MOOPs TV | Episode 2 | Mike Rizzo & Jessica Meyers

In the second episode of MOOPs TV Jessica Meyers takes her turn sharing how she made a mistake as a new Marketo user.

Watch the episode to find out what the mistakes were and how (if possible) they were resolved.

 

Transcript:

Mike Rizzo: [00:00:00] All right, Jessica, it’s your turn. Thank you for being a host of MOOPs TV with me and 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 moods 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?

Jessica Meyers: So I’m Jessica Myers. I’m currently the senior manager of marketing operations at Asian pop where a healthcare tech company focused on single and small provider healthcare. Mom and pop docs and dentists getting them more digitally compatible. 

Mike Rizzo: Very cool. Yeah. So moops in that world could be really dangerous, just trying to run a good business. So I get it. 

Jessica Meyers: Cool. 

Mike Rizzo: And how many years have you been practicing marketing slash revenue operations? 

Jessica Meyers: Oh, I have been in this [00:01:00] world for four years and some change. So nowhere not quite as seasoned of a professional as you, but cut my teeth navigate as a consultant which it feels like more than you.

There’s a consultant years, like dog years. I don’t know. One consultant year is definitely not the same. I don’t think as. One non-consultant year. 

Mike Rizzo: Totally agree with you. I think what you experienced as a consultant leapfrog, do that, put you light years ahead. I actually said the same thing in my startup life too.

If you’re at an early stage startup your accelerated learnings happen exponentially. So dog ears is I think a good 

Jessica Meyers: thing for traveling like the deep end of the pool. 

Mike Rizzo: Yeah. Without a doubt.

Like before. We get into it. Like where were you at when this moves happened? I know you’re only a couple like three, four ish years in, but was it like yesterday? 

Jessica Meyers: This was actually like, I think my first big mistake is the one I’m going to talk about. So I was probably like six months ish into being a [00:02:00] consultant.

We, the company, I was a consultant for did a pretty robust training program. And then you start. Like supervised client projects. And this was, I hadn’t graduated totally out of supervised plan projects, but I had some things that I was allowed to do unsupervised 

Mike Rizzo: juicy. Okay. 

Jessica Meyers: So I was like bright-eyed in bushy tailed about how much I knew.

Mike Rizzo: Yeah. I bet. I bet you’re feeling really confident. All right. So what were you trying to do? 

Jessica Meyers: 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 yeah, some Excel and Marquetto 

Mike Rizzo: work.

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

Jessica Meyers: We always did like a kind of standard data cleanup before doing a listening part. So I think it was like a trade show list. I don’t know, it’s [00:03:00] 2017. When we could do it in person and stuff, but for the trade show list, and I was doing some, 2016, I might’ve.

Anyways doing some basic cleanup. So like proper casing names formatting emails, making sure like states and stuff were generally in line with pick list. 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, or you like double click down.

And then you copy and paste your values over. Somehow in Excel, I created a like literal and I’m not 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 they were lines on the Excel spreadsheet when I went to hit import.

So I spoiler created. Have a million records in this client’s system. And it would have been more than a million. Had I not caught my [00:04:00] mopes myself and wondered why my 200 person list import was taking two and a half hours.

Mike Rizzo: This is really good. Oh my gosh. Alright. You noticed it that’s a question we love you. Sometimes it’s us, sometimes others catch it and then, what happened? What did you do to remedy the situation? 

Jessica Meyers: So first thing was the list import was still going. So like in Marketo you get 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 in. So I started the import near the end of my day. I think it was like 4:00 PM. And I was like, cool, 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 to my list. Import like finished so I can write my client email. I was like, Hey, we’ve processed your list. Import it [00:05:00] uploaded this many new people whatever. And I was like, Why else it’s 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, cause we’re like Marketo can be glitchy go and pull like a smart list of recently like created that day. A million people and they’re all building. So we stopped the list. Import was the first thing that we did. So that’s what I did as I was, Hey, I think 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 walk through the confirmation that yeah, you did actually create a million records.

Just isn’t being really swell. So that was a first step in remedying and acknowledging the situation. I think at that point, what we did was confirm that they legitimately [00:06:00] all were blank. And being in a deletion of those records I think we knew we were going to delete them, so we didn’t get Marketo support involved in boarding any.

Person has created campaigns or things like that, but there was definitely the potential to like massively slow down in the quiet instance. 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, 

Mike Rizzo: right?

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

Jessica Meyers: For sure. So one, I’m always check my Excel imports now. I think let’s imports are this thing everyone’s oh, they’re super easy. You’re just putting a list into the marketing automation platform [00:07:00] for people who aren’t very experienced thinker, really easy, but like truth be told there. I think the easiest way to screw up your good data.

Yeah. Accidentally importing over good data and things like that. Another one I’ve seen a bunch of people, like double-click a Salesforce ID field that ends in a one 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.

So it matches the anticipated number of records. And I’m extra cautious when I’m doing anything with a number in the field, so that I don’t end up with totally whacked Salesforce characters and things like that. I’ve helped with when I was a consultant. And I don’t do a ton of list imports right now, but when I was a consultant, build like a QA doc of here’s the five things you should check before you do a list import.

I started that kind of after that. And then the non the non-processed related one was it’s okay to ask for help. Like I think, especially when you self identify your screw up, it’s nerve wracking to go to somebody [00:08:00] who’s been doing it a lot longer than you and say hi, hello. I think I messed up.

Can you please help me? But it’s usually the right move. 

Mike Rizzo: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I agree. It’s definitely scary. Sounds like you’ve created process probably moving forward, at least back then and now a patient pop. As you continue to build out your team and your programs, are you creating processes ahead of time and identifying new ones?

I assume. 

Jessica Meyers: We Def, I definitely try to that’s the goal is to be more proactive than reactive as far as process and things go. We’re not the hugest team demand gen. So there are definitely some reactive process processes getting put in place at PatientPop, but I try to work really close with our demand gen.

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. 

Mike Rizzo: Good. I think you, you said you have a little bit of advice on, someone who might make a similar mistake, which is ask for help. I think that’s coming through loud and clear.

So the last two questions are really, what would you say [00:09:00] 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 rev ops professionals in 

Jessica Meyers: general?

So the first one is you’re not alone. I think that prevailing sentiment, right? As if you haven’t made a mistake in marketing ops or marketing, you’re either brand new or you’re not doing things hard enough or you have a great. Who has spent many years in time putting the safeguards in place to me 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 they’re behind. But I think one you’re not alone. Everyone does it especially in email marketing. It’s so visible. I told this to people on my team, like easy to see when you screw up a wink or a settling, it’s a lot harder to see when a backend process goes wrong, but everyone does it.

It’s not the end of the world and take a deep breath and to step away and if needed. And then I think my advice for [00:10:00] 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 shameless plug, obviously for the most pros, but you get involved in a community.

If you’re not already, that might have information you can clean. The additional help and support and resources from the communities that exist is killer. And I think that I’ve had another like dog year of learning being the team of growing a team at a startup after being a consultant and the community has really helped with that.

Mike Rizzo: Thanks, Jessica. I appreciate you coming on MOOPs TV with us.