Get more from your Marketo Engage database

Cleaning up the Marketo database

Having the biggest database in the market doesn’t mean you’re going to get results. In today’s data-led marketing world the success and future growth of your business stems from how you handle your data quality in Marketo. If it is complete, accurate, meaningful, relevant and actionable, your business will convert more and at a faster pace. If it is not cleaned, an unwanted scenario emerges – data becomes unreliable, time consuming, and even detrimental to your growth plans.

Marketo data management is probably the hardest and most boring task, and is often found towards the bottom of the priority list. The right person to tackle your Marketo data hygiene should be an experienced and dedicated data manager. If your company lacks one of these specialists, it is of utmost importance not to assign this task to any other team member, such as the poor graduates who always get the short end of the stick.

Why?

Because, in our experience as Marketo specialists, we have often seen how clients have made the biggest mistake of outsourcing the data cleanse activity to a “data house” whose responsibility is to fill in the gaps, remove the bad data and then sell some more names in at the same time. Commonly referred to as the “data universe”.

The consequence from this action is that data becomes immediately out of date as soon as it is exported and sent to your company. Combined with the need to add this data into the Marketo Database or CRM, and the fact that the data is already dirtied as soon as it’s released into the wild (the telemarketing or sales environment), these consequences become even more pronounced.

Fortunately, JTF Marketing are specialists in not only Marketo Engage but how to improve data quality within the system. This means we can help you handle the whole process. We use best practice data management techniques which reduce poor data quality, improved qualification and boost campaign results.

The impact of bad data quality in Marketo

Poor data quality doesn’t only cost you money, it is also one of the top reasons marketing automation campaigns fail. Here are just a few reasons why you should focus on your data quality in Marketo:

  • Reduce duplicate records that result in split customer tracking
  • Fix or remove bounced or invalid records
  • Reduce and manage unsubscribe rates
  • Drive highly personalised segmentation and targeting
  • Enable effective lead scoring through consistent data

Taking all of this into consideration, the necessity of a Marketo data management plan and an overall Marketo data hygiene maintenance should be a high priority.

Gartner® cautions Marketo users on data management

For the 8th consecutive year, Marketo was named a Leader for its completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Recently, Marketo data management made the top 3 of the caution list in Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management when comparing Adobe Marketo Engage against other platforms by stating:

Data management: Several reference customers cited lack of flexibility in Marketo Engage’s data models, particularly for complex-enterprise use cases. They also noted challenges with CRM integrations, reflected in below-average satisfaction scores for this capability.

How do you improve Marketo data management?

Step 1: Understand the volume of data

Understanding the  volume of data in the Marketo database and its different states will give you a clear direction to prioritise your further actions.

To complete step 1, you need to get your hands on JTF Marketing’s proprietary data hygiene report that connects with Marketo and gives you a live view of your Marketo database and its data quality.

Step 2: Reduce your Marketo licence fee

Cost is also an important factor when thinking about improving your Marketo data management strategy. The goal is to strike a balance between saving the company’s money by eliminating poor resource utilization and satisfy the users with storage that gives instant insights into their data requests. 

The problem arises because all marketing automation platforms use per contact pricing models meaning even if you switch from Marketo you’ll still have the same pain point.

If you are ready to change this and reduce costs get your free report now.

Step 3: Boost results of your marketing campaigns

This can be achieved by targeting a set of qualified leads, specific to your campaign and by defining your “buyer” personas. Also, the campaign can be improved by tailoring. This involves customising your marketing campaign messaging, as well as channel research where you send the messages. Next, figure out the trigger marketing, which relates to sending the messages in a specific period during important phases of the customer’s engagement lifecycle and, finally, track the results.

Claim your free data hygiene report from JTF Marketing to find out how we could improve your data quality, reduce cost and more importantly boost the results of your marketing campaigns.

Get your free data hygiene report

Duplicate management in Marketo

If you are confident that your Marketo database is in a pretty good condition, make sure that confidence is justified – have a third party review it and give you an expert opinion.

In the whole process of data management, one challenge arises that can’t be automated whilst using Marketo. That challenge is duplicate leads.

Duplicates in your enterprise data aren’t just caused by human error – they’re also caused by erroneous list imports from marketing activities. The consequences of these two bad practices are increasingly poor CRM maintenance or back end system integrations.

We have developed a mass deduplication tool which can be set to run once, or our preferred path enable always-on. In this way, helping you with your data governance and data quality processes will never be any easier! Best of all, we can clean up both Marketo and your SFDC CRM if connected.

Microsoft dynamics is coming soon for an incredible Marketo deduplication!

Discover how ShipServ reduced their Marketo database by 52%

With an impending renewal JTF Marketing helped ShipServ reduce their overall database size improving data quality and hygiene. Take a look at the case study to witness the incredible results.

VIEW CASE STUDY