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A
Anonymous
February 27, 2015
Question

Using Marketo to Round-Robin Assign Leads & Contacts to BDRs

  • February 27, 2015
  • 6 replies
  • 4720 views
I'm faced with a frustrating challenge to round-robin assign MQLs to our BDR team.

In our company, we do not differentiate from leads and contacts in process - both SFDC record types have the same "lead stauts" field that indicates that person's stage in the funnel. When a person hits MQL, I need to round-robin assign to our team. 

SFDC's round-robin assignment capabilities do not solve my problem for two reasons:
  1. the assignment occurs when the lead is created, not when it becomes MQL
  2. it cannot be used for contacts (same issue here with queues)
I am hoping that I can find a workaround in Marketo, since the system sees the person, not a lead or contact. However, I haven't been able to find any trigger autonumber capabilities in my research. 

Maybe there's a way to use program member ID? I'm really not sure so I'll put it out to the community to help!

Thanks in advance,

Amanda
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    6 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    February 27, 2015
    I would use the same Round Robin ID field in Salesforce and ensure it exists on both leads and contacts. Only SFDC has the logic to generate the number using the formula. 

    However, once that field synchs over to Marketo, I believe you could use it to create your own assignment rules based on the number via a smart campaign. 

    E.g., 

    Flow Step - Change Owner

    If Round Robin ID = 1, Assign to John
    If Round Robin ID = 2, Assign to Sue
    etc. 

    One issue you may run into is that a formula field change does not trigger the synch between SFDC and Marketo. You should be fine since the field will be populated when the lead is first created and so there is time for it to synch before it becomes MQL. However you may want to include a "Synch lead to SFDC" flow step and a wait step in your assignment campaign to ensure the Round Robin ID is populated before you do the assignment. 
    A
    Anonymous
    February 27, 2015
    Hi Justin - thanks for the response. 

    Unfortunately, it doesn't solve my problem. The round robin ID from the autonumber generated on creation won't be an equal distribution (i.e. what if all the odd numbered leads become MQLs and the even numbered ones do not, then only one rep gets MQLs). Also, autonumbers in SFDC are only generated when a record is created, the database we're nurturing will not have the number that the roundrobin ID is based on.

    Amanda
    Edward_Unthank_
    Edward_Unthank_
    Level 7
    February 27, 2015

    Hey Amanda!

    The short answer is that you can use a flow step for "Change Owner" with choices based on Random Sample. 



    How we trigger this is through a Lead Lifecycle Processing program, which basically runs all operational programs and operational smart campaigns within our Marketo instance. 

    Here's a snapshot of our Lifecycle Processing program tree:



    This is the processing core of our Marketo instances—everything based on your lead lifecycle statuses. Basically, every trigger you currently have in your instance of "lead is created" can be better organized into this Lead Lifecycle Processing program. It also helps enormously in organizing your instance so that when you're onboarding someone new, you can just go straight to the lifecycle processing program to know exactly what happens at every stage of a lead's lifecycle. 

    This runs off of a new field attached to both leads and contacts called "Lifecycle Status." That way you don't run into the problem of lead/contact there. 

    Each folder contains the smart campaigns associated with the processing steps once a lead transitions to a new Lifecycle Status. The first one (300a, in this case) has the original triggers that being the daisy-chained, requestable smart campaigns.

    Two types of triggers to begin the cascading: system proxies that are triggered automatically without your team's human intervention (such as "behavior score changed to be 100 or more"), and process proxies that are triggered based on certain field updates which happen through your team's human intervention (such as a human changing the Lifecycle Status to "3 - SAL" in this case).

    These smart campaigns are daisy-chained together—each smart campaign has a trigger of "requestable" and has flow steps of: (1) requesting the primary processing smart campaign, and then (2) requesting the next smart campaign in the process.



    Here's the specific smart campaign you're looking for, in this case "320 - SAL: XDR Round Robin":


    Random Sample in the same flow step as choices takes whatever percentage you enter (above: 33%), and 33% of lead will land in that choice option. This is out of 100%, so in the above example it's 33% to Jacob Wild, 33% to Edward Unthank, and 34% to Dale Knudsen. (Currently, you can't go into decimals for random sample flow steps, so that's as Round-Robin as you can get.)

    Lots of these smart campaigns in Lead Lifecycle Processing actually request smart campaigns in outside programs. If there's only one flow step that happens, I put the flow step in the Lead Lifecycle Processing program directly, such as the example above. When there's more than one flow step associated with a processing step, the triggering smart campaign in the Lifecycle Processing program begins the more complicated operational calculating program elsewhere. 

    A good example of this is having Lead Processing request the beginning smart campaign for a Traffic Director (which places leads into the most appropriate Engagement Program based on their persona profile, product interests, previous content downloads, and buyer cycle stage). That's a lot of decisions to make, so we start the processing in Lead Lifecycle Processing (for one consolidated view of what's happening), and if we ever want to deactivate the Traffic Director, we just deactivate that triggered smart campaign in Lead Lifecycle Processing. 

    I'm speaking about this at Summit 2015! Here's an abstract:

    The best setups in Marketo are robust and scalable, allowing you to minimize the amount of effort required to create marketing programs. This presentation will walk you through how to architect Marketo for a best-practice setup, using a lead processing program as the primary driver, creating programs with hooks that latch in, and allow you the most flexibility in creating programs quickly and with the appropriate amount of energy. Come see how you can create a well-architected Marketo instance that’s easy to use, easy to report on, and easy to innovate. Never ask yourself “what does that do” again, and never worry about accidentally breaking programs again.

    Hope that helps!

    Edward Unthank | Founder, Etumos

      Dan_Stevens_
      Dan_Stevens_
      Level 10
      February 27, 2015
      Now if only Marketo offered the "Change Owner" flow action for MS Dynamics CRM users, this would work brilliantly for all users.  We have a very similar setup as you, Edward, and it works great.  Glad to hear you'll be speaking on this at Summit (as will I in my session).  But the ommission of this key flow action makes it necessary for us to create band-aids on our workflows to ensure the appropriate marketing lead is being notified when leads become marketing qualified.  I'm off to create an idea right now...
      A
      Anonymous
      February 27, 2015
      Ya we round robin on MQL value data change within Marketo. Works like a charm. 
      A
      Anonymous
      February 27, 2015
      Hi Edward,

      We have the same setup (although our nurture assignments are not as sophisticated as your own). 

      I was aware of the random sample option but also reluctant to use it as it's not exactly even (although the distribution evens over time). So if I'm using random sample to assign between two owners, there's a 50/50 chance it will go to one or the other, and is not at all linked to the last assignment that random sample flow step assigned.

      I was hoping to find a workaround that was a consistent, even assignment between our XDR team but will accept the random sample option if there isn't another. (I've tried custom objects, operational programs, unique fields/formulas and I'm coming up empty).
      A
      Anonymous
      June 20, 2015

      We use the EzAssign app to round robin assignment when the lead becomes marketing qualified.  EZAssign™ - Adaptus - AppExchange

      A
      Anonymous
      June 25, 2015

      does this work for leads, and accounts? I need both.

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