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James_Zolinski
Level 4
December 14, 2018
Solved

Interesting Moments and CRM sync

  • December 14, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 7391 views

In order for Interesting Moments to work, does your CRM need to be synched to Marketo?

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Best answer by SanfordWhiteman

Thank you, so with the way the flow is set up, according to your recommendation for the trigger, I should be able to track and store the CSV style like your example above?

Will that history be included on the alert email that goes to our sales team? Or since our CRM is not integrated I am still only limited to last interesting moment. I believe that is what was said previously.

As for the velocity script, is this all I have to do:

Am I in the right spot for using a velocity token? Am I getting these my.tokens confused with velocity tokens?


(You should use inline images, not attachments; not all Jive clients can even see the attachments.)

Thank you, so with the way the flow is set up, according to your recommendation for the trigger, I should be able to track and store the CSV style like your example above?

You can check that quite easily: as you run people through the flow, that history field should be appended to in a consistent CSV-type fashion. You can look at the value right in the Marketo UI.

Will that history be included on the alert email that goes to our sales team? Or since our CRM is not integrated I am still only limited to last interesting moment. I believe that is what was said previously.

I think you're still confused.

When you use a Textarea as a history field, as Dan shows you how to do, you're updating a standard lead field (which you could output exactly as-is with the corresponding {{lead.token}}).  Calling it a "history field" gives it a clear purpose in your environment (it tells you that you should be appending to it, not overwriting it, at least for the most part) but in all other respects it's just like any Textarea.

Consistently structuring the contents of a history field is a good idea if you ever want to machine-parse that history field using Velocity token, or even if you want to extract your entire Marketo database and parse it offline using any other language. Technically, datetime - colon - activity type - comma - activity details - linebreak is also "consistent," but it's not a well-known structure, so better to stick with the tried-and-true-er CSV.  (Or if you're really adventurous, use a JSON format, which is even better for machine parsing but gets hard to read for people.)

Simply having the history field in a parseable format doesn't mean it automatically gets parsed, though.

If you only output the {{lead.History Field}} token in an email, no parsing of any kind happens.

If you have a Velocity {{my.token}} and it only contains the one line of VTL code ${lead.History Field} then similarly, no parsing happens (since you're in Velocity, you're able to parse it before printing, but you're just printing it instead in this case).

To take advantage of how Velocity can parse and filter in a CSV-like field, well, you actually have to parse it. That is, split on the line breaks and split on the commas to create "live" Velocity objects.  Then you can do things like re-sort by type of activity, filter by form name, etc.

3 replies

Jay_Jiang
Level 10
December 14, 2018

My understanding is you have to purchase MSI seats to get interesting moments working, so getting interesting moments working and syncing with a CRM are two separate things.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
December 14, 2018

Interesting Moments are a Marketo feature that works with or without a CRM link.

Last IM data may be synced to CRM or surfaced via the MSI package, but neither is necessary to use the Interesting Moment flow step.

Jay_Jiang
Level 10
December 14, 2018

I'm pointing out to the OP that if they haven't purchased a MSI add-on subscription, they don't get any of the interesting moment features - flow step, standard fields etc.. Something I recently found out myself.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
December 14, 2018

Nope. Just use the Interesting Moment flow step. Why would you think it would be CRM-only?

James_Zolinski
Level 4
December 14, 2018

Thanks Sanford. Just based on what I have been reading through the community about this topic, it seemed, in order to get the most out of IM, it needs to be synched to CRM. We do have MSI so I do see we have IM’s, but not currently running IM’s. We are looking to start using them and I’m trying to get the best understanding I can about IM’s so we can take full advantage of them.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
December 14, 2018

it seemed, in order to get the most out of IM, it needs to be synched to CRM. We do have MSI so I do see we have IM’s, but not currently running IM’s.

"The most out of" is subjective (and somewhat of a marketing ploy... not that there's anything wrong with that!)

IMs within Marketo itself are incredibly valuable for prioritizing activities on the lead and keeping history around for longer than they would as generic activities. ​Visit Web Page and ​Clicked Link on Web Page​, ​for example, age out after 90 days. Stamping interesting VWP and ​CL ​activities into IMs means they stick around for 25 months. That makes IMs well worth using on their own.

Trevor_Parsell
Level 5
December 14, 2018

Hey James,

What are you trying to do with Interesting Moments when you say "get interesting moments to work"?

When I used Interesting moments in the past, they were most useful when synced with CRM for providing updates on Sales related milestones, but you shouldn't have to be synced with CRM to access the functionality in Marketo.

James_Zolinski
Level 4
December 14, 2018

Hi Trevor, we are looking to have IM’s included on an alert email that goes to our sales team. So when our sales team receives the alert email about a new lead or scored so many points to become a SQL, sales will see either a small history of the leads IM’s or the leads last IM. This way our sales team would have an idea of the leads activity.

James Zolinski

Marketing Operations Manager

Direct: 602-601-5833

Email: james@helpinc.us<mailto:james@helpinc.us>

Web: www.helpinc.us<http://www.helpinc.us/>

Trevor_Parsell
Level 5
December 14, 2018

Hey James,

To have Interesting Moments included on an alert that goes to your sales team, you would not necessarily have to have integration with CRM, since that can all be done within Marketo. However, for sales to see a small history of the lead's interesting moments within a Salesforce page layout, you will need to have the integration in place.

In your alert to sales, I would also recommend including a link directly to the specific lead (using the lead ID token), which also requires the integration.