Migrating Marketing Automation Platforms from Pardot to Marketo and Integrate SiteCore CMS
The Challenge
Beckman Coulter’s marketing team had used Pardot for a number of years. It had worked for their small marketing team, but as the company scaled, it became clear they needed more flexibility than Pardot could offer. Marketing needed to produce and run email campaigns and landing pages, but executing these tasks within brand standards became a challenge as Pardot didn’t have drag-and-drop tools to help build these out easily. Reporting was also an issue; the team needed to be able to share campaign results, but limited reporting features forced them to rely too heavily on Salesforce, which fell short of their needs.
Salesforce, however, had problems of its own; there was no 1:1 field sync between SFDC and Pardot, so some data existed in Pardot that did not transfer. This contributed to the creation of multiple data fields in Salesforce that captured the same information – creating a duplicate effort and inconsistent data between the two platforms.
To address these issues, Beckman Coulter knew the next best move was to adopt Marketo, well-known for its power and versatility. But Beckman Coulter, already taxed for its size, needed to work with a company that immersed themselves in Marketo. Further, because the switch to Marketo would require a migration of data from Pardot, they also required a team who would understand the nuances of a successful Pardot to Marketo migration.
The Solution
While researching options, Ricardo Rego of Beckman Coulter met with Pam from Labcyte (acquired during the time), who had previously worked with Digital Pi. With her recommendation, Rigo reached out and engaged with Digital Pi
After taking some time to learn about Beckman Coulter’s current position, the Digital Pi team provided an upfront plan as to how they would handle the Pardot to Marketo migration. After working together to create a rollout strategy that prioritized key functionality first, Digital Pi got to work on the details of the migration, with resident Pardot expert Luke Wakefield leading the way.
Following the Gold Standard processes and priorities, Digital Pi began migrating the instance, ensuring that Salesforce and Marketo were setup with a best practice 1:1 sync between the platforms. Digital Pi also introduced FLEX templates and landing pages to gain flexibility of building emails and landing pages with ease while maintaining Beckman Coulter’s global brand standards. Outside of Digital Pi’s standard processes, Beckman
Coulter wanted to be more hands on in certain aspects of configuration. Specifically, Rego requested to take part in creating a custom Sitecore CMS configuration with Marketo the API, which was a big “win” for Beckman Coulter. Digital Pi also implemented other thirdparty configurations, including Gigya, Kickbox, and Brightverify – all essential to Beckman
Coulter’s workflows.
Digital Pi worked with Beckman Coulter’s budget and timeline, both of which were tight, to stand up a working version of Marketo in six months. “What was really impressive about Digital Pi was the implementation timeline. We had to get Marketo up and running quickly.” said Rego. “Digital Pi understood our situation and created a plan that prioritized a strong foundation that met our needs. The ‘bells and whistles’ came later. We purchased Marketo in October and were up and running in April.”
But Digital Pi’s service did not stop after implementation; the Beckman Coulter team had little to no Marketo knowledge to work from. Digital Pi took on educating 40 people in the first round of training and provided a deck that could later be referenced and used in future
training sessions. Then, as Beckman Coulter started using Marketo themselves, Digital Pi continued to provide excellent service with efficient ticket response, prioritizing items that were urgent. “Whenever you introduce a new technology, there are snags,” said Rego. “But Claudia and Luke were great at understanding our priorities. When we would submit
tickets, they were handled according to their urgency. I never felt like when we had a larger issue it would just go to the ‘back of the line.”
Key custom programs at Resolve by Digital Pi include:
- Marketo Program Channels/Success configuration
- Program templates
- Global Forms migration from Pardot to Marketo
- Nurture/Engagement Programs/Emails migration from Pardot to Marketo
- Lead Scoring
- Flex Email and Landing Page Templates
- ARB reports for FT and MT revenue attribution
Results
After working with Digital Pi, the Resolve Systems marketing team has been able to work more efficiently, as they can rely upon the automated workflows configured by Digital Pi in Marketo.
Lead sourcing smart campaigns have both saved manual labor and created a complete and reliable set of Source Data. Resolve is also operating with reliable SQLs and MQLs for the first time.
Gold Standard implementation in Marketo has also allowed the marketing team to be very agile in how each quarter is planned. As a result, Marketing has an excellent reputation.“Since Digital Pi has implemented Gold Standard processes in our Marketo instance, our Marketing team has enjoyed an excellent reputation within the company,” Ames noted. “The Digital Pi team has created a system that meets our needs and in many ways helps Marketo regulate itself! It feels good to be able to confidently report and make decisions based on accurate attribution and pipeline data.”
Why Digital Pi
Beckman Coulter found a partnership with Digital Pi to be ideal because of the depth of their Marketo knowledge as well as their Pardot knowledge. This expertise made custom integrations, like the Sitecore CMS configuration with Marketo, a reality – while allowing Beckman Coulter to be a part of the process. “On top of the major benefit of having a best practice instance of Marketo, and all that comes along with that, working with Digital Pi gave us the opportunity to have our Marketo totally tailored to our needs. We’ve integrated with Kickbox, Brightverify, and Gigya, and our API integration with Sitecore is really incredible.” Finally, the Digital Pi team made sure to educate Beckman Coulter on Marketo’s functionality, providing full visibility into the features and workflows they had implemented. Beckman Coulter now has a well-trained team and a template for future success, running a best-in-class Marketo instance.