The Marketing Operations Strategist - How I audit a marketing automation platform in a matter of hours

Hey! 👋

A follower recently started a new marketing job and asked me: how do you evaluate your new marketing automation platform instance? The marketing automation instance isn’t new, but it’s new-to-you…where do you begin? 🤔

As someone who has inherited or consulted on dozens and dozens of instances, I will walk you through my method.

Let me tell you more about it after a quick mention from our wonderful sponsors 💖

There’s so much to learn about a new martech or salestech instance…so, where should you start? Here’s what I do, and how to go through each step:

1. Setup Panel

Most marketing automation platforms have a setup panel readily available. Sadly, it won’t tell you everything that could be improved in your instance, but it makes sense as a starting point.

• An example: HubSpot’s setup panel. To access, go to your home page and look in the upper right.

  

• How you can get started: If you don’t use HubSpot, log in to your marketing automation platform (MAP) and look around on the homepage. If you still don’t see anything, either you’ve already done all setup steps, or you could search “(MAP name) + setup guide” in Google to see if there are other resources available. Lastly, you could open a ticket with your customer success manager at the vendor (Salesforce, Adobe, HubSpot, etc) to meet and get their take.

2. Sync Errors

One of the most important things a marketing automation platform does is send prepared leads over to the CRM, typically Salesforce, HubSpot, or Microsoft Dynamics. This is why I would jump over to view the current state of sync errors as a top priority.

• An example: Check out this how-to on finding and catching Marketo ←→ Salesforce sync errors.

  

• How you can get started: If you aren’t familiar, search around on Google to figure out how to check your system’s MAP ←→ CRM integration for any sync errors. If you get stuck, copy and paste the sync error reason into Google, a MOPs community, or your sales operations team to help determine the root cause.

3. Lead Journey/Lead Pass

Once we’ve diagnosed and fixed any sync errors, then we want to create some test records and send them through to sales rep assignment and follow-up. This will ensure we can diagnose and fix any lead-pass/lead follow-up issues before they balloon.

• An example: You might send test lead “Sara McNamara” through to Salesforce and find that the test lead gets assigned to the wrong sales rep. This is something you can flag to your sales operations team and work with them to fix.

• How you can get started: Think of every flow that a lead is supposed to go through, and create at least 1 test lead for each. Put those leads into a sheet for tracking, and then create them in your MAP. Follow their journey and see if they end up where they’re supposed to go, with the data they’re supposed to have at each lifecycle stage!

4. Field Usage

System fields tend to be created and then forgotten, which is typically a huge mistake. Why? Because when fields are left in a disorganized manner, it means 1. unnecessary tech debt (which field do I use for this new integration?) 2. user confusion (which field do I use?) 3. even more junk (I’m not sure what these existing fields are for, so I’ll create yet another field for my use case!). All of this slows down your users as well as your system performance.

• An example: When Sally worked at Slackforce, she set up a Job Title field. When John joined a few years later, Sally had left the company and he wasn’t sure what the Job Title field contained and was nervous to change it, so he created Job Role. A few years later, Jesse joined and wasn’t sure on either of the pre-existing fields, so she added a third field, Job Title 2. Now, no one knows which field is the source of truth and each field is incomplete across a variety of data sets.

• How you can get started: Export all of the fields from your MAP and CRM. Put them in a Google or Excel sheet and fill in fields like Field Name, Field Type, Number of Characters, Use Case, Default Value, Created Date, Last Edited Date, Last Edited By, etc. Check with other relevant employees and then, where applicable, move data into relevant fields and delete old fields.

5. Data Dictionary

Okay, I know, this is a long shot — but, it’s worth asking around to see if anyone has a data dictionary. A data dictionary is the next step up from a field audit, as it contains more information about how the data is used within the business and how it relates to other data.

• An example: Sara sets up a data dictionary (she could build it off of her previous field audit!) so that all teams can use it as a single source of truth for data meaning. The sheet includes all of the fields in the field audit, but also includes integration mappings, integration settings, and how the data relates to other data. There may be a visual chart included as well.

• How you can get started: Take the field audit(s) you completed and build upon those, adding as much of the above information as you can. Ask peers (especially those who have been at the company longer) to help fill in any gaps and/or historical context.

6. Automation

If you’re in Pardot, you’re going to want to look at automation rules and engagement studio programs. If you’re in HubSpot, you want to look at workflows. If you’re in Marketo, you want to look at smart campaigns. Either way, look at the automations in your instance…and, if you can, document them. What they do, how they do it — it’ll be invaluable to understand the automation that exists in your instance. Faulty automation is one of the largest sources of dysfunction in a MAP, in my experience.

• An example: Mariska goes to check her MQL performance month over month and notices that her MQL leads keep getting overwritten back to the Lead lifecycle status. She looks at the edit history for a handful of the records and sees that a workflow in HubSpot is the culprit..the entry criteria for the workflow is too broad, so it is incorrectly pulling in her MQL leads. She works with the person who last edited that workflow to narrow down the entry criteria and to fix her leads so they shift back to MQL.

• How you can get started: A lot of these issues will come up in your previous activities, like the lead journey tests, but if you can’t explain how the automation woks within your system, fixing any issues will be an uphill climb. If you understand how all of the pieces of automation work, you will know how to avoid data issues because you can make sure your work aligns with the entry or exit criteria for each automation.

7. Email Deliverability

Don’t forget about email!! Actively monitor your delivery rate, unsubscribe rate, spam rate…these are all critically important to your success. If you trash your email sending reputation, you’re, as the kids say…cooked. Eventually, the email service providers will start sending your emails to the promotions tab and eventually to the spam folder.

• An example: Jason logs in to see that his email deliverability rate is 95%, but then finds that the spam rate is 10% on every email! Marketing is hemorrhaging leads because of these spam complaints, not to mention doing longer-term damage to the company’s email sending reputation. Jason works to understand why the email performance is this way. He can leverage tools like HubSpot’s email performance reports to get started.

  

• How you can get started: See if your MAP has an out-of-the-box, instance-wide email marketing report. If it doesn’t, look through the performance of each email or export the full email results to do some data analysis within Google Sheets or Excel. Discuss your findings with marketers and run tests to see if your theories are correct and you can improve results.

8. User Permissions

I’m sure many of us have had the experience of logging into a new instance of a tool and finding that everyone has been set to system admin. 🤦‍♀️ While these stories make for funny conversation, they can become serious issues if someone is able to access customer data illegally…not to mention, a user could also accidentally delete or corrupt a lot of data. Make sure users have the appropriate permissions for their persona.

• An example: Maddy logs into Salesforce and finds that everyone else is also a System Administrator and can see all data. She realizes that this means all a hacker has to do is get access to one user, and then they can see ALL of the customer data for her company. She works with HR and relevant department heads to get a list of all folks who need access to Salesforce, with their titles — then creates personas that group in similar job titles and roles. Finally, she can create or adjust Salesforce Profiles and Permission Sets to ensure everyone only has access to the data they need to do their job. PoLP (Principle of Least Privilege) is a great concept to learn and follow when it comes to user permissions.

• How you can get started: Basically, do what Maddy did in the example above. 🙂 Google is your friend when learning how your system handles user permissions, and then you can perform an audit and persona mapping.

9. Integrations

If you’re following this guide, you’ve already checked your sync errors between your MAP and CRM — but what about your other tools? Marketing event hosting tools like SplashThat and ON24 are infamous for sync errors, so you’ll want to check those as well. Keep an eye out for any incorrect field mapping or overwrite settings and correct them as needed.

• An example: Sandra is a frustrated event marketer — she is driving people to sign up for SplashThat events on SplashThat landing pages, but she is not seeing those same people show up in Pardot.

• How you can get started: Understand how your system’s integration works, and diagnose the issue. For SplashThat, the integration issue is typically related to some kind of field mis-mapping or too much data syncing at once. If you go into the integrations tab in SplashThat, you can look at the sync errors and re-test to determine the root cause and solution.

10. Forms, Landing Pages, and Imports

Finally, audit your forms, landing pages, imports…if you can, audit every entry point through which data comes in from the outside world, into your MAP. You want to make sure that data comes in consistently, cleanly, and standardized where needed. For extra credit: set up dynamic lists or automations that will catch any import issues early on, alerting you or other admins so you can catch any bugs and resolve them quickly.

• An example: Joshua keeps importing Excel files into Pardot, but he can’t figure out why the leads are not showing up in the system. He thinks something must be wrong with the system, not his file. He looks in the Pardot error file and sees that his field values for Job Title don’t match the set field values in Pardot, hence why Pardot rejected these leads.

• How you can get started: Look at past system imports and error files to see where errors have occurred previously. Each system works a little differently, so use Google and knowledge base articles to understand where to look in your specific system. If you see a similar error happening across many imports and many users, create documentation and help train those users into the correct behavior.

These items are just scratching the surface, but they should get your creative gears turning when it comes to thinking about how you could potentially leverage AI at your job!

Learning resource of the week:

Helpful AI tool of the week 🤖

Writer is an AI writing tool that can automate product content, personalize audience communications, recast existing content, and do so much more…all to take the manual lift off of you and your marketing team’s shoulders. This is huge for mass-content-updates like those we often have to do during mergers and acquisitions (M&A)!

What I’m up to/what I’m studying

This week, I’m working on re-mapping my Trello board of learning goals for the new year. Every year, I do a refresh based on: 1. What I’m hearing from others out in the field, 2. What I’m seeing as high-demand skills in the job market, 3. Areas I find are in high-demand or that I want to become more proficient at for my current full-time job/consulting business. Now is the time to do your new year professional development planning too! If you missed my first newsletter and want to check out how I do my planning, you can read more here.

Oh, and FINALLY — in my next newsletter, I’ll be releasing my (paid) MOPs Career Course to a handful of lucky subscribers. 🙂 I want the first batch of students to get a close-knit experience with a lot of support, so this first cohort will be small.

Dear Sara ✍️

New to marketing operations? On a team of one at your company? Shy/introverted? Wish you could ask a question to an experienced marketing operations professional, without them knowing who you are? Here’s your chance! Submit an anonymous question to me here and I’ll answer a new question in every issue.

Here’s my answer to a question from last week:

First: Take advantage of all of the free training out there. Look at job listings to determine what kind of company/title you want, look at the skills required, and start there. If those skills include tools, Google “(vendor name) + university” to find free training. Some vendors even offer a free training instance, like Salesforce!

Second: Network, network, network. Join the groups I’ve outlined in this previous newsletter edition and be active! Most jobs nowadays are filled by applicants who knows someone who knows the hiring manager, not cold applicants.

Third: If you can, try to get as much exposure to marketing operations work as you can. If you’re currently in marketing or sales operations, this could be as simple as asking your manager if you can shadow or help take some smaller tickets and help out the marketing operations team. If you are in a role that is further away from MOPs, this may mean doing some side consulting or helping a friend at another company for free on the evenings or weekends. This may get me shaded a bit, but you could apply for the very low-ball consulting gigs out there….when they want to pay $20-50 USD per hour, they can only expect so much experience-wise. Regardless of your specific situation, be creative and see what opportunities may be out there for you.

Fourth: Prepare yourself for a lot of rejection. You may luck out, but most of us have faced a decent amount of rejection before we found that first hiring manager who was willing to give us a chance. Do whatever self care you need to ensure that you keep your spirits high and that you keep trying!

What else do you want to hear about from me?

I have a bunch of content lined up, but I want to hear from you — did you enjoy this issue? Is there anything specific you’d like to hear my take on? Please do reply to this email with any and all feedback! 😄

Til next time,

❤️ Sara