It’s hardly a secret: ESP’s and marketing automation platforms (MAPs) are complicated! Whether you’re new to the platform or a veteran user, there always seems to be more to learn to make your email creation process easier and more efficient.
But never fear–there are lots of tricks and shortcuts that can make working with them slightly less painful. That’s why we’ve created this series, full of tips from experts in each platform. Next up is one of the most popular marketing platforms, especially for B2B mailstreams: Marketo.
Embrace Templates and Tokens
As Madhu Galati, CEO of Marrina Decisions and keynote speaker told us “Marketo templates and tokens come in handy managing a mass volume of programs simply by implementing a set of assets on the platform centrally. Implementing design assets through tokens and templates also aids in minimizing redundancy and improving consistency of design through the program. By simply cloning the template, users can assign token values to a new asset. If you have a large volume of email programs to manage and use for a diverse set of products, without the hassles of working on the multiple templates, tokens come to use.”
Stensul is extremely helpful for maintaining modules and templates across programs; you might strongly consider incorporating an external creation platform as well. If you’re not ready for an Email Creation Platform, Stensul also offers a range of free Marketo email templates.
Familiarize Yourself With Smart List Queries
Phillip Wild, Global Manager, Marketing Automation at G Adventures, advised, “Take some time to read up on how smart list queries work. Not only will it save you many hours of waiting for the queries to run, but it will ensure that a super slow query doesn’t timeout and break your campaign.”
Commit to a Naming Convention
Stefani Read, Email Marketing Specialist at Walden University, stressed the importance of naming conventions. “Have a naming convention and actually stick to it,” she said. “If you’re trying to run reports/find old things/call it from other parts of Marketo, knowing your naming convention can save you so much time and effort!”
Embrace a Center of Excellence
Joy Martinez, Marketing Operations Manager at Snagajob, told us: “Have a Center of Excellence with program templates so that programs are consistently set up with best practice, standard naming convention, asset templates, smart campaigns with logic and flow steps set up according to your business processes. Your flow steps may include data value changes and creating tasks for sales.”
In addition to these tips provided by some Marketo experts, we’ve pulled a few from our own experiences and research.
Time Your Email Sends According to the Recipient’s Time Zone
Go to Admin > System Settings first to set the System Time Zone, or the time zone in which all actions and sends happen (aka the time zone you’re working in). Next, use Wait Steps or Batch Time to send your email at the time you want recipients to get it in their time zone. If you’re a large global company, you might want to segment your emails out by continent or global region (like EMEA or the Americas), and companies with a smaller reach might consider segmenting by inter-country time zones.
Add the “Forward to a Friend” Link
In order to ensure that your audience has the ability to forward emails to their communities and expand your reach, use the code {{system.forwardToFriendLink}} to insert a handy forwarding button anywhere in your email and ideally recruit more readers.
Becoming proficient in Marketo will take time and experience. To make things easier, and increase the speed and efficiency of your email creation while you’re at it, we recommend using an email creation platform in addition to Marketo. To learn more about how you can create emails more easily in a platform that recognizes all of your brand guidelines, request a demo of stensul’s platform. We’ll be happy to show you how other marketing organizations in your industry leverage stensul + Marketo for maximum impact.
