Getting (re) Certified for Marketo: Exam AD0-E558 — Topic Area 1: Administration and Maintenance
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Hello there!
Following the introduction post, I’m going to discuss each and every exam area for Exam AD0-E558 — Adobe Marketo Engage Business Practitioner Expert, and this writing is dedicated to the 1st Section of the Exam Areas: Administration and Maintenance — which carries a weight of 12%.
There are 6 points in this area, so let’s go through them one by one.
Determine mapping process between Marketo and CRM
The first point of the first topic area is immediately about system integration. As a Marketing Automation Platform, Marketo can and ideally be integrated with a variety of systems, and of the most important kind of systems to integrate are CRM systems. Marketo has natural integrations with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. In my opinion, for this point, we only need to cover the very basics first. Here are the resources I recommend to be consumed:
1. Introduction video about CRM sync
2. Marketo CRM Synchronization Architecture Whitepaper
Marketo has several different Objects (which I’m not going to discuss everything in detail), and I believe the key to passing through this first point, is to understand the different basic Objects of Marketo — the “Typical Synchronized Entities” (Adobe Experience Cloud, 2021, p.6). Once we understand the basic Objects and their relationships, integration with CRM systems is a matter of understanding how Marketo Objects could be synced properly.
Here are some of Marketo's basic Objects:
Lead Objects:
I understand Lead Objects as the main Object in Marketo, and Lead Objects have various relationships with other Objects. “Lead field mapping should be determined by the available person types in the CRM system” (Adobe Experience Cloud, 2021, p. 7).
We can understand this better by reading into the table I took from the Marketo CRM Synchronization Architecture Whitepaper, by reading it from the Lead Object’s perspective first, such as: N (multiple) Leads are meant to be connected to a single Company Object; N (multiple) Leads belongs to a single SalesPerson Object; N (multiple) Leads could belong to N (multiple) Opportunities — and so on.
Company Objects:
“Company objects represent the organization to which lead records belong” (Adobe Experience Cloud, 2021, p. 8). Company Objects have 1 to Many relationships (N) with the Lead, Opportunity, and SalesPerson Objects. Think of this as a Company having multiple Leads for multiple Opportunities, and multiple SalesPerson working to close the multiple Opportunities.
Opportunity Objects:
“Opportunity objects loosely represent sales deals in Marketo, and are responsible for attributing revenue to leads, companies, and programs. Opportunity usage varies between both CRM implementations and organizational implementations, so they may encompass anywhere from a sales deal complete with individual line items to broader records of sales efforts ” (Adobe Experience Cloud, 2021, p. 9). Multiple Opportunities could be attributed to a single Company. Multiple Opportunities could be attributed to multiple Leads. Multiple Opportunities could also be related to multiple Marketo Programs.
Opportunity Role Objects:
“Opportunity roles are link objects from lead records to opportunity records. Without this relationship, leads will not be associated to Opportunities in any way. They are also required relationships to perform end-to-end Program Opportunity Attribution” (Adobe Experience Cloud, 2021, p. 11). In Marketo, multiple (N) Opportunity Roles could be attached to a single Lead. I understand this as, for example, I have a Lead to follow up from Company X for Opportunity 1, and in that Company, the Lead serves as a Consultant. However, in another Opportunity, this Lead also plays a part, say as an Owner. Hence — multiple Opportunity Roles could be attributed to a single Lead — or Opportunity.
SalesPerson Objects:
“SalesPersons represent an internal entity which has ownership of a set of person records, typically for sales purposes. The information present on these records is used to derive certain formula fields and tokens for lead records in Marketo” (Adobe Experience Cloud, 2021, p. 12). I think SalesPerson Objects are quite straightforward. A SalesPerson could own multiple (N) Leads, and a multiple SalesPerson could be going for a single Company.
Identify what happened to an asset using the Audit Trail
This should be straightforward. Audit Trail is a super useful feature for System Administrators, and basically, there are 3 components of Audit Trail: Asset Audit Trail & Admin Audit Trail, and User Login History.
- Asset Audit Trail basically covers what actions are tracked upon the operations on the Assets (Design Studio Assets, Marketo Programs, Smart Campaigns, and Lists) — which could range a great variety of actions.
- Admin Audit Trail is about events in relation to configurations of IP Restrictions, Partition, Password Strength, Role, Smartlist Report, User, and Workspace.
- User Login History is parked in a different place compared to Asset & Admin Audit Trail (Admin > Security > Audit Trail). This feature is parked under Admin > Security > User & Roles, and the User Login History identifies log-ins — time and date, username and email address, role, workspace, and IP Address.
Recognize differences between users and roles
In short, a User, well, is a User of Marketo. Roles defines what that User could do. Marketo provides a very good example for explanation:
“…a marketing user typically needs broad access across the application, to create, modify, and deploy emails, landing pages, and programs. A web designer, on the other hand, spends almost all their time in the Design Studio, creating assets for use in emails and landing pages. And while company leaders make extensive use of Marketo’s reports in the Analytics area, they may not need to create or drive the assets or programs themselves” (Adobe Experience League, n.d., para. 2).
There are built-in Roles (Admin, Standard User, Marketing User, Web Designer, Analytics User) and we are also able to create a new Role. The concept of Roles has a very tight relationship with the concept of Permissions — what the Role is actually able to do.
Given a scenario, identify the best fit for using workspace and partitions
The concept of Workspace and Partition is another straightforward topic.
Workspaces are “separate areas in Marketo that hold marketing assets like programs, landing pages, emails and more. They can be used by multiple people. Each user has access to one or more workspaces” (Adobe Experience League, n.d., para. 1). One reason why Workspaces are useful is for the separation of Assets — say different Geography and different Business Units may need to utilize different Marketo Assets.
Sharing of Assets between Workspaces is possible, and the items that are sharable include Email & Landing Page Templates, Models, Smart Campaigns, Smart Lists, Segmentations, and Snippets. Some Assets are also cloneable and movable across Workspaces — Programs, Emails, Landing Pages, and Forms, and this could be done with a simple drag and drop. For cloning, Marketo advises that for “assets that aren’t templates, it's best to clone them as local assets inside of a program” (Adobe Experience League, n.d., para. 3).
Person Partition is a very interesting topic. “Person partitions act like separate databases. Each partition has its own people that do not de-dupe or mix with other partitions” (Adobe Experience League, n.d., para. 5). Person Partitions could be assigned to Workspaces in various combinations. Separation of Database in Workspaces (different people are using different assets) is a very good reason why Partitions are needed.
Marketo advises contacting Marketo Support for help in setting up Person Partition.
Identify CRM platforms with native Marketo synchronization
As noted, Marketo has natural integrations with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics
With Salesforce
- Syncs take 5 minute intervals
- Sync is bidirectional only for Leads, Contacts, and Salesforce Campaigns — all other syncs are one direction from Salesforce to Marketo
- Objects that are synced: Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Users, Opportunities, Salesforce Campaigns, Custom Objects, and Activity
With Microsoft Dynamic
- Sync is done in the background in batches — not in real-time, and beside the first sync, sync typically takes seconds or minutes for data that has been changed.
- Sync is bidirectional for Leads and Contacts — all other syncs are one direction from Microsoft Dynamics to Marketo
- Objects that are synced: Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Users, Teams, Opportunities, and Custom entities.
Given a scenario, locate where information is referenced
In all honesty, I do not really understand what this point means, besides that we should be getting ourselves familiar with the overall Administration and Maintenance topic. Well, here’s one for the experience and accumulated knowledge.
References:
- Adobe Experience Cloud. (2021). Whitepaper:Marketo-CRM Synchronization Architecture. Adobe. https://developers.marketo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Marketo-CRM-Synchronization-Architecture_2021_Whitepaper.pdf
- Adobe Experience League. (n.d.). Managing user roles and permissions | Adobe Marketo engage. Experience League | Adobe. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/administration/users-and-roles/managing-user-roles-and-permissions.html?lang=en
- Adobe Experience League. (n.d.). Understanding workspaces and person partitions | Adobe Marketo engage. Experience League | Adobe. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/administration/workspaces-and-person-partitions/understanding-workspaces-and-person-partitions.html?lang=en
