Migrating from Pardot to Marketo: How to Breakdown the Complex Process


This is the second article in our Pardot-or-Marketo series:

Marketo or Pardot Part 1 – Which is a better fit?
Marketo or Pardot Part 3 – How to Manage Data for Long-Lasting Success
Marketo or Pardot Part 4 – Learn A Whole New Language


You decided to move from Pardot to Marketo Engage. Now what?

What’s next after you’ve made that decision? From analyzing what’s working to ditching what isn’t, it can be a complex process. But, take a tip from this PiPointer and things may seem a bit easier!

Jeff Coveney: Today, we’re here with Luke Wakefield. We’re talking migration, specifically Pardot to Marketo and everything that you need to know about those considerations. Luke, in the last episode we talked about why a company might move over from Pardot to Marketo. Let’s just say that decisions have already been made. Now what? What should a company start to consider once they’ve made that decision? 

Luke Wakefield: You really want to identify what’s working well in the system. You don’t want to completely break processes that are functioning well for your team and you’ll want to repeat the build within Marketo and then you also want to identify what’s not working. Because as you’re building in a new system, you need to kind of consider eliminating some of those processes, some of those campaigns.

And really when you’re starting fresh, you want to make sure that it’s identifying those problems that your marketers, those kinds of pain points. You want to make sure that the new system supports that. So that communication will help you begin the process of building out your program inventory. So all of your programs, you’ll want to see which ones you’ll want to bring over. So this running list of all your campaigns that need to be migrated to Marketo.

So you’ll want to start this sooner than later just to fully understand what needs to be brought over and really how much time it’s going to take to bring that over. I think people overlook how much is actually in the system. So getting that started. And then I would say the last thing, we could go through a whole bunch, but I’ll just start with these ones.

Is really seeing the field sync documentation. So whichever CRM that you’re going to be connecting to, you’re going to want to identify all the fields that you’ll be sinking and mapping from your CRM to Marketo. So this is an important step because there’s a lot of internal conversations needed around this and this, you’ll kind of see that there are data quality issues when you get into those conversations.

So it does take time and it does warrant these types of sit down and maybe one to two-hour sessions with some of your CRM teams to make sure that it’s good quality data and you can bring it over.

Jeff Coveney: Is there a good way to kind of archive some of those campaigns to keep that intelligence somewhere else? Whether or not it’s in Marketo or it’s someplace else being managed.

Luke Wakefield: So once you decide on your cutover date when you’re going to flip the switch from Pardot to Marketo, you can work backward to determine when you stop adding members. So essentially you would continue sending your nurture emails in Pardot until the switch over. So there’s really no gap in time. So those are the one’s things you want to think about.

And the reason why that’s important is it takes a lot of time and effort to batch members from their placement engagement studio program within Pardot. And putting them into their correct place within a nurture program in Marketo. So if they’re halfway through an engagement studio program, it’s going to take a lot of manual effort to batch them into that same place in Marketo.

Jeff Coveney: Was there an easy way to move some of those assets over, Luke?

Luke Wakefield: You can go into their API and export all of their different images and those URLs you can take, and you can consider building some of those or you can consider building all of those. So listing those assets out will help you see which ones you actually want to bring over.

Jeff Coveney: What should companies consider when they’re thinking about bringing over all those files and data from Pardot? Anything specific on the Pardot side that will make their lives a little bit easier?

Luke Wakefield: So once you start fresh in a new system, it’s also a really nice time to put in place a file naming convention. So the same thing’s going to happen with your programs and campaigns. So if you’re starting fresh, either create that new naming structure or if you have one in place, it’s probably a good chance for your team to reemphasize your name and convention, both with programs and campaigns and also with your assets.

So once you get that CSV export, you can take a look at the current filename and you can also put a corresponding column next to it if you want to rename it. And if you want to do that, then essentially you can run a script that brings that into Marketo with the new naming convention. You can put it into the design studio portion and you can even bring it into a particular folder if you already have that folder structure built out in Marketo.

Jeff Coveney: Well, thanks for sharing some of these tips on the initial thoughts around the migration. I think next we’re going to be diving into data. So thanks for this session, Luke, and we’ll catch the rest of you on the next session.

Luke Wakefield: Sounds good. Thanks.


This is the second blog of the Pardot-or-Marketo series:

Marketo or Pardot Part 1 – Which is a Better Fit? 
Marketo or Pardot Part 3 – Long-Lasting Success
Marketo or Pardot Part 4 – A Whole New Language

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