Figure this. You’re selling a software that’s already fetched the attention of multiple stakeholders within a company. Irrespective of the length of your sales cycle, businesses can have different decision-makers involved in the final buy-in.
Which means, prospects who show interest in your demo forms and marketing collateral can turn up at different timelines despite being a part of the same company. This is where Marketo’s lead-to-account matching steps in by identifying the account or company they belong to, avoiding lead redundancies and duplicate account creation.
But to drive a quality sales pipeline, is this truly sufficient? Because, in Marketo, lead-to-account matching is limited to identifying different leads belonging to an account (read: company). Is it worth having your sales folks manually sift through the list? We’ll get to that once you understand how lead-to-account matching works in Marketo.
How to set up lead-to-account matching in Marketo
Before we dive into the lead-to-account matching set up, here's basic housekeeping that will make your process fluid – creating named accounts.
Creating a named account in Marketo
To group multiple leads into a single account or company, you need to create a named account that will fetch these details. There are two steps to this.
Step 1: Hover over the horizontal bar on top and click on Named Account. Under the Named Account tab, click on New and select Create Named Account.
Step 2: Fill up the Create Named Account pop-up with all the attributes that the list needs to satisfy.
Now, over to lead-to-account matching.
Automatic lead-to-account matching in Marketo
Marketo automatically detects leads that belong to the same account using fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is an algorithm that aggregates data based on the similarities between different variables.
The variables here are the leads’ form fields that enter Marketo and the result is the respective accounts they are matched to.
This is something you don’t have to enable manually. The feature is built-in. But it’s key to understand what goes on behind the scenes of Marketo lead-to-account matching.
- Marketo scans lead attributes such as IP address, company name, and email domain to match with them with accounts
- Multiple variations of the company names are identified and grouped under a normalized account name for each company.
- The matched leads and accounts are tagged as strong match and weak match based on their mapping strength and certainty. The matches can however be manually approved to ensure there are no redundancies.
This functionality is especially valuable for pushing your leads to the CRM you use, and avoid duplication over there.
Limitations of Marketo's lead-to-account matching
In terms of utility, Marketo’s lead-to-account matching feature is only an afterthought in your overall pipeline building.
Why? Simply because it’s not purpose-built for a smooth sales handover. Let’s look at some of the reasons:
1. The potential doesn’t stretch beyond demand generation and ABM
The matched leads and accounts can only be used for further marketing nurtures and ABM campaigns. It doesn’t leave the realm of demand generation per se unless it is connected to a CRM or sales automation tools.
2. Too much dependency on the data hygiene of your CRM
CRMs are clunky and data-heavy as they are. Marketo’s lead-to-account matching may not communicate well with your CRM or worse – end up adding a lot of tedious manual tasks related to quality checking the lead matches. To put things into context, even a CRM like Salesforce inhibits pitfalls in its lead-to-account matching functionality.
3. The requirement of external automation to trigger sales scenarios
Is it worth keeping your demand generation data siloed from your sales triggers? Certainly not. You would ultimately need the help of a smart scheduler or a lead router to make the account data from Marketo relevant for a sales motion.
4. Basic matching rules that pose customization challenges
The lead-to-account matching offered by Marketo is too bare-bones to take on customizations as you scale or involve sales folks into the flow.
- Instant lead qualification: Can your leads be instantly qualified for a sales call based on their attributes? NO.
- Instant meetings after form-fill: Can you display a scheduler and prompt a high-intent prospect to book a call right they fill your demo form? NO.
- Account mapping to the right rep: Can you route them to a specific account manager who handles this company’s leads? NO.
As long as your company’s strategy is down to matching leads and handling them exclusively within your marketing ecosystem, you can totally live with these limitations.
But the moment you look to ramp up your GTM workflow by bringing SDRs and account managers into the picture, the status quo of Marketo’s lead-to-account matching starts looking primitive.
The future: Sales-driven lead-to-account matching can power up Marketo and your pipeline
Marketo’s built-in lead-to-account matching is certainly a good-to-have for your marketing activities. But if you think about it, what’s the final goal behind your demand generation, lead nurture, or ABM campaigns?
We can all agree it’s down to pipeline and conversions. At the end of the day, your Marketo leads need to effortlessly make it through your qualification criteria and sales workflows.
Case in point: RevenueHero’s intuitive lead-to-account matching and routing.
RevenueHero is the lead-to-account assist your pipeline desperately needs
Having spawned out of the very pain that GTM functions face in building a pipeline of highly engaged and qualified leads, RevenueHero blows the marketing-sales disconnect out of the water – apart from a purpose-built functionality to perform lead-to-account matching.
Don’t just take my word for it. Leading SaaS companies such as Okendo have leveraged RevenueHero’s account matching, instant meeting scheduling, smart lead routing, and much more to increase qualified meetings.
Once you integrate RevenueHero with Marketo, you can:
1. Route new leads from an existing company to the designated account owner or SDR, who has maximum problem context and-–if lucky—the camaraderie of already nurtured leads.
2. Match your inbound leads to the right account within moments of form fill and qualify them instantly based on custom attributes and granular campaign-level details.
3. Avoid wrapping your head around the complexities of maintaining data hygiene in your CRM, with RevenueHero’s laser-precise automatic lead-to-account matching with Marketo forms.
4. Display open slots of your best available sales rep or account manager MOMENTS after a high-intent prospect fills up your demo request form.
5. Avoid mismatches between your Marketo campaigns and CRM data with error-free, granular attribution within RevenueHero.
Do these functionalities fall in line with your pipeline aspirations? If you think so, set up a personalized demo with us and we’ll discuss how RevenueHero can turn your aspirations into most attainable lead-to-conversion metrics – and ensure that you #MakeBuyingSimple for your prospects.
