What Is a Marketo Webhook – How to Make the Most Uses of Marketo’s Webhook Tool?

The term ‘Webhook’ has been known as technical jargon, which is mostly used by developers and coders. Currently, webhooks are rapidly becoming popular among marketers who are using this tool to gain better control over the performance of their marketing campaigns.

Webhooks come in handy for marketers in order to measure their campaigns using the right set of metrics and combination of technologies. One of the main reasons why these webhooks are emerging to be favorite tool of marketers is because these tools enable their marketing platforms to interact with third-party platforms and exchange data from other systems via API. 

What is a Marketo Webhook? 

Marketo is one of a few marketing automation platforms to offer a Webhook tool that empowers users to execute, measure and manage their sophisticated campaigns by integrating with other platforms. If used effectively, Marketo’s Webhook allows users to work both ways – for sending (or POSTing) data to any other third party and also, receive data from other platforms, in the same way, via API.

Other than third-party platforms, Webhooks also allow the ability to communicate messages and share data within cross-functional departments of an organization. Apart from executing Marketo campaigns which are synced with other applications in delivering segmented audiences with the right message at the right time, Webhooks also facilitate marketers to integrate and communicate with other teams in an organization to manage the workflow at the right time. 

Best uses of Marketo Webhooks? 

Marketo’s Webhooks can be used with any third-party web services if those can be connected via an API. Once connected, Webhook starts supporting ‘Get’ and ‘POST’ of data from diverse locations with a specific URL. Major uses of Marketo include:

• Creating ‘Cases’ or ‘Support Tickets’ for CRM or any other third-party customer relation software
• Deliver text messages to any prospect, targeted audience or customers.
• Search for current leads, accounts or contacts on a CRM platform 
• Check with and stop generation of duplicate customers’ data on CRM.
• Add data from any open source data points.
• Track “trolling” activities on website and stop such accounts involved in those activities.  

Best Practices to make the most of Marketo Webhook to improve campaigns:

1. Set up notifications to track inactive contacts & communicate with new ones   

Set up Marketo Webhook to get notifications when accounts or customers attempt login. Hence, Webhook helps Marketo users monitor when their customers are inactive for an extended period of time. When an employee of the current account you are handling leaves the organization, he or she may stop signing in with the platform. Moreover, the new employee who joins the organization to replace the previous employee could be unaware of the communications about your products, services or messages. Thus, the notification feature of Marketo Webhook will enable the sales reps or customer service reps to initiate the dialogue with the new contact to make them aware of your services, offers or communications.        

2. Address customers’ complaints before they leave 

Marketo’s Webhook presents marketers with opportunities to address their customers’ exasperation or complaints. With Marketo’s Webhook at a marketer’s disposal, marketers and customer service reps can get proactive to address their irate customers’ complaints and resolve issues before they silently resort to the competitors. Marketo users can make use of the CRM (such as, Salesforce) synced with the platform and create a case for customers who are not regularly logging in with the platform. Later, the customer service team can access the details from the CRM to pursue those customers. To address such issues, you need to create a Webhook  named something like ‘Customer Check-in’ and then, users need to set the Case to a unique record type and the organization ID to access customer details.              

3. Avoid duplicate contact details using Webhook

One way to ensure no duplicate data is present in the CRM or the Marketo marketing automation platform is to make good use of the Webhook tool. In order to solve the issue of duplicate records and prevent running the campaign based on those duplicate records, we recommend that you keep a regular check on the risk of duplicate data and merging data, when required. Using manual resources for such processes of preventing duplicate records and merging details can be erroneous and time consuming. Duplicate records can cause severe issues with the campaign. Inaccurate lead scoring, increasing cost of Marketo license, lessening email open rates are just a few of several types of issues that can negatively impact Marketo programs. Marketers can create a Webhook called Web-to-Lead that can help prevent risks of duplicate records, set the Webhook request type as ‘POST’. Remember that you also need to create a ‘RESPONSE’ Webhook and mapping. Once increased, users need to sign out and sign in with Marketo to verify if the RESPONSE is fine.         

4.  Remind customers of upcoming demo or event using Marketo Webhook

Do you have any upcoming product launches? Are you planning to release the demo of your new product, service line-up or service upgrade/update? In case you are looking forward to such an event, make the most of a Marketo Webhook to automate the process on the marketing automation platform. In addition to keeping your customers informed of upcoming events or demos, use Marketo Webhook and CRM workflows. To create an event token for your Marketo customers, you need to create a time-based Salesforce workflow calendar and trigger a smart campaign in the Campaign. 

Remember that in the final step of the workflow construction process, you can create the process from ‘Time-Dependent Workflow. Time Trigger Edit, which e.g. can be set as one or two hours before the start. Do you need preliminary technical assistance or tips to make the best uses of Marketo Webhooks for your smart campaign? Talk to our Marketo Certified experts by calling (408) 502 6765. Or else, direct message (DM} or chat with our experts via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.