MAP Migration – System Set-Up

This is Blog 4 in our series, “Digital Pi Dives Deep Into Marketo Migration”
After such great feedback on our Migration planning blog, we decided to dive deeper into each of the steps first mentioned there. Click on these links to check out all of the blogs in the series: 

Marketo migration has many moving parts which can be daunting, especially if you have a tight deadline. The good news is that with a little bit of prep work early on, there are several tasks that can be completed in parallel with one another to free up some time in your project plan. During migration, there are many teams who will assist you with the configuration of your new Marketo instance. It is important to engage these key stakeholders early, as often their tasks can take extra time to complete. While your inventory is being completed, begin engaging the stakeholder teams that will assist with configuring your system setup.

During your Marketo migration, you will most likely become best friends with your IT team. You will need to rely on their help to assist you with completing several steps (CNAME configuration, SPF/DKIM, Munchkin Tracking, and Whitelisting IPs) during your system configuration. Engage your IT team early on to give them a head’s up that you’ll need their support during your migration. Depending on your company’s IT request process, system set-up steps can take several days to complete. At smaller companies, it is possible that you are able to reach out to your IT person directly for same-day turnarounds. However, larger corporations tend to have IT ticketing systems and it can take several days for your ticket to be reached in the queue. “Expect the unexpected” and allow enough time in your project plan for delays.

Customize your URLs with a CNAME

You’ll need to work with your Marketing team to customize your landing page and email tracking URLs with a CNAME. A CNAME allows you to configure your domain settings so that your Marketo landing pages and email tracking links utilize your company’s domain instead of Marketo’s. Here are some helpful tips to help with CNAME selection:

  1. You must select different CNAMEs for your email and landing pages.
  2. Keep your landing page CNAME short and understated so that the URL does not draw attention away from the page itself. For example, ‘go.companydomain.com’ or ‘info.companydomain.com.’
  3. Avoid selecting CNAMEs such as ‘track’ or ‘link’ for your email CNAME, these are often flagged as spam.

Once your CNAMEs have been determined, engage your IT team for assistance with configuring your CNAMEs. They will need to create a DNS record for both the landing page and email domains that have been selected.

Helpful Tip: If you are migrating from an existing Marketo instance to a new Marketo instance, it is possible to keep your existing CNAME. This can be valuable if your customers are familiar with your landing page URLs and there is brand recognition associated with them. If you decide to keep your existing CNAME, you will need to coordinate with Marketo Support to select a specific date (near your go-live date) where they will switch the CNAMEs over to your new Marketo instance. It’s best to engage Support early on in your project to schedule the switch. If you decide on this route, you’ll need to schedule time with your IT team for the same day to ensure that they are available to make changes on your DNS records, as your account string and tracking link will be different.  

SPF and DKIM Signature Set-up

Once the DNS entries have been created for your CNAMEs, you will need to engage your IT team again to incorporate SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) into your DNS settings. SPF is an email-authentication technique used to prevent sender address forgery. Like SPF, DKIM is also an email authentication method. It detects forged sender addresses or ‘spoofing.’ Configuring SPF and DKIM is a quick and effective method to improve email deliverability.

Helpful Tip: Both sets of Munchkin codes (code from your existing instance and code from your new instance) can be on your website at the same time. You can save time at the end of your migration project by working with your IT team to complete this set-up task at the beginning of your project. 

Munchkin Tracking

Marketo has a custom JavaScript tracking code, called Munchkin. Prior to your go-live date, you will need to work with your IT team to add the Munchkin Code to your website. The Munchkin code tracks all person activities on your website allowing you to react to their activity with automated marketing campaigns. Anonymous visitors and their IP addresses are also tracked. The Munchkin Code is required to integrate your website with Marketo. Without it, you will not be able to track visits or other web activity from your website.

Whitelisting Marketo IPs

Finally, you will need your IT team’s help to add Marketo’s IP addresses to your corporate whitelist. A best practice for your marketing team to follow is to send test emails internally before sending out email blasts. Sometimes these test emails can be blocked by anti-spam systems that rely on IP addresses to verify that the email is valid. Whitelisting Marketo’s IP addresses ensure that the test emails will arrive in your inbox.  

Once these set-up tasks are complete, your IT team can take a break. It’s time for you to make new friends with your Marketing Ops team.

Users and Roles

Engage with your Marketing Ops team to develop a list of users who will be given access to your new Marketo instance. You can control the areas of functionality that each user has access to. Marketo provides several ‘out of the box’ roles with varying levels of access:

  • Admin – access to all parts of the platform, including the Admin section
  • Standard User – access to all parts of the platform, except the Admin section
  • Marketing User – access to all parts of the platform, except the Admin section
  • Web Designer – only access to the Design Studio
  • Analytics User – only access the Analytics (reporting) section
You can also create custom roles to match the organizational needs of your company.
 
Helpful Tip: While you can select users and create roles early on in your migration project, we recommend only giving Marketo access to the team members who are playing a direct role in your migration project. This prevents having unintended items added to your new instance, accidental sends, errors, etc. Plan to grant access to other users once your new Marketo instance is configured and they have been trained on the new set-up/configuration of your new Marketo instance. Typically, right around your go-live date. 
 
With your system set-up complete, it’s time to think about preparing your data for your new Marketo instance. Be on the lookout for the next blog as we take a deep dive into best practices for data hygiene in the midst of a migration. 

Your marketing technology experts.

At Digital Pi, we use technology to connect revenue to marketing efforts. We fuse marketing strategies, processes, data and applications to make marketing technology solutions work for clients' businesses.

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