**MOOPs** Episode 2 - Jessica Meyers & Marketo + Imports - find out what went wrong!

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

Tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you in your marketing operations career. Hi, I'm M.H. Lines. Over the course of my career, I've hired more than 100 marketing operations One of my favorite interview questions to see if someone's really been in the marketing operations trenches is to ask them about their biggest marketing operations fail. Whether it's from complexity, simple human error, or technology outages, mistakes happen to every single one of us, and they happen a lot more than we want to admit. That's actually the reason I founded StackMoxie. We help people find problems and fix them faster and make sure they never come back. It's also the reason the team at StackMoxie and I are really passionate about I'm really excited and proud to be a sponsor of Moops TV by MoPros. I love that we can come together as a community and get better together as a community. It might seem counterintuitive, but a failure, especially on a big stage, is an incredible opportunity for you to showcase your leadership chops. I hope you enjoy Moops TV.

All right, Jessica, it's your turn. Thank you for being a host of MOOPS TV with me and B, for recording the second episode. Maybe it's the first. Maybe I'll air your episode first, but I'm really excited to learn about your MOOPS and hopefully others will learn from it too. So let's kick things off. Why don't you introduce yourself and where you currently work?

So I'm Jessica Myers. I'm currently the senior manager of marketing operations at PatientPop. We're a healthcare tech Company focused on single and small provider healthcare, like mom-and-pop docs and dentists, getting them more digitally compatible.

Very cool. Yeah. So MOOPs in that world could be really dangerous for folks that are like, you know, just trying to run a good business. So I get it.

Cool. It sure could.

And how many years have you been practicing marketing/revenue operations?

Oh, so I have been in this world for 4 years and some change. So nowhere, uh, not quite as seasoned of a professional as you, but cut my teeth, uh, right out of the gate as a consultant, uh, which feels like more than— you're like, there's like consultant years, like dog years. I don't know, one consultant year is definitely not the same, uh, I don't think, as one non-consulting year.

Yeah, totally agree with you. I think what you experienced as a consultant leapfrogged you, that put you like years ahead. I actually said the same thing in my startup life too. Like, if you're at an early-stage startup, your accelerated learnings happen exponentially. So dog years is, I think, a good point.

It's definitely like the deep end of the pool.

Yeah, without a doubt. So, uh, like, before we kind of get into it, like, where were you at when this move happened? I know you're only a couple, like, 3, 4-ish years in, but Was it like yesterday?

This was actually like, I think my first big mistake is the one I'm going to talk about. So I was probably like 6 months-ish into being a consultant. We, the company I was a consultant for, did a pretty robust training program. And then you started with like supervised client projects. And this was, I hadn't graduated totally out of supervised client projects, but I had some things that I was allowed to do unsupervised.

This is getting juicy. Okay. All right. All right.

So, so I was like bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about how much I knew.

Yeah, yeah, I bet. I bet you're feeling really confident. Yeah. All right. So what were you trying to do?

So I was trying to do a list import. So Excel is like the culprit, but the client in question used Marketo as their marketing automation platform, which That factors into the story as well. But, uh, yeah, some Excel and Marketo work.

Okay. And so what happened? Like, what was the thing that caused the moves?

Um, so we always did like a kind of standard data cleanup before doing a list import. So I think it was like a trade show list. I don't know, it was 2017. So, uh, when we could do in-person stuff, but clients have the trade show list and I was doing some Maybe it's 2016. I might have actually— anyways, doing some basic cleanup. So like proper casing names, formatting emails, making sure like states and stuff were generally aligned with PigList. And I think some light phone number formatting. And I don't remember which cell I did this on, but I was doing an Excel formula to the right of my data cleanup where you like double-click down and then you copy and paste your values over. And somehow in Excel I created a literal, and I'm not exactly Exaggerating, literal million blank record rows at the bottom of my Excel sheet, but had enough data in those sheets for Marketo to recognize that there were lines on the Excel spreadsheet when I went to hit import.

Oh.

So I, spoiler, created a million blank records in this client's system, and it would have been more than a million had I not caught my mopes myself. And wondered why my 200-person list import was taking 2.5 hours. Oh my gosh. And got to investigate.

This is good. This is really good. Oh my gosh. So, you know, all right, you noticed it. That's a question we love to be like, you know, sometimes it's us, sometimes others catch it. And then, you know, what happened? Like, what did you do to remedy the situation?

Uh, so first thing, um, was the list import was still going. Um, so like in Marketo, you get like this little notification in the upper right corner when you do a list import and it's like processing or whatever. And then you can see a link. And, uh, so I started the import kind of like near the end of my day. I think it was like 4:00 PM and I was like, cool, like 200-person list import of like trade show booth drop-offs or whatever. Like this will take 20 minutes, if that. And I like go to a meeting or something and pack up, try to go pack up and leave. And I'm like, all right, let's confirm that my list import like finished so I can write my client email. I was like, hey, we've processed your list import. It uploaded this many new people, whatever, whatever. And I was like, why the hell is it still going? Like, what's going on? So I alerted like the team and I was like, hey, I think something is— I think I did something like this list import should not be taking this long. So we go and we, before we stop anything, because we're like, Marketo can be kind of glitchy, go and pull like a smart list of recently created that day. And we see that it's a million people and they're all blank. Oh my God. So we stopped the list import was the first thing that we did. So that's kind of what I did is I was, hey, I think like something is wrong based on me checking to make sure my work is done correctly. And then I got some help involved on like, how do I confirm that something is wrong? And I got somebody to help me kind of walk through the confirmation that, yeah, you did actually create a million records. Yeah, you moved. Just isn't being really, really slow. So that was kind of the first step in remedying and acknowledging the situation. I think at that point what we did was confirm that they legitimately all were blank and begin a deletion of those records. I think we knew we were gonna delete them, so we didn't get Marketo support involved in like aborting any triggered person has created campaigns or things like that. But there was definitely the potential to like massively slow down the client instance.

Hmm.

But luckily the deletion of all of those created records, which we started basically immediately, helped fix that so that we didn't make their system broken for a week.

Right. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, that could definitely throw things for sure. So during this process, you learned a couple of things. It sounds like you learned how to go check potentially for is there a problem happening, which was the like, show me a list of everybody who was created today bit. Would you say you learned anything else during like this, this kind of outcome moving beyond the loops?

For sure. So one, I always check my Excel imports now. I think list imports are this, this thing that everyone's like, oh, they're super easy. Like you're just putting a list into the marketing automation platform or people who aren't very experienced think are really easy. But like, truth be told, I think the easiest way to screw up your good data is like accidentally importing over good data and things like that. So, um, another one I've seen a bunch is people like double-click a Salesforce ID field that ends in a 1 and they all like auto-increase or things like that. So I'm definitely way more cautious with my list imports, making sure that the number of people on my Excel matches the anticipated number of records. Um, and I'm Extra cautious when doing anything with a number in the field so that I don't end up with totally whack Salesforce characters and things like that. Um, I've helped with, when I was a consultant, um, and I don't do a ton of list imports right now, but when I was a consultant, like build like a QA doc of like, here's the 5 things you should check before you do a list import. Um, and I started that kind of after that big whoops. Um, and then like the non Yeah, uh, the non-process-related one was it's okay to ask for help. Like, I think especially when you self-identify your screw-up, it's kind of nerve-wracking to go to somebody who's been doing it a lot longer than you and say like, hi, hello, I think I messed up, can you please help me? Um, but it's, it's usually the right move.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I agree. And it's, uh, it's definitely scary, but, um, sounds like you've created process probably, uh, moving forward, at least back then and now at PatientPop, as you continue to build out your team and your programs, are you creating processes ahead of time and identifying new ones, I assume, along the way?

We definitely try to. That's the goal, right, is to be more proactive than reactive as far as process and things go. But, you know, we're not the hugest team at demand gen, so there are definitely some reactive processes getting put in place at PatientPop, but I try to work really close with our demand gen team and other stakeholders about things that are coming up so we can build out what's that process going to look like ahead of time.

Very good. Well, I kind of think you, you said you have a little bit of advice on, you know, someone who might make a similar mistake, which is ask for help, right? I think that's, that's coming through loud and clear. So the last 2 questions are really, you know, what would you say to someone who is about to make that same mistake or literally just made it today and they're like watching this for a sense of relief to feel like they're not alone? And then any other advice that you have for marketing and RevOps professionals in general?

So the first one is you're not alone. I think the prevailing sentiment is if you haven't made a mistake in marketing ops or email marketing, you're either brand new or you're not doing things hard enough, or you have a great admin who has spent many, many years and time putting these safeguards in place to make it so that you don't make that mistake. And if so, Buy them a beverage of their choosing and give them a big virtual hug because they're saving your behind. But I think, one, you're not alone. Everyone does it, especially in email marketing. It's so visible. And I have told this to people on my team, like, it's easy to see when you screw up a link or forget a link. It's a lot harder to see when a backend process goes wrong. But so everyone does it. It's not the end of the world. And take a deep breath and a step away and if needed, get help. Um, and then I think my advice for other professionals is my career has grown tremendously in the last year, having gotten more involved in some of the communities that exist out there. Um, shameless plug, obviously, for the MoPros, but get involved in a community if you're not already. The amount of information you can glean and like the additional help and support and resources, um, from the communities that exist is killer. And I think that I've Had another like dog year of learning, being a team of like growing a team at a startup after being a consultant. And the community has really, really helped with that.

Very good. Well, thanks, Jessica. Appreciate you coming on Moops TV with us.