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A
Anonymous
July 30, 2017
Question

Scoring via API?

  • July 30, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 2206 views

Hi community

We are currently set up on Marketo, and are using it for just one part of our business (commercial property).

We have recently set up a scoring model and are wanting to score leads ONLY when they look at commercial property listings - not residential, or rural listings. The issue we have is that our website is set up with extremely generic listing URLs which give no indication as to what the listing is. The listing IDs are all completely unique, and follow no clear pattern.

For example:

Industrial listing: bayleys.co.nz/2301179

Residential listing: bayleys.co.nz/2301342

Business for Sale listing: bayleys.co.nz/1683677​

Rural listing: https://www.bayleys.co.nz/813154

I know that these listings are loaded onto the website automatically from a database - there are values in the back end that are common to every commercial listing (such as 'CommercialListing=TRUE'). My issue is I'm not a developer, and I'm not sure how to pull that information from the listing across to Marketo and into the lead record for scoring.

Has anybody done something similar, or able to help?

Thank you

Di

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1 reply

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
July 31, 2017

You don't want an API call here, you want a webhook (i.e. outbound request from a Flow).

We do exactly this kind of thing to decode random advertising IDs to friendly names, which we then stamp onto lead fields.

Of course a prereq is that you have to be able to access your database back end somehow. A direct connection would be ideal, but a periodic export to a spreadsheet could also work. Then you can host the sheet on your Mkto instance and read it via the 'hook.

    A
    Anonymous
    July 31, 2017

    Thanks so much Sanford. Are you able to expand further on this? I will need to provide guidance to the web development team who aren't very familiar with Marketo.

    I understand the use of a webhook to reach into the database and pull values, but I'm unsure of exactly how this would be structured within Marketo. Would it need to be a separate campaign, which would then request the scoring campaign if the value was 'CommercialListing=TRUE'? I'm trying to work through this in a logical flow, but I'm not sure how logical it is! :-)

    1.  Lead visits listing

    2.  Visit triggers campaign in Marketo to call webhook

    3.  Webhook calls database to see if CommercialListing=TRUE

    4a. If TRUE, this would then trigger a second campaign which scores, and stamps the listing view as an interesting moment

    4b. If FALSE, do nothing.

    Does that sound right, or have I missed the bus?

    Thanks!

    Di

      SanfordWhiteman
      SanfordWhiteman
      Level 10
      August 1, 2017

      You're definitely getting it!

      But I wouldn't return a boolean true/false. I would use a DateTime field. Have the database echo back the current value of the field if false, otherwise send back the current timestamp. The field is thus equivalent to ​LastCommercialListing​Visit , ​not a simple boolean HadCommercialListingVisit. Then you can trigger on ​Data Value Changes ​on the field, as it will continue to change, unlike a boolean which can't be re-set to true if it's already true.

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