Adobe Marketo Engage

  Consistently setting Acquisition Program (AP) is a best practice for data completeness and reporting (if you need a refresher on the importance, start here!), but it's possible to find yourself in a situation where this best practice wasn't always followed historically in your instance. If this is you, don't be overwhelmed. This scenario is not uncommon, and more importantly, it IS fixable. You can remedy this by backfilling both the Acquisition Program and the Acquisition Date fields.   ~~Sounds easy, but how do I actually do that~~ you might be thinking... Let's talk about a framework you can employ to accomplish this!   Understand the scope Is it only 10% of your database that doesn't have Acquisition Program? Is it a bigger amount like 60% that doesn't? You want to be clear on this first because if it's a smaller percentage, you might decide you're OK with it and instead focus your time and efforts on ensuring everyone has AP moving forward. If it's a lar

We are excited to announce the Adobe Marketo Engage Community Member of the Year for 2024! A big congratulations to this year’s winner: @sanfordwhiteman.      Sanford has shown exceptional commitment to the Marketo Community, by selflessly offering his expertise to assist others, writing his many in-depth, highly technical blogs, and sharing valuable feedback.   His contributions have greatly enriched the community and inspired others to get involved. Thank you Sanford; your work has significantly impacted countless learners, empowering them to grow in their understanding of our products. Thanks to your efforts, new members are not only learning faster but also feel encouraged to participate more actively.   As we step into FY25, we encourage Sanford and all community members to keep the momentum going. Let’s work together to make the community even stronger by sharing knowledge, engaging with peers, and inspiring one another to grow!

All email validation services fundamentally do the same thing:   look up the domain to see if it has an MX record if it has one, connect to the MX and pretend they’re about to send an email quit after sending RCPT TO, before sending a message body report whether RCPT TO returned 250 OK or not[1]   They can — okay, since I’ve built such services myself, we can — dress ’em up with “heuristic analysis” and “suspicious domain databases,” but the foundation is the same.   Here’s the log of a service hitting our corporate server to validate sandy+test-ssloptional@figureone.com: 94.46.244.65 [1DB4] 20:44:55 Connected, local IP=66.165.231.34:25 94.46.244.65 [1DB4] 20:44:55 >>> 220 icewarp.figureone.com ESMTP IceWarp Epos Update 1 build 17; Sun, 13 Apr 2025 20:44:55 -0400 94.46.244.65 [1DB4] 20:44:55 <<< EHLO douglas.email-validator.com 94.46.244.65 [1DB4] 20:44:55 >>> 250-icewarp.figureone.com Hello douglas.email-validator.com [94.46.24

Connecting Marketo to Zapier allows you to unlock a world full of automation and integration capabilities. One way to do this is by sending a webhook from Marketo to Zapier containing information about an event or person and then using this to trigger a workflow to leverage all of the 3rd party integrations and automation tools that Zapier has which Marketo does not.   If you want to learn how to set up webhooks in Marketo, see different use cases, and how to troubleshoot issues then check out the Webhook Quick Start Guide.   In this blog post I will show you how to: Set up a Zap in Zapier to receive a webhook from Marketo Configure your webhook in Marketo to send to Zapier Request this webhook from the flow of a Marketo smart campaign   I will use the example of sending information from a form fill in Marketo to Zapier so that a Jira ticket can be created and populated using the form fill information and a Slack message sent to notify people of the ticket’s creat

Welcome back to the Community Lens newsletter for April 2025! In this edition, catch the latest on-demand resources from Adobe Summit 2025, view our step-by-step guide on how to use the new email editor, and watch our product demo on the recently launched Adobe Express integration! Lastly, don't miss the several blogs published by our Adobe and Community experts, which cover topics on the classic features in Marketo Engage, backfilling acquisition programs, and Marketo Champion's take on the Adobe Identity Migration!    Highlights   [Adobe Summit 2025] Marketo Engage Recap: A wealth of new product information was shared by the Marketo product team at Summit this year. For a list of the top sessions available on-demand, make sure you check out our recap thread! Step by Step Tutorial: Try the New AI-Powered Email Editor in Adobe Marketo Engage: Read this in-depth tutorial if you are curious about how you can spin up personalized emails quickly and perfect them for your B2

Early February Adobe brought the new Email Designer to Marketo. The UI of this new designer is a much welcomed improvement to what we have been used to. There are lots of things in there to be enthusiastic about. The way fragments can be stored as independent ‘modules’ for re-use and the high level of flexibility in being able to lock content are already great features. Not to even start about the fact you can create your own templates without much in terms of html experience. Yet, there are questions to be answered with the current release.   So, what is available right now? In Marketo instances that have migrated to the new Adobe IMS, any user can be granted access to the new Email Designer. With that access, you can create and edit both email templates and emails using the new UI. You can do this inside Design Studio, in a separate folder from where your existing emails and templates live. You can also create emails using the new Email Designer inside Email Programs. In the ne

We’re building out an account-based referral program for a client. The program lets people invite colleagues to in-person events. It’s like “Forward to Friend” on PEDs.   An email preview needs to accompany the referral form, and rather than the huge time suck of manually creating thumbnail images, we realized the standard “View as Web Page” (VAWP) would be perfect if we could get it into an <iframe>: Turned out to be net-easy — though, as with many such projects, 10% harder than you might think!   Set up the HTML and CSS First, the <iframe> and some critical styles and attributes: <style> iframe#emailWebView { pointer-events: none; user-select: none; } </style> <iframe id="emailWebView" scrolling="no" tabindex="-1"></iframe> The HTML attributes scrolling and tabindex, together with those two CSS “event neutralizing” styles, make the <iframe> behave like a static image so it can’t be accidentally clicked or selected.*   Se

Missed Adobe Summit 2025? No worries! In our recent hands-on lab, marketers explored the new email designer in Adobe Marketo Engage, powered by AI and the Content Accelerator. This tutorial will guide you through the same steps to create modern, personalized emails quickly, perfect for engaging B2B audiences. We’ll take on the role of email marketers at Bodea Inc. Let’s get started with this quick, step-by-step guide!   What You’ll Need Access to Adobe Marketo Engage (log in via your Adobe Experience Cloud account). A goal: We’ll create a promotional email and a thank-you email for Bodea Inc.’s event platform.   Step 1: Create an Email Template Let’s create a new email template using the new email designer. Navigate to Email Templates [New]: In Marketo Engage, go to Design Studio > Email Templates [New] and click "Create New" button. Select an OOTB Template: After you give it a name “Bodea-Email-Template”, add a description like “Bodea Inc email template” and click “C

This blog post aims to demystify the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger and clear up what it is, why you might want to use it, and show you how to use this trigger.     Explanation   A lot of people incorrectly assume that the “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger will fire when a lead syncs from your CRM to Marketo. This is NOT the case. The “Person is Pushed to Marketo” trigger and “Person was Pushed to Marketo” filter will ONLY run when the Push Lead to Marketo API call is made.   As shown in the API docs the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request can be used to upsert a lead i.e. create a new lead or update an existing lead, with field values specified in the body of the request. This API request can be used for lead capture events e.g. when you have a non-Marketo form you can send the lead information to Marketo using this request.   Body of the “Push Lead to Marketo” API request The “programName” and “input” parameters must be specified in

California’s CCPA and CCRA require opt-in to share or sell personal data, so make sure you offer that setting alongside your existing cookie options. If you happen to use OneTrust, here’s how that looks:   That’ll store the setting in OneTrust’s internal database and in their local cookie, but how do you push it to Marketo when the visitor becomes known?   It’s undocumented but turns out to be really simple.   First pass: Decode the cookie as if it’s a query string The OneTrust cookie is called OptanonConsent. It has a predictable, standard encoding: exactly like a URL query string or application/x-www-form-urlencoded request.   Here’s an example OptanonConsent cookie value (yes, the whole thing is the value of a single cookie): isGpcEnabled=0&datestamp=Sat+Jan+13+2024+20%3A24%3A04+GMT-0500+(Eastern+Standard+Time)&version=202308.1.0&browserGpcFlag=0&isIABGlobal=false&hosts=&consentId=5c7582be-217

Did you get a chance to attend Adobe Summit 2025 in-person or virtually this year? In case you missed it, several exciting new features were shared at our product sessions and labs. Check out some of the recordings below, now available for you to watch on-demand. From Marketo Engage roadmap innovations to customer-led best practices on our latest enhancements, you're sure to find a topic that applies to you!   Session Title Session Description On-demand Link Marketo Engage and Journey Optimizer B2B Edition Roadmap and Innovations Discover the future of marketing automation and revenue marketing with our Adobe Marketo Engage and Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition product leaders. This session will unveil key innovations in B2B marketing automation with a focus on generative AI, data-driven strategies, and enhanced customer journeys. Our roadmap includes powerful new features that allow marketers to move faster with new AI-powered content, optimize workflows with deeper

tl;dr: if a URL’s query params all start with utm_, you do not need to separate them with &. Use the simple &.   Using & when it’s not required is harmless. But it’s not really best practice, since it makes links harder to build by hand and harder to read.   On the other hand, if you use params other than utm_*, might as well stick with &. Knowing exactly which names/prefixes require & is tricky, as we’ll see below. And if you use a URL builder that automatically spits out & that’s fine.[1]   Why you don’t need it with utm_ params & is the HTML-encoded form of &. You need in only one case: when the characters that follow the & would otherwise be confused for one of HTML’s named or numeric entities. This is not the case with with utm_ params because there’s no named entity &u, &ut, or &utm. (Named entities only contain letters, so once you get to _ you can stop worrying.) &n

Say you have an LP section like this: <div id="intro"> Good to see you back, {{lead.First Name}}. You can still benefit from intro pricing if you sign up before June 1st. </div>   The LP is public, so some sessions will be anonymous and {{lead.First Name}} is empty. Heck, even if the session is associated with a known lead, if you don’t know their First Name you don’t want to fall back to “friendo” or anything.   So the whole section must be hidden if {{lead.First Name}} comes up empty.   You can do this using just CSS, no JS required! First, put a <span> around the token: <div id="intro"> Good to see you back, <span id="name-token">{{lead.First Name}}</span>. You can still benefit from intro pricing if you sign up before June 1st. </div>   Then use this CSS: #intro:has(#name-token:empty) { display: none; }   CSS :empty selects elements that are completely empty, including whitespace (a.k.a. have no Text nodes) wh

Since people now live in Slack, the out-of-the-box email alerts sent by Marketo are outdated and notifications need to be sent to Slack for the most timely follow up from Sales and Marketing teams. In this post I will walk through the Marketo Slack integration where webhooks from Marketo are sent to Slack containing the message to be shared in a direct message or a channel.   If you want to learn how to set up webhooks in Marketo, see different use cases, and how to troubleshoot issues then check out the Webhook Guide with Examples.     Why would you want to Integrate Slack with Marketo?   Slack has become the dominant internal communication tool within may companies with email falling into the shadows, inboxes going monitored, and unread email count growing. We want to make follow-up from our Sales and Marketing team as convenient as possible a) so that they actually do it and b) they can follow up on these notifications as soon as possible.   Therefore,

Marketo uses exact string comparison (case-sensitive and accent-sensitive) to determine if fields have changed. Overall, this is great: otherwise, we couldn’t use enrichment/normalization APIs!   One side effect is not-quite-real changes to fields like Email Address (which teeeeechnically is case-sensitive but must be treated as case-insensitive) are treated the same as major modifications:   Likewise for case changes to First Name or Last Name, or accent adjustments like “Rege-Jean” to “Regé-Jean.” To be clear, it’s not that these changes aren’t significant[1] and obviously they must be saved to the database. And logging individual changes is harmless anyway, resource-wise.    It’s unnecessary bulk changes of this sort that are a problem because they increase sync latency. One of our clients had an enrichment service upper-casing thousands of values every day, only for SFDC to switch back to the original values due to permissions. What

The sheer audacity of 3rd-party form trackers (conversion pixels, enrichment services, attribution libraries) is amazing. “Don’t worry about telling IT,” they’ll say. “It has zero side effects, just drop it onto every landing page.”   Now if their code is correctly detecting and using the Marketo Forms JS API, that’d be reassuring. But in reality, most use a Marketo-ignorant — and for that matter, Marketo-competitor-ignorant — approach. They look for <form> elements in the page and at least try, to varying degrees, to listen for native DOM events (focus, change, submit) without disrupting the final outcome.   This approach can easily fail. Take a certain social media conversion tracker that was causing every Marketo form to submit twice with the same data: This naturally messes up all kinds of Smart Campaigns, and even creates duplicates[1] for net new leads.   How did they screw up? Here’s a trimmed-down equivalent of their code: htmlForm.addEventListener("subm

Anyone who has used Marketo’s inbuilt lead nurture programs knows how limiting they can be when it comes to customizing when emails can be sent and under what conditions. In this blog post I will show you how to customize your lead nurturing to allow you to gain full control over when emails are sent and under what conditions.   Before you start sending emails to your leads you should check out the Email Template Quick Start guide to make sure that your emails are looking amazing and that they are easy to create and modify so that building your lead nurturing cadences is a breeze.     Default Nurturing Program   The default lead nurturing program consists of streams that are populated with emails. A lead will be entered into the nurture program and assigned to a particular stream so that they will receive the emails from this stream.   Email streams in a lead nurturing program   A good example of where you would use different streams is for

Standard ask: “Can we ‘prime’ a form with selections based on the query string?”   That is, if the query string includes “GC5000 series” and “GC3000 series,” check those boxes automatically, letting the user change those selections if desired:   We sure can, with a few lines of JS! The question is what does it mean for a query string to “include” multiple field values?   The standards-based way: multiple params The standard[1] — and strongly recommended — way is to include the same query param multiple times, clearly indicating a multivalued param: productInterest=GC5000+series&productInterest=GC3000+series   Frustratingly, lots of people don’t know about that, probably because their URL parser is poorly written and doesn’t understand it. But since URLSearchParams is available everywhere now, that’s no excuse: const currentURL = new URL(document.location.href); const initialProductInterest = currentURL.searchParams.getAll("productInterest"); // initialProduct

Much of MOps is explaining why things that seemingly shouldn’t happen (a) clearly are and (b) with good reason.   Case in point: it’s possible for a Contact’s fields to stop updating from Salesforce ➞ Marketo and vice versa, while that Contact’s new campaign memberships continue to sync to Marketo!   Why? Because SFDC Sharing Rules, as shown here... … don’t pertain to the Campaign Member object, which as you probably know is the junction object/cross-reference between Contacts and Campaigns.   This can lead to undue panic, where you might worry Marketo doesn’t have access to SFDC fields, or Last Modified Date is out of whack, or other wrong turns.   If you right-click and force Sync to SFDC in these cases, you’ll see an error in the Activity Log about being unable to reach a previously visible sObject, while Added to SFDC Campaign comes through fine. Needless to say, if someone’s being added to campaigns you expect to use in Marketo, they should be made visib

Hello there,   I'm reaching out with an important update regarding the Marketo Engage Career Connect job board. After careful consideration, we've made the difficult decision to discontinue this service, effective Tuesday, March 20th. We understand that this news may impact many of you who have relied on this resource for career opportunities.   First and foremost, I want to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who has used Career Connect to advance their Marketo-driven careers. Your engagement and trust in this platform have been invaluable, and we're truly appreciative that it has been an important career resource for many of you. As we move forward with this transition:   We will be contacting all users with Career Connect accounts, including both candidates and employer profiles. Following the shutdown, all associated Career Connect domains will redirect to the Marketo Community.   If you have any questions about the shutdown process or need assistan

Hello, San Antonio Marketo enthusiasts!   We have some exciting news to share with you! After a break, we are thrilled to announce the official restart of the San Antonio Marketo User Group. And not only are we restarting, but you’ll also get to meet two of the current Marketo Champions at the event!   Join Us for a Night of Networking and Knowledge!   We’re inviting all San Antonio Marketo users to come together for an evening of meet and greet, networking, and Q&A. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, this event is for you. Bring all your questions, challenges, and ideas, and let’s tackle them together.   Event Details: Date: March 12, Wednesday Time: 6pm-8pm (CST) Location: Buffalo Wild Wings, 5860 De Zavala Rd, San Antonio, TX 78249 Enjoy Some Delicious Wings!   To make the evening even more enjoyable, we’ll be serving up some delicious wings and refreshments. It’s the perfect setting to relax, connect with fellow Marketo user

“We’re seeing duplicate GTM Data Layer updates for a single Marketo form fill,” read the trouble ticket. “Sometimes even 3 or 4 updates.”   My mind went to adding multiple onSuccess listeners. Sure enough, they had a setup like this: function gtmAfterSubmit(submittedValues){ dataLayer.push({ event: "marketoFormSubmit", form: submittedValues.formid }); }); MktoForms2.whenRendered(function(mktoForm){ mktoForm.onSuccess(gtmAfterSubmit); });   Spot the problem?   It’s the use of whenRendered, which fires every time form elements are injected by Visibility Rules. They had some VRs in place (Country ⮕ State dependency, business vs. personal fieldsets) so the form rendered more than once. Each render meant another gtmAfterSubmit() pushed onto the onSuccess stack. Once the form submitted successfully, they all ran.   The fix is to use whenReady. To be clear, whenRendered is key to a lot of custom form behaviors — we more often see people use whenReady whe

Curated by @zoe_forman & @ilona_buteneers    Introduction The Marketo platform is migrating to the Adobe Experience League platform, and with this comes an important change: the move to Adobe's Identity Management System (IMS). This migration will soon be coming to your Marketo instance. This move aims to streamline your experience and integrate Marketo more seamlessly with other Adobe products. This post will walk you through the key benefits, offer tips for a smooth transition, and explain the migration process.   Why Migrate to IMS? The migration to IMS offers several key benefits: Unified User Management: Manage your Marketo Engage subscriptions and users within the Adobe Admin Console, alongside your other Adobe products. Easy Switching Between Organisations: Seamlessly switch between different organisations. Single Adobe Identity: Sign in with one Adobe ID across all Adobe products and the Marketo community. Centralised Support: Access support,

Managing multiple email addresses within Marketo can be tricky, but it's a common challenge in many marketing automation strategies. Often, prospects or customers have alternate email addresses for different purposes (e.g., work and personal emails), and managing them accurately is essential to creating meaningful and personalized marketing experiences.   However, challenges arise when replacing the Primary Email Address with alternate emails, leading to record invalidation and unreliable reporting. To address these issues, we should develop a scalable solution to track, validate, and manage invalid email records efficiently. Common Challenges Invalid Lead Records: Marketo marks the entire lead record as invalid if any email hard bounces, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause. Lack of Email Tracking: No visibility into which specific email field caused the invalidation. Compromised Email Campaigns: Marketo’s standard email field is used when executing targeted camp

When we heard a client’s Marketo forms weren’t showing for users of AdBlock Plus, our first thought was they were embedding forms using the old marketo.com domain, which is blocked by privacy plugins.   But no, that wasn’t it: the forms were on Marketo LPs, not embeds, and they were using a proper LP domain. (Also, for the record, AdBlock Plus doesn’t care about marketo.com. Only Firefox Tracking Protection and equivalent plugins care about that.)   So what’s the deal? Well, here’s what you see in the console in Chrome:   Pretty standard, just means a 3rd-party plugin did the blocking. Looking at the AdBlock-injected console tab shows the deeper reason:   Now that’s interesting. See, the client is a media company, so naturally their B2B product is ad time. Their LP domain is https://ads.examplemedia.com, which fits the business.   Problem: AdBlock Plus, uBlock Origin, and other plugins use the EasyList crowdsourced database to determine what’s an ad. And th