LinkedIn Integration linkedin-integration

Overview overview

The Marketo Measure integration with LinkedIn comes in two parts:

Sponsored Content: The Sponsored Content integration allows Marketo Measure to tag destination URLs on LinkedIn ads, which ultimately allows Marketo Measure to follow a user through their entire touchpoint journey and map the activity back to the specific LinkedIn Campaign and Creative. This provides insights to customers about the ROI of their LinkedIn activity.

Lead Gen Forms: Through the integration with LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms, Marketo Measure gains insight into forms that have been submitted through the LinkedIn platform. These form fills are matched against leads from your CRM or Marketo Engage instance so that they’re eligible for attribution. With insight into the Campaign, Creative, and Form that helped generate the forms, teams can now further optimize their LinkedIn marketing and ad spend.

Availability availability

Available to all users.

Requirements requirements

Campaign Manager Roles

For Marketo Measure to be able to download Ads Data & Ads cost data, you must have one of the following roles in the Campaign Manager:

Learn more: User Roles and Functions in Campaign Manager.

Paid Media Admin Roles

For Marketo Measure to be able to Create/Update Sponsored Creatives, you must have one of the following Paid Media Admin roles:

Learn more: LinkedIn Page Admin Roles.

There are other LinkedIn roles which we do not require for our integration. These roles are often mistaken for the required roles, so note there is a difference!

Page Admin Roles

For Marketo Measure to be able to download/integrate leads from lead gen forms, you must have the following Page Admin role:

Learn more: LinkedIn Page Admin Roles.

LinkedIn Ad Types linkedin-ad-types

Marketo Measure will support:

Sponsored Content: Sponsored Content allows you to deliver content to the LinkedIn feed of members beyond those who are following your company. Sponsored Content can be targeted to a specific audience and can help advertisers reach LinkedIn members wherever and whenever they are engaging on the LinkedIn platform across desktop, mobile, and tablet. Sponsored Content with Lead Gen Forms are supported.

The types of Sponsored Content ad formats supported by Marketo Measure are Single Image Ads and Video Ads (through Lead Gen Forms). Due to the complexity of the schema, we do not support Carousel ads.

Marketo Measure does not support Sponsored Messaging, Text Ads, or Dynamic Ads.

How It Works: Sponsored Content how-it-works-sponsored-content

LinkedIn’s Unique Auto-Tagging Requirements

Marketo Measure can help track your LinkedIn campaign performance by auto-tagging your landing pages.

Marketo Measure will search for creatives with a unique LinkedIn Share and add a ?_bl={creativeId} parameter to the end of it.

Copying Shares

With this Marketo Measure/LinkedIn Integration, we ask that customers do not copy/clone/duplicate existing Creatives. If Shares are found and are detected to only be used on one Creative, Marketo Measure can tag the Share as is without having to recreate any Creatives or Shares and all ads history (impressions, clicks, shares) will remain.

As soon as a Share is found to be shared across multiple Creatives, Marketo Measure will have to run through a process of pausing, copying, and re-tagging in order to make a unique set. Marketo Measure will pause and archive live creatives and therefore erase Ad History including impressions, clicks, and social shares in order to auto-tag everything properly.

Moving forward, Marketo Measure recommends that you do not duplicate any LinkedIn Shares and keep all creatives and shares as unique as possible so that we can simply add our tracking without having to erase Ad History.

Shortened URLs

The reason for the extra step is because LinkedIn allows destination URLs to be a shortened URL (bit.ly, goog.le, etc.,), which means Marketo Measure doesn’t see the long, resolved URL and Marketo Measure needs to add tracking parameters to a resolved URL. In order to get around that issue, Marketo Measure looks for shortened URLs prior to re-creating an ad, expands the URL, then creates the new ad with the resolved URL and all of its parameters, allowing Marketo Measure to add tags. Creating a new ad will erase ads history (impressions, clicks, shares), hence the need for permission to tag shortened URLs.

If you heavily use shortened URLs, this could severely impact your creatives. We recommend that you no longer use shortened URLs so that Marketo Measure can tag the landing pages without having to create new ads and erase Ad History.

The Process

Let’s start with some examples. Let’s say we have…

Creative A : Share 123
Creative B : Share 234
Creative C : Share 234
Creative D : Share 234

1) Marketo Measure will first look through all Campaigns, Creatives and Shares with an “Active” status. Marketo Measure will not tag paused, archived, or cancelled ads. If an ad was paused, then set to active, we will tag it once it’s active again. If we can find a unique Share, meaning it’s not used across multiple Creatives or Campaigns (e.g., Creative A : Share 123), Marketo Measure will add our custom parameter >> ?_bl={creativeId} to the share URL.

2) Now if the Share has been shared and lost its uniqueness (for instance, Creative B : Share 234 and Creative C : Share 234 and Creative D : Share 234), Marketo Measure will pause and archive all similar creatives (which would be Creative B, Creative C, and Creative D).

3) Marketo Measure will create 3 new creatives, Creative E, Creative F, and Creative G, that copies the content of Creative B, which is archived.

4) Marketo Measure will also create 3 new shares, Share 345, Share 456, and Share 567, that copies the content of Share 234, except it will have its own unique ?_bl tagging.

5) Marketo Measure will have to regularly check that Shares do not get shared and if they do, we will restart the process at step 2 above.

How It Works: Lead Gen Forms how-it-works-lead-gen-forms

LinkedIn’s Unique Auto-Tagging Requirements

Marketo Measure can help track your LinkedIn campaign performance by auto-tagging your landing pages.

Marketo Measure will search for creatives with a unique LinkedIn Share and add a ?_bl={creativeId} parameter to the end of it.

The Process

Through LinkedIn’s Ad Form API and Ad Form Response API, we are able to gather form submission data for an ad account and associate the email address to a lead from the CRM or Marketo.

LinkedIn forms may contain multiple email address. When we download form responses, we will look for email addresses with the following priority: Work email, Email address (primary form field), or custom fields with a valid email value.

Regardless of Campaign or Creative status, all Form Responses will result in a touchpoint. Marketo Measure has a 90-day lookback restriction, so Marketo Measure is unable to access form responses older than 90 days, but the longer that the Marketo Measure and LinkedIn integration is enabled, the more Lead Gen Form touchpoints will be visible through Marketo Measure.

Tracking Lead Gen Forms in CRM or Marketo

Before the Marketo Measure and LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Integration existed, it was common practice for customers to push their form submissions to a Marketo Program and/or CRM Campaign to track the forms and receive attribution on those activities. Once the Lead Gen Forms setting is enabled, we want to make sure those form submissions aren’t double counted. Check the following:

Touchpoint Details touchpoint-details

After Marketo Measure has successfully tagged your landing page on the LinkedIn creative, you are able to view the resolved ads data on the touchpoint. Here’s the mapping of data values that you should expect to see:

* “Ad Destination URL” field is only populated for Sponsored Content. It is not populated for Lead Gen Forms.

Costs costs

Because Marketo Measure has a direct integration with LinkedIn, we download the recorded spend for each Campaign and Creative each day. There is no need for a customer to report on LinkedIn spend within the Marketo Measure application anymore.

As with other ad integrations, Marketo Measure has defined a marketing channel rule to place all LinkedIn campaigns, creatives, and cost. To use the rule, the customer will want to insert a new row for their Paid LinkedIn efforts. It can be a new or existing channel. In the Referrer column, use the definition “[LinkedIn Paid]” which Marketo Measure has defined as any touchpoint with a Marketo Measure tag.

Marketo Measure Discover marketo-measure-discover

There have been some enhancements made to Marketo Measure Discover to support Lead Gen Forms reporting.

Paid Media Board

Lead Gen Forms tile: New tile that includes count of LinkedIn form fills. Drill through of this count will display Activity Id, Form Date, Form Name, and Email Address.

Engagement Path Board

Journey of Events: Includes the “Activity” event type and medium “Lead Gen Form” for forms that come through the integration. Drill through view includes Campaign, Creative, and Form details.

Sponsored Content FAQ sponsored-content-faq

What is a Dark Share?

A dark share is a post where it is never posted on the company page and immediately gets created and directly added as a Creative. So that Marketo Measure-created Creatives don’t appear at the top of a company’s page and get promoted again, dark shares are used so that it can launch behind the scenes.

What Statuses does Marketo Measure actually tag?

There are four different statuses on a LinkedIn Campaign and Creative: Active, Paused, Archived, and Cancelled. We only tag Campaigns and Creatives that are Active. Tagging other statuses set them to Active again. Marketo Measure will not tag Paused, Archived or Cancelled Campaigns or Creatives, but will resume tagging if the status changes to Active.

What is the value that Marketo Measure is using to tag?

At the end of the destination URL, Marketo Measure is adding the parameter &_bl={creativeId}, where the {creativeId} is the Creative Id from LinkedIn. With the Creative Id, Marketo Measure can also determine the Campaign Id since LinkedIn has a pretty basic ads structure since each Creative can only belong to one Campaign.

What happens with my old creative once Marketo Measure creates a new version of it?

When Marketo Measure recreates a Share and places it in a new Creative, the old Creative get archived. This is also why Marketo Measure will not tag archived Campaigns or Creatives - it would otherwise loop with Marketo Measure trying to tag it indefinitely.

Why doesn’t the destination URL of the ad created match my original ad?

Marketo Measure needs to add the tracking parameters to a resolved URL, but the URL that is presented in the API can potentially be a shortened URL without all parameters present. In order to get around that issue, Marketo Measure looks for shortened URLs prior to re-creating an add, resolves it, then creates the new ad with the resolved URL and all of its parameters, allowing Marketo Measure to add tags.

Are you tagging all of my ads? I don’t see the bl parameter on all of my landing pages?

We have observed that some marketers will put an image link into the destination URL, which Marketo Measure cannot tag, so we search for the URL within the ad content. If Marketo Measure has permissions to tag shortened URLs, we will expand the URL and tag that, but due to LinkedIn’s copy structure, it automatically gets shortened within the text. The tag will live within the LinkedIn shortened URL, which will appear in the touchpoint’s Ad Content field rather than in the Landing Page - Raw field.

Oh no, someone on my team accidentally cloned a share. Can I pause it?

No worries. Marketo Measure will programmatically check for shares that are no longer unique, meaning that it had since been copied into a different Creative. Once that copy has been detected, Marketo Measure will follow the usual flow to tag and create new ads.

My ad was pending review earlier. Why is it pending review again after Marketo Measure tagged it?

LinkedIn requires that all ads that are created or modified go through the normal security process before it is posted. Marketo Measure tries to intercept the ad as quickly as possible, as it scans for new ads every 6 hours but with LinkedIn’s additional step, it can delay the launch by a few hours.

There are 2 URLs on my ad. Which one gets tagged?

Both. The Marketo Measure integration allows us to tag the destination URL from the click through image in the ad, but also automatically updates the shortened URL in the ad description.

I’ve connected my LinkedIn ads account. Why is not Marketo Measure tagging my links?

The connected LinkedIn user needs to have proper editing access, which means the user needs to be an Account Manager, Campaign Manager, or Creative Manager.

How do I know if my creative will be copied? Can I see if my creatives are using the same share?

The share ID is not provided in a LinkedIn report, so there is not a clear and obvious way to check for creative-to-share mappings. If you suspect a creative might be a copy, you can manually check by opening the ad from within your LinkedIn Campaign manager–this opens the ad in a new tab and you can find the share ID in the URL.

Lead Gen Forms FAQ lead-gen-forms-faq

What is the cost of this enhancement?

This offering is included with any paid Marketo Measure subscription.

Is the integration retroactive?

Yes, we will download historical ad form responses from LinkedIn, although we are limited to the 90-day lookback window. The longer that the Marketo Measure and LinkedIn integration is enabled, the more Lead Gen Form touchpoints will be visible through Marketo Measure.

There is no option to set a specific date for download, but you can optionally set Touchpoint Deletion rules if there are touchpoints that you need to suppress.

Will this automatically be enabled if I’m already using the Marketo Measure LinkedIn ad integration?

No, we will not automatically begin downloading it for all customers but it’s a very simple switch to enable this feature in settings.

Is Form data available?

Form data is available through Marketo Measure Discover including Form Id and Form Name. Form details are not yet available on the touchpoint objects in the CRM.

What happens to any LinkedIn leads that have previously been synced to Marketo Programs or CRM Campaigns?

It is recommended that you adjust any Marketo Measure rules to generate touchpoints from those specific Programs or Campaigns to avoid duplication. The LinkedIn API has a 90-day lookback limitation, so if you are using Marketo or CRM rules, it is recommended that you set the end date on the rule to 90 days prior to the date you enabled the integration in Marketo Measure. From this point on, Marketo Measure can download those leads for you with greater insight and details.

Is there any auto-tagging or tracking involved?

No, this is different from other Marketo Measure integrations. Rather than modifying the landing page (since there is no click through landing page), we are only downloading the relevant information from LinkedIn and treating them as activities within Marketo Measure.