Learning to use and navigate Marketo feels a lot like moving into a new place. You were shown the layout and general features when you first moved in, but as you spend time there, you start to find the little things you hadn’t noticed before, like that light switch that turns off half the outlets in a room.
Marketo is full of these little features.
One of the most common questions asked by Marketo users is ‘what aren’t we using that we should be?’. Here are five Marketo features that we frequently see organizations ignore, even though they’re available to all Marketo instances.
Bot Filtering
Bots have undeniably been an increasing issue for email metrics, skewing numbers like email opens and clicks. Marketo Engage added a setting in June 2021 to help filter out bot data and make email metric reporting more reliable. At the time it went under the radar of most companies. The few that did try it found it didn’t make enough of a difference. The bot filtering feature was then updated in May 2022 and now makes a notable impact on reporting. Unfortunately, a large percentage of Marketo clients do not benefit from this feature – and often because they don’t know about it.
This Adobe article outlines how to enable this setting and goes into what specific IP addresses are blocked. It is as simple as flicking a switch in the admin settings to enable. For broader understanding on how it should be rolled out (including the settings we recommend) consult our blog post about it.
A/B Testing for Emails
All companies want to be sure they’re sending the email that will get the best engagement every time. A/B testing allows users to compare different variations of an email to identify what versions bring you closer to the goal of that particular initiative.
Marketo offers two different types of A/B testing:
- A/B test. This test is for one time email blasts, so the tests are meant to be fairly short and to test a minimal number of variations. The term ‘A/B Test’ in Marketo specifically references the test performed in an email program. This article outlines how to set up this type of test.
- Champion Challenger. This type of test is used in trigger campaigns and engagement programs, and is best for evergreen assets that will be around for a long time. This article outlines how to create this type of test.
Segmentation
As databases get larger and smart lists become more complicated, performance and loading times start to become an issue. Segmentations are the answer.
Segmentations are essentially permanent smart lists. They divide the database into different subgroups based on the defined criteria. Each segment within a segmentation should be a targeted audience that can then be referenced by smart lists, smart campaigns and programs. Examples of segmentations include region, company size, level, department and the like
The benefits of segmentation include:
- Dynamic Content. Once segments have been created emails and landing pages can be made dynamic so that different content is displayed based on the segment the person is part of.
- Report Filters. Compare the performance segments by filtering reports by segment.
- Smart List Efficiency. Segments pre-divide the database so a smart list can reference a segment directly instead of filtering for the same criteria separately.
Marketo offers documentation that outlines how to create a segmentation.
Dynamic Content
Dynamic content allows a landing page or email to display customized content for each lead. Personalizing content allows companies an efficient way to deploy customized campaigns. The main text body of an email, for example, could display different verbiage about a product announcement depending on if the recipient is in a C-level role or someone in IT.
In addition, dynamic content allows for a single email that targets multiple different demographics instead of creating multiple similar emails sent by a complex smart campaign. For example, A common use case for dynamic content is to have multiple versions of an email/landing page for different language
While the steps to creating dynamic content are similar, there are articles available that outline step-by-step how to add dynamic content to emails and to landing pages.
Snippets
As more emails are created in Marketo, there are aspects of the emails and landing pages that are the same every time. Snippets are the shortcut designed to place these repeat sections. Snippets are pre-built blocks of content that can then be placed in an email or landing page. This allows users to create or write a block of content once and then use it in multiple places. This makes snippets a great way to prepare universal content like footers, disclaimers and social media icons.
Snippets are globally managed. When the snippet is updated, those updates can be pushed down to all assets using that snippet at once.
Snippets are also a natural pair with dynamic content and segmentations. Multiple versions of the same block of content can be created with adjustments based on the audience. For example, there could be a series of disclaimer snippets in which each snippet is in a different language.
Some common uses for snippets:
- Footers. A footer is an email element placed at the bottom of most emails, which usually contains general information about the company. Common details to include are the address, telephone number, website, social media icons, and the unsubscribe button.
- Social media icons. Social media icons are used to provide your audience with a way to connect with your brand on various social media platforms. These are typically these are images of the social media logo that is hyperlinked to a companies specifical social media pages
- Disclaimers. Disclaimers are legal texts that offer businesses protection from legal liability. Moist emails won’t need a disclaimer, but when sued they do need to be consistent and correct.
Marketo offers step up step instructions on how to create snippets and how to add content to them once they’ve been created.
The Iron Horse insight.
Buying new technology to add new features and improvements to your marketing stack isn’t the only way you can get access to new features. Many great features already exist in tools that exist in the martech stack that simply haven’t been explored yet. If you want to get more out of your Marketo instance (and don’t want to do the heavy lifting yourself), Iron Horse can help.
