Marketo’s January 2022 Release: Advanced Features to Look Forward to

Marketo is one of the most popular tools for creating forms, lead nurturing, lead scoring, email marketing, and automation. With an extensive range of native integrations and efficient engagement programs, marketers use this tool to achieve most of the business goals. You can use it to reach out to customers with any upsell or cross-sell opportunities in addition to product updates. Some outbound marketers use it for cold prospecting too and acquire new customers. 

The expert team at Marketo comes up with new features every quarter to cater to the competitive marketplace, considering the changing dynamics of marketing communications. 

The good news is that the January 2022 release is already here with some exciting features, released on 21st January 2022. 

Let’s take a look at what lies in store for Marketo users in the first quarter of 2022. 

1. Additional screens in the next-generation experience

Professionals using Marketo will be able to get additional, refreshed screens in the next-generation experience. The feature comes with an updated design and usability enhancements that can be accessed with a toggle switch. 

• Landing Page Asset Details in Design Studio
• Landing Page Asset Details in Marketing Activities

2. Microsoft Dynamics Integration

• Better targeting functionality

Marketo users will be able to sync the multiselect optionset field type from Microsoft Dynamics. This will facilitate better audience targeting in Smart Lists and Smart Campaigns. 
You will be able to target through advanced parameters like products of interest, preferred modes of communication, and many more. 
The new sync will be compatible with Microsoft Dynamics version 9.X, also including Dynamics 365 Online. 

• Enhanced security with multi-factor authentication

To ensure better security, Marketo will support Server to Server (S2S) that will work as an additional authentication component. It will enable the application of multi-factor authentication, and all authentication and sign-ons will be based on OAuth. The advantage of S2S mode is that it eliminates the need for an extra license as it is based on Application User instead of Licensed User. 

3. Administration

Landing Page Header Security

Administrators will be able to employ Strict Transport Security and X-Frame Options headers on their landing page domains. Consequently, it will complement strong security requirements. 

Apart from these three updates, there are some premium features that will be released throughout the year, irrespective of the quarterly cycle. They are paid add-ons, and you will have to get in touch with the Marketo Engage representative for more details. 

1. Sales Insight

A. Sales Insight for Microsoft Dynamics 

Users will get a holistic view of all the frequent actions like email activities, web activities, interesting moments, and score changes for all contacts in the account

B. Sales Insight for Salesforce CRM

a. New Type Column for Best Bets
Use this feature to get instant insights with a new column labeled “Type” for differentiation between contacts and leads on the Best Bets page.
b. Salesforce Platform API Update
As Salesforce is discontinuing Salesforce Platform API versions 21.0 to 30.0, the Sales Insight package is updated with the latest APIs.
c. Updated Branding
The Sales Insight pages will be updated to conform to the new Adobe branding. 

2. Sales Connect

a. Call Outcomes and Reasons

Marketo will allow users to track the outbound efforts of the sales professionals with their new call outcome and call reason outcomes. The highlight of this feature is that it is completely customizable. You will also get access to new governance to enforce call reason and outcome selection for the calls, new governance to enable or disable call reasons and outcomes, and a new Call Reason and Call Outcome Salesforce Activity custom field to log data to Salesforce. 

This update is especially important for teams using the Call Outcomes feature in Sales Connect. Marketo has launched this update to centralize configuration to the Sales Connect application and impart a smooth experience to manage and create call outcomes. The users will no longer have to add the Salesforce task subject picklist to customize the call outcomes. 

b. Salesforce Activity Detail Customization

When a sales activity is logged to Salesforce from Sales Connect, you will be able to customize the information that is fed in the Salesforce task subject field. As a result, you will be able to capture more sales activity and task data in Salesforce. Currently, there is no feature to allow the admins to configure the information logged to the subject field. Therefore, the new Salesforce Activity Details Customization feature will allow you to customize the pattern used for your activities and establish a consistent pattern defined by the Sales Connect admin. It will also reduce the need for custom activity fields, thereby making the activity details easily scannable for the sales professionals. 

While these two features are paid add-ons, Marketo has also added a free functionality that goes as follows. 

AEP Marketo Engage Destination Connector to Create Net-new Leads
If you are using the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), you will get the feature to push net-new person records into Marketo Engage from AEP through the AEP destination connector. This will eventually help to maximize the database. While transferring audience segments from AEP to Marketo Engage, users within the segment that are not included in the Marketo Engage database will get added to it automatically.  

Marketo has also come up with some announcements for the quarter. Here’s a sneak peek into the same:

1. Marketo Sky will not be available on 11th March 2022. As they shift their focus on imparting the next-generation user experience, they will add Asset Expiration and Smart Campaign Priority Override to the mainstream experience.

2. Marketo Engage integrators got the functionality to submit to Marketo Forms with the help of a supported and authenticated REST endpoint in January 2021. They released the Submit Form API for the same. However, it had some technical issues owing to which they made some changes in the August release. Later, in October release, they released support for Program Member Custom Fields for the Submit Form REST API endpoint. As integrators will need time to check the changes before onboarding onto the Submit Form endpoint, they have delayed the blocking programmatic POSTs to the leadCapture/save2 endpoint to the January release. 

3. Marketo Engage Subscriptions will have “non-API only” users verify their email addresses after the January release. If their subscription is enabled with Email Verification, directory service authenticated users will get their emails verified automatically. Email Verification will be delayed in the following cases:

i.  Users who have selected the Login in Invite User Dialog

ii. Users with subscriptions that have a single email associated with multiple people within the subscription. 

Such users will be able to get the email verification in the March release. (Details in the point below)

4. Login in Invite User Dialog will be deprecated in the March 2022 release. As an implication, only one user will be associated with an email address within a subscription. 

Sunsetting of the Domains Without SSL Certificates

Call will fail for Marketo Engage Domains that have not activated SSL Certificates and https://.
In other words, these domains will sunset, and Sales Insight users will run into system callout errors on their Lead, Contact, Account, Opportunity Panels, or Marketo Global page. In case you notice this error, you will have to update your Marketo Engage configuration. Update Marketo Engage credentials highlighted in the Marketo Sales Insight Config section of the document.  

Wrapping Up

The one thing that Marketo users love is the regular product updates that they bring in. So, are you excited to try out all these powerful additions to Marketo?

We would love to hear from you in the comments below. 

Also, if you are looking forward to starting your journey as a Marketo user, our Marketo experts would be happy to help you. 

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