice steps evaluate in order and run the first matching branch; a default branch is optional. Use explicit conditions rather than relying on order when behavior must be predictable.

Request Campaign: a trigger campaign can be invoked by another campaign's flow step, enabling reusable sub-campaigns. The invoked campaign's smart list is not re-evaluated.

Batch campaigns process leads in the smart list at run time; adding leads during a run does not include them. Use 'Run Once' or recurring schedules deliberately.

Webhooks: a webhook is an asset invoked by a flow step; it sends a GET or POST with tokens. Response mapping can write values back to lead fields.

Program-level automation: 'Program Status' flow steps plus channel definitions drive success; engagement program transitions use 'Change Engagement Program Cadence' and 'Change Engagement Program Stream'.

Testing: use the 'Send Test' feature with a seed list, and verify tokens resolve before a production send. Test mode does not record activities or affect scoring.

Revenue Cycle Analytics (RCA) uses the revenue model to attribute pipeline and revenue to programs. The model has stages, success definitions, and attribution rules; changing it re-runs historical attribution.

Multi-touch attribution: first-touch credits the program that created the lead; multi-touch distributes credit across programs in the model, often weighted by success position.

Program Analyzer: reports program membership, success, and revenue. It relies on program statuses marked as success; a program with no success status shows zero success.

Email performance metrics: delivered = sent minus bounces; open rate = unique opens / delivered; click-to-open rate = unique clicks / unique opens. Open rates are inflated by privacy features and should be treated as directional.

Smart list reports are point-in-time; use 'Lead Performance' for cohort metrics and 'Email Performance' for send-level metrics. Date ranges apply to the activity, not the lead creation.

Attribution touchpoints come from program success and from activities; ensure the model includes the channels you actually use, or those programs will not receive credit.

Dashboards: custom dashboards combine reports and can be shared by workspace. Subscription to a report sends a scheduled email with the report as an attachment or link.

Data freshness: most reports update within minutes, but revenue model changes and large imports can take longer. Verify the report's last-refresh time before acting on a number.

CRM sync (e.g., Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce) is field-level and bidirectional by default; each field can be set to sync one way, both ways, or not at all. Changes to sync settings do not backfill existing data.

Sync users: the CRM sync runs as a dedicated integration user. Its permissions in the CRM determine which records sync; missing object permissions cause silent sync failures.

Field mapping: map by API name, not label. Picklist values must match between systems or the value is dropped; maintain a value-mapping table for each picklist.

Adobe Experience Cloud: Marketo Engage integrates with Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Real-Time CDP. Identity stitching relies on a consistent person key (email or ECID) across products.

LaunchPoint services: each integration (e.g., webinar, CRM, SMS) is registered as a service with an API key and secret. Rotate credentials and remove unused services.

Webhook and REST API: REST uses OAuth 2.0 with a client ID and secret; tokens expire and must be refreshed. Bulk API is for large extracts and has separate rate limits from REST.

Rate limits: REST API is limited per day and per second per instance; exceeding limits returns HTTP 429. Batch large jobs and use the Bulk API for volume.

Third-party sync conflicts: when two systems write the same field, last-write-wins by timestamp. Define a system of record per field to prevent flip-flopping values.