Marketo Connector: September 2019 Update

On September 10th, 2019 we released a series of enhancements to the Marketo Connector "Connect to Program" feature.  Here is a breakdown of what's new:

Ability to map "Program Statuses"

Improved "Duplicate" Handling

Improved Record Counts on the Program Overview

Removal of Dependency on "Campaign Reference"  Field

Ability to map "Program Statuses"

Previously, BrightTALK automatically set the Program Status of a lead using hard-coded values that could not be changed.  For instance, if a lead watched a webinar on-demand, we would always send the Program Status "Attended on-Demand."  If that status did not exist in your Program, the lead update would fail.

To avoid this situation and to make the tool more flexible, we now allow you to set the Program Status yourself using this menu:

Notes:

• These changes apply to all Connected Programs (past, present, and future)
  
  
• You will automatically be prompted with this menu the first time you open the "Marketo Programs" section of your Connector.  If you wish to make no changes, simply hit "Save."  After the initial prompting, you can access the menu at any time by clicking the "Map Program Statuses" link.
  
  
• We still enforce that the following Program "Types" be used:
  
  
  • "Event" for Webinar and Summit Programs (first 4 statuses)
  • "Default" for Intent Programs (last status)
    
    
• Updating or changing the Statuses does not trigger a historical sync of data.  This will need to be done manually.

Improved "Duplicate" Handling

Previously there was an issue where if multiple users existed in Marketo with the same email address (i.e. they were duplicates), the Program Status update could fail.   To avoid this situation, we are now updating Program membership and status based on the user's unique Marketo ID.  Once a lead has been first updated by our API, we will keep track of that user's Marketo ID and use that to update the Status moving forward.  

Improved Record Counts on the Program Overview

 Previously, on the "Manage" page of a Connected webinar, the "Records Synced" and "Records Failed" numbers could get inflated if historical sync occurred.  We have now added an improvement where those numbers will always reflect the total unique number of leads sent through.   Note: to accommodate this change, as of this update, we have "reset" the Records synced and Records failed numbers to 0. 

Removal of Dependency on "Campaign Reference"  Field

Previously, the Connector stored the name of the connected Marketo Program in the Webinar's "Campaign Reference" field.  Since that value is editable, this led to issues where either the field was changed to an incorrect value or a webinar was accidentally connected to the wrong Program.  As part of this release, we are no longer using the Campaign Reference field to store the name of the Marketo Program.  This means that the only method for connecting (or disconnecting) a webinar to a Program is in the Marketo Connector interface.