Scaling Global Marketing Operations with Marketo: Courtney McAra’s Expertise

Q: Courtney, could you start by sharing your experience with Marketo and what unique value you believe it provides compared to other platforms?

A: I’ve been using Marketo since 2010, working both in-house at small startups and large enterprises. I also spent about two and a half years working at Marketo itself. During my time there, I worked closely with their post-sales team, focusing on onboarding and training new customers.

When it comes to Marketo’s unique value, I’m careful not to say one platform is inherently better than another because it really depends on your business needs, the size of your team, your global or local reach, and, of course, your budget. One of Marketo’s key strengths is its seamless integration with Salesforce as a CRM. Marketo programs can be directly associated with Salesforce campaigns, which I see as a major advantage. Another benefit is its custom fields, which provide flexibility in how you use and organize your data.

Marketo’s interface, while not as simple as some other platforms, offers a low barrier to entry with the right training. It can also be very organized for larger teams thanks to its folder structure, subfolders, and workspaces. This structure allows teams focused on specific verticals or geographies to have their own areas to work within Marketo, which is beneficial for managing complex operations.

Q: When it comes to managing regional workflows, how does Marketo support centralized efforts, especially for companies with a global presence?

A: The focus should be on the audience you’re marketing to. For example, you might have a team focused on a specific geography, like APAC or EMEA, whose primary goal is to market to people in that region. In such cases, you can have regional teams driving marketing efforts, but you might also have a centralized marketing operations team handling global elements like lifecycle management, lead scoring, and product interest tracking.

However, certain aspects like advertising spend, UTM tracking, and event invitations often vary based on regional preferences. Even in centralized setups, you may need to adjust these elements to fit the cultural context of each region. The key is to determine which parts of the marketing process need to be standardized globally and which can be tailored for local markets.

Q: Speaking of UTM parameters, what are the best practices for tracking UTMs, and how should companies avoid potential pitfalls?

A: UTM tracking is a broad topic, and it’s critical for companies to establish clear, global rules for how UTMs are used. I often advise companies not to have separate Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) criteria or qualification criteria based on country. These should be standardized at the company level. However, aspects like specific white papers, webinars, use cases, or pain points can be tailored to the nuances of each country.

One common pitfall is overwriting UTMs. The historical tracking of where people come in—the medium, source, content, or campaign—is valuable data. The most recent touchpoint isn’t always the most important. I believe it’s crucial to track the chronological history of interactions within your system, regardless of the platform, to get a more comprehensive view of the customer journey.

Q: Could you share your insights on data hygiene in Marketo and the common causes of data becoming messy?

A: Data hygiene is incredibly important because without clean data, you’ll end up with messy results. One of the main reasons data becomes disorganized is when the “keys to Marketo” are given to someone who may not have the proper training or experience. Marketing operations is a relatively new field, so it’s common for someone on a team with available bandwidth to be handed the responsibility of managing Marketo.

What often happens is that without a clear end goal or understanding of best practices, they start building out programs and folders on top of each other. As time goes on, the structure becomes convoluted, which makes it difficult to manage and find things within the platform.

To avoid this, teams need to plan ahead and develop a structure that anticipates future marketing efforts. This involves thinking through whether you’ll need customer marketing, prospect marketing, vertical marketing, or audience marketing. Data and marketing are intertwined, and successful operations require a solid grasp of both to maintain a well-organized Marketo instance.

Q: You mentioned earlier that Marketo’s reporting has some limitations. How do you view its reporting capabilities, and what areas do you believe need improvement?

A: Marketo offers good reporting for what it is—a marketing automation platform. If you’re looking for reports specific to marketing activities, such as campaign engagement or lead performance, Marketo can provide those. However, for more comprehensive, revenue-focused reports that cover the full customer lifecycle and business impact, you typically need to rely on your CRM.

Many people get frustrated with Marketo’s limitations in this area. The reality is that revenue and opportunity reporting tend to reside within the CRM rather than the marketing automation platform. That said, you can integrate Marketo with other business intelligence tools like Looker or Tableau to pull the data you need for a more holistic view. While there is room for Marketo to invest in more advanced reporting features, I understand why they have kept their focus on marketing-specific metrics.

Q: In terms of scalability, what features in Marketo do you find most beneficial, and what practices do you think could become obsolete in the future?

A: Marketo’s scalability is one of its standout features. Folder-level tokens, the ability to clone programs, and the use of templates are particularly useful. For example, someone can create a complicated, robust program once and then clone it 30 times without having to rebuild it from scratch. This ability to repeat processes with minimal effort offers a significant return on investment.

As for what could become obsolete, that’s hard to predict. Marketing practices evolve, and what’s old sometimes becomes new again. For instance, direct mail was popular, then it faded, and now it’s back. The same can be said for web chat tools and calendaring. I don’t think we can say that anything will become truly obsolete because the marketing landscape is constantly changing.

Q: How do you address the common issue of misalignment between marketing and sales teams?

A: Misalignment is more of a people problem than a data or process issue. It often stems from the leadership structure of a company. Sales is the heart and soul of the business because if the sales team isn’t successful, no other department will thrive. Therefore, alignment usually starts with understanding what sales wants and finding a common ground.

If there is a struggle or friction between marketing and sales, the focus should be on education or training to clarify pain points and expectations. Sometimes, what sales is asking for may not be possible to deliver in the short term, and it’s important to have open communication about these challenges. Ultimately, building alignment requires focusing on people solutions and clear communication between teams.