Adobe Marketo Engage

A client found a single recipient domain where every Marketo email went to Spam due to failing DKIM validation. (A bad DKIM signature should really result in the message being dropped completely, so sending it to Spam was dangerously generous!)   We knew the DKIM DNS record (m1._domainkey.example.com) for Marketo was correct, and of course were reassured by only one company reporting problems. But still, you have to track things down.   What DKIM signs DKIM signs the important parts of outbound SMTP messages: the SMTP body and s set of common SMTP headers.   If a DKIM signature is valid, the recipient knows those parts of the message were generated on a server controlled by the signer, which increases trust.   (It also works both ways: the signer can’t claim they didn’t generate the message. This is known as “non-repudiation” and is important in regulated industries.)   A sample DKIM-Signature header looks like this: DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/t

A client recently asked about connecting Marketo to Clay and we were dismayed at Clay’s official docs: Snippet from Clay docs   See how they recommend Request Token Encoding: None? That’s totally wrong, since: There are {{lead.tokens}} in the body, i.e. request tokens. The body uses URL encoding, indicated by the & and = delimiters. You must URL-encode tokens in a URL-encoded body. This webhook setup instantly breaks with a Company like Jack & Jill Construction. It’s kind of inconceivable that they tested it at all.   Moreover, when you actually set up a webhook receiver in the Clay app, it says the payload is supposed to be JSON-encoded, not URL-encoded! So their doc feels like a hallucination. You should actually be using a payload like this: { "first_name" : {{lead.First Name}}, "last_name" : {{lead.Last Name}} }   And of course set Request Token Encoding: JSON.   Why would you ever use Request Token Encoding: None? In 2 rare cases, None is cor

Knowing if the current pageview is associated with a known lead vs. anonymous is key to a lot of cool personalization.   For example, you can build the equivalent of “If Known Visitor, show Custom HTML” with a non-Marketo form. Or show instant download links if someone is associated (since clicks will be logged by Munchkin) vs. a modal form if they’re anonymous.   ℹ️  Notice I wrote “pageview” rather than “session” or “cookie” to be precise. A page will render in the context of a known record if it has the mkt_tok param from an email click, even if cookies are completely disabled. Of course, that type of association won’t travel to the next page, but the current page is associated.   The old way The typical way to do this is create a dedicated “association checker” Marketo form with Known Visitor HTML enabled. in the KV HTML block, have a <script> that runs your “if associated” code in the regular form, add a Rich Text with a <script> t

Introduction   Taking over a Marketo Measure (fka Bizible) instance can feel overwhelming. Whether a result of joining a new organization, internal turnover, or a recent reorganization, the core challenge remains the same: how do you quickly get up to speed on your new instance?   Instance Audit   The top recommended best practice for customers who inherit a Marketo Measure instance is conducting an instance audit. Instance audits allow you to assess the platform's effectiveness, performance and confirm objectives. In this blog, we'll highlight three key areas to start with as part of your initial audit: Instance Setup & Configuration Channel Configuration / Channel Mapping Diagnostic Reporting   Key Area 1: Instance Setup & Configuration   Understanding and documenting setup and configuration details is a critical step in auditing and managing your new instance. Two of the most critical configuration areas – Domains and Ad Platforms – are essential f

  Note: This blog is intended for users inside Marketo that have permissions to access the Admin section of Marketo   As an admin, one of the key aspects of getting your Marketo instance up and running is getting your landing page domain aliases (aka "CNAMEs") set up and generating an SSL certificate for each (or even an existing instance - maybe you have brought some new brands on board, for example!) Previously, this was a step that required a support ticket, but now you can self serve and generate the SSL certificate directly in Marketo's UI.   First, navigate to the Admin tab > Landing Pages from the navigation tree. When you click New > Domain Alias, you can now click a checkbox that says "Generate SSL Certificate." After putting in your other details (i.e. Domain Alias, Default Page, etc) and checking the box, click Save.         Once done, navigate to the "Rules" tab and you should see the name of your domain alias and verify that the "

AI is a powerful tool that can be used to utilize, enhance, or cleanup the data we have in Marketo. We can use AI in our processes moving forward to reap the benefits but since AI adoption in RevOps only started in 2023 what do we do if we want to process the large number of records that existed in our instance prior to the advent of AI? This is the perfect use case for the OpenAI batch API, which was designed to process large numbers of requests at once.   This blog post will use the example of bulk formatting numbers in your Marketo instance to E164 format to show how you can use Python code to:   Transform your data exported from Marketo into the required format Upload it to the OpenAI Batch API with instructions on how to process the data Download the processed data Upload the processed data to Marketo     Why use OpenAI’s Batch API?   The main advantage of using the OpenAI Batch API is that it offers a 50% cost reduction compared to using the

Creating compelling, responsive emails has always been a balance between creativity and technical constraints. With the introduction of the new Drag-and-Drop Email Editor, that balance is shifting for the better - though there's still room to grow. After spending some time with the editor, here are my thoughts on what it gets right and where improvements are still needed.What’s Working Well 1. User-Friendly DesignOne of the standout features of the new editor is how intuitive it is. You don’t need to be a seasoned designer or a developer to create beautiful emails. The drag-and-drop functionality is smooth and easy to grasp, even for beginners.   2. Quick Template CreationIn marketing, speed matters - and this editor delivers. You can build a fully functional email template in under an hour, making it a big boost for productivity.   3. AI Assistance for Content and DesignThe built-in AI assistant is a great addition. Whether you're looking to polish your messaging or refine y

Velocity is already verbose, but you’ve still gotta code defensively even if that means a little more code.   Crucially, in the Marketo-Velocity ecosystem, don’t assume code will only run in the context of a Person record. Prepare for person fields and object lists to be empty. This is true, for example, during asset approval.   Take this little snippet that adds a footer including the email domain: #set( $emailParts = $lead.Email.split("@") ) #set( $emailDomain = $emailParts[1] ) If this email was mistakenly routed to your spam folder, ask the administrator of the ${emailDomain} mailserver to allow future emails from info@example.com.   It’ll run fine when you preview by a Person or List, but when you try to approve you’ll get:   You can’t see the full error in the popup, but if you look at the underlying Java error it’s an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.[1]   And this makes sense! Because on line 1 the (overly naïve) email parser does a split() on @ and o

👋 Hi Marketing Nation Community,   Join us for one of Adobe’s largest digital learning events of the year! Experience Makers The Skill Exchange returns this August for its fifth consecutive year—bringing together Adobe customers, product experts, and solution strategists for two weeks of inspiring and practical sessions.    Save your spot and register today    Marketo Engage sessions will specifically take place on August 20, 2025. Hear from reputable Marketing Automation leaders and our Marketo Engage Champions, get inspired by their sessions on:    Opening Keynote by @bamukher ​ From MQL to AIQL: Building an AI-Powered Lifecycle Engine in Marketo Engage with @josh-17  Improving Data Categorization in Marketo Engage Using Fine-Tuned AI Models with @tyronpr   Unlocking the Full Power of Design Studio for Global Marketing Operations with @corey.bayless14  Experience Makers Spotlight: Streamlining

For years, we’ve leaned heavily and happily on AWS Lambda to stretch Marketo into other realms.   A simple Lambda lets you integrate with, say, event platforms, transforming their generic outbound webhooks to valid inbound Marketo API calls. Especially cool are “loopback integrations”: a Marketo webhook calls a Lambda that swoops back in to call the Marketo API, allowing juiced-up flows of all sorts.   Serverless architectures pioneered by AWS are perfect when a service doesn’t need to run hot 24/7 but must still be available and scalable 24/7, i.e. when a second of spin-up time after idling or increased load isn’t a problem.[1]   But the dynamic spin-down/spin-up comes with undocumented risks. One rears its head with newer (but not older!) versions of NodeJS Lambdas. To make matters worse, you won’t see the problem when developing your Lambda offline, only when it’s really running within AWS.[2]   A simple example A snippet from a Lambda that receives an inbound

As primitive as SMTP and DNS may seem, lots of stuff needs to work for an email to go from sender ⮕ recipient’s MX ⮕ recipient’s mailbox. Then even more stuff needs to work for a mail client to parse and render an HTML email, plus its embedded resources and/or remote images.   The good news: modern infrastructure is reliable. We don’t worry much about extended network outages or servers melting down. But that’s also misleading, since fault-tolerant infrastructure, plus the native resilience of SMTP and DNS, can disguise poor performance.   Put another way, stuff stays up, but that doesn’t mean it stays fast.   DNS is everywhere I recently looked into a problem with email image load performance for a client. Check out the animation below. The left side shows the expected load performance with an unprimed local cache.[1] This was happening most of the time. But sometimes they’d see performance like the right side: a noticeably staggered experience, more than twice as slo

Extending an earlier post on standard JavaScript ${template strings} on Marketo LPs, here’s how to use near-standard {{ variable }} syntax.   Say you want to use AngularJS to create highly dynamic LPs, or even single-page apps, hosted on Marketo. (May not be a common ask, but it is technically feasible!)   You might declare a little ng-app like this: <div ng-app=""> <p>First Name: <input type="text" ng-model="firstName" /></p> <p>Last Name: <input type="text" ng-model="lastName" /></p> <h1>Hello {{ firstName }} {{ lastName }}!</h1> </div>   Problem is, you won’t be able to approve the LP:   The popup doesn’t provide details, but the root cause is the super common {{ }} delimiters, which Marketo reserves for internal use: that’s how we deploy {{lead.tokens}}, {{my.tokens}}, and so on! Yet you aren’t using a valid dot.ted variable name inside them, so it’s a syntax error.   Seeing the error is good ac

One of the things that I find very helpful as a learner (and when I'm teaching others) is to make comparisons, or "translations" between new vs known products. In this case, I often try and use Marketo Engage as the anchor point.   Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition has a functionality to create buying group stages in what is called the stage model. The most similar translation to that in Marketo would be the lifecycle model and lifecycle stages. Below are some similarities and differences in their use cases.   Like a Marketo Engage lifecycle model, AJO B2B buying group stages are designed to track the progression of opportunities converted to customers - but in this case it tracks the progression of the buying groups as a whole, rather than only individual person records. You can use this feature to track buying group progression and identify the next best actions for buying group members to compliment your existing strategy. Though it is not a requirement to build and

There may be no code smell ranker than this:   That screenshot was sent by a 3rd-party form vendor who was getting frequent errors from their Marketo API calls and couldn’t figure out what was wrong.   “Does this look right?” they asked. “Nope,” I said immediately — even before they showed me any error messages.   See, even taking Marketo out of the picture, this is wrong for any API. If you see something like this, it’s frankly not suitable for work.   No way is that value correctly JSON-encoded It’s clear they’re not encoding since there are double quotes outside the template variable. A JSON-encoded string always includes the double quotes. (Simple JavaScript example: JSON.stringify("Hello") is "Hello" with the quotes, not Hello. You cannot add another pair of " around it.)   Let’s review how their “bizarro JSON” logic works.   They’re using Jinja templates, but any template language works the same way. Since there’s no filter specified, the property

Hard to put a number on it, but I’d bet 51% of Marketo users don’t realize a non-empty SFDC Type field doesn’t mean the record is synced to SFDC. Same with a non-empty SFDC ID.   That’s right: someone can have SFDC Type = Contact and SFDC ID = 003BLAHZAYBLAHBLAH and there may be no trace of them in SFDC.   Why? Because those fields come from the last time they were synced and will not be updated unless they’re synced with another SFDC record in the future. And that last connected SFDC record may have been completely deleted.   Don’t believe it? Create a Smart List like this:   You might see thousands of records. (If you regularly delete people who have SFDC Is Deleted = true, the number won’t be as high.[1])   This came up recently on Marketo Nation, when someone wanted to add the person’s current SFDC Type to certain alerts (e.g. type=L or type=C). This can be done via a Formula field:   N.B. Formula fields can’t be used in filters, only in {{lead.tok

Welcome back to the Marketo Community Lens - June Edition! In this series, we highlight the most impactful and exciting announcements that will improve your capabilities as a best-in-class marketer. This edition highlights some resourceful updates including an AMA on Advanced BI Analytics, a feature which launched on June 1st, 2025, an announcement on using AI-driven Predictive Audiences to revolutionize targeting, and a Self-Service Flow Steps blog for unlocking limitless integrations. Plus, Adobe's September security upgrade and Dynamic Chat's smart routing are reshaping how we automate. Don't miss these game-changing updates - dive into the full newsletter now!   Highlights   Business Practitioner Exam Guide: Transform your Marketo knowledge into certified expertise with comprehensive guidance for both Professional and Expert practitioner exams. The 110-minute Expert exam contains 50 questions requiring 32 correct answers, covering advanced campaign logic, database manage

Shout out to Andy Schneider for letting me brainstorm with him!   It’s been a question many of my clients have had, particularly with the announcement of Customer Journey Analytics B2B at Adobe Summit this year: where do I use Marketo Measure vs. other B2B analytics tools?   It’s important to understand that attribution is a specific subset of analytics. Analytics, particularly journey-type analytics, focuses on analyzing overall business performance, customer behavior, and marketing campaign effectiveness, while revenue attribution – such as that provided by Marketo Measure - specifically focuses on measuring the impact of individual touchpoints and channels on lead and sales conversions within the B2B customer journey.   B2B journey analytics involves collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about various aspects of a business, including customer behavior, sales performance, marketing campaign results, and overall business operations. Its goal is to gain insights i

As seasoned Marketo Engage users, we’ve built sophisticated lifecycle models, orchestrated complex nurture programs, and fine-tuned our segmentation strategies. But with the introduction of Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B (AJO B2B), many of us are asking: how does it compare—and more importantly, how does it complement what we already do in Marketo?   Marketo Engage: The “OG” and Proven Powerhouse Marketo Engage remains the gold standard for B2B marketing automation. Its strengths lie in: Lifecycle Management: Granular control over lead progression and scoring at a per-record level. Programmatic Flexibility: Supports nearly every B2B use case. CRM Integration: Deep native integrations with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. Tokenization and Personalization: Scalable personalization across channels, deep persona- and activity-based personalization B2B: Journey Intelligence at the Account Level AJO B2B is a complementary layer built on Adobe Experience Platform (AEP). It introduces ca

AppFolio has seen immense success when using product usage data to onboard and nurture our customers. Using engagement programs and the template provided here for how to structure a product data-driven nurture, written by my incredibly talented colleague @shannonmacq, (LinkedIn) you'll be well on your way to seeing similar marketing successes with your own customers!    Building product-driven nurtures is one of the most powerful options we as marketers have to provide the most relevant onboarding materials, give our customers access to support, and help drive product adoption in one seamless experience. Below is a template for how to think through your first product nurture to create the most tailored experience for your customers.   Stream one:  Welcome Message   Stream One’s objective is to welcome your new customers and help familiarize them with the resources they’ll need for success. You can listen for customers who have just begun their onboarding journe

Hi Marketo Community, @shannonma6 and I presented at the February 2025 Marketo User Group on one of our favorite topics: email operations. From improving deliverability to surfacing meaningful metrics, Shannon created this blog to give a high-level summary of the strategies and best practices we covered during our session. Building and Protecting Your Sender Reputation Your sender reputation directly affects whether your emails land in the inbox. These are some of the foundational steps every team should be following: Authenticate your sending domain: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are essential. BIMI can also enhance brand recognition. Warm up new IPs or domains: Start slowly, sending to your most engaged users first, and gradually increase volume. Maintain list hygiene: Remove invalid or inactive contacts regularly. Email validation tools are helpful for staying ahead. Stay consistent: Maintain a steady sending volume and cadence to avoid deliverability spikes. Avoid “no-reply” senders:

Self Service flow steps (SSFS) are a powerful way to integrate with third party applications and to build custom workflows that can't be achieved in Marketo alone. This blog post will give you a Replit repository that you can clone to get started and it will walk you through the code in the repository so that you can make it your own and bring SSFS into your Marketo instance.   Ok so we all know what a SSFS looks like inside of Marketo but what happens when the SSFS is executed in a smart campaign flow and the data is sent outside of Marketo? There is a server set up to catch all this information, process it, and then send the information back to Marketo to update the lead record.   Don't be intimidated by the word "server", this is just somewhere we have hosted our SSFS code so that it is constantly listening out for information sent from Marketo, ready to process it and send it back. This hosted code for the SSFS can be referred to as a "service".   I have seen

Is AI coming for my job? Lets face it, that question hangs in the air. In the world of Marketing Operations (MOps) – where we orchestrate the complex symphony of marketing technology and process – the rise of AI feels particularly potent. It promises automation, efficiency, and insights at a scale that seems almost... threatening. The narrative often paints AI as the disruptor poised to dismantle roles built on process and precision.   But hold on. Lets deconstruct that fear. Is AI really an extinction level event, or is it the ultimate leverage point? NYU Professor Scott Galloway breaks it down succinctly, with his characteristic bluntness: “AI wont take your job. Someone using AI will.” This shifts the frame entirely. It’s not about being replaced by a machine, it’s about being outpaced by someone who masters the new tools. The challenge isn't the technology itself, but how we adapt to it.   For Marketo professionals, adept at navigating sophisticated campaigns and wo

Here are the instructions to send a Birthday Message.  In this example, I am using the Date of Birth field which is automatically created when a new Marketo instance is created. It is automatically mapped to the SFDC Contact Birthdate field when Marketo is integrated with SFDC.  The field type is “date.”     You have to set up two smart campaigns since the lead token, {{lead.Date of Birth}}, can only be used in a trigger campaign.     Step 1. Create a trigger campaign with campaign is requested in the Smart List     Step 2.  Configure Wait Step in the Flow Add token {{lead.Date of Birth}}. Remember a token can only be used in a trigger campaign. Remember to click "Use next anniversary date" Set time for when you want the wait step to end. This will be the time the email will be sent out.     Step 3. Add Send Email to Flow   Step 4. Activate   Step 5. Next create a batch campaign with a request campaign in the fl

Dynamic Chat in Marketo Engage provides powerful capabilities to ensure customer interactions are guided seamlessly to the right agents at the right time. Proper routing not only enhances customer experience but also streamlines your team's efficiency. In this blog, we’ll explore the various routing options available and share setup tips to help you make the most of Dynamic Chat.     Key Routing Methods Dynamic Chat boasts several intelligent routing options to accommodate your requirements. Here’s a closer look: 1. Account Routing Account routing allows you to prioritize customers from specific accounts. For example, high-value or strategic accounts can be assigned to designated agents. To set it up: Go to the account routing tab. Add the domain of the account (e.g., microsoft.com). Assign an agent to this account. Whenever a visitor from this domain engages with Dynamic Chat, they’ll be routed to the assigned agent if available. 2. Custom Routing Rules Custom routing rul

Let’s face it—webinars can be a little… well, bland. But not on your watch! With Adobe Marketo Engage’s Interactive Webinars the power is at your fingertips in Design Studio to change the obvious default look and feel to your brand. Whether you're hosting a product launch, a customer Q&A, or a thought leadership session, customizing your webinar experience is the best way to extend your brand.   Why Bother Customizing? Because first impressions matter—and so do second, third, and fiftieth. Customizing your webinar room isn’t just about slapping on a logo and calling it a day. It’s about creating a seamless, on-brand experience that makes your audience feel like they’re in the right place (and not just another Zoom room).   Step Into Design Studio To get started, head over to the Design Studio in Marketo Engage. Under the “Interactive Webinars” tab, you’ll find the “Customize Webinars” section. (Good to know… These setting apply to all of your events and all workspaces, so