Setting up the Wistia - Marketo Integration
Wistia and Marketo go together like Sherlock and Watson! Want to get in on the fun? Elementary - here's our guide to getting the Wistia-Marketo integration working for you.
Haven’t signed up for the integration yet?
Setting up the Integration in Marketo
To send leads and viewing data from Turnstile as well as listening data from Channels into your Marketo account, there are three things you need to create in Marketo. Fortunately, our friends at Marketo wrote some lovely documentation about how to complete each step:
- Create an API-Only User Role
- Create an API-Only User (in other words, a robot user on your Marketo account with the aforementioned role 🤖)
- Create a Custom Service
Thanks, Marketo. 🙌
After you finish creating your Custom Service, click on View Details on your new service. Copy the Client Id and Client Secret into the Marketo integration area in your Wistia settings.
Next, go to Admin > Integration > Web Services > REST API in Marketo and copy/paste the URLs for Endpoint and Identity into Wistia as well.
Make sure you have all four:
- Client Id
- Client Secret
- REST API Endpoint
- REST API Identity
Have those four pieces on information filled in, clicked Connect, and see that the integration is connected? Well then congrats, you’re all set up in Wistia! The last thing to do is set up your website.
Setting up your Website for Wistia - Marketo Tracking
Now we’ll set up webpages for tracking and get that engagement data flowing from your website to Marketo, so you can start using this data to drive automation:
First you’ll need to have a media embedded on your website. Here’s how to do that.
You’ll also need to make sure Marketo’s Munchkin tracking script is on the same page as your media.
Finally, you’ll want to include a Marketo form or Turnstile somewhere in the mix to make sure your leads are properly identified. If you’re embedding a video, you can overlay the form on that. Otherwise, the form can just be on the page with your embedded media. In fact, the form can even be on a different page, and if it’s completed after playing a media then all prior views in that browser will be sent to their Activity Log as well.
The key here is that a form or Turnstile submission on a page with the Munchkin script must happen at some point in that browser to set the proper Marketo cookie. For anonymous users who later become known, this is how Marketo will identify a “known lead.”
Wistia does not have any concept of who is or isn’t a known lead in Marketo, as that data is not being sent to Wistia from Marketo. The whole transaction relies on the Marketo cookie being present to identify who the lead is and where to send their engagement data.
Collect Leads from Videos with Marketo Forms
You can add forms created in your Marketo account to your Wistia videos. They’ll act exactly the same as Marketo forms, except that they’ll appear in your video like a Turnstile or CTA.
Once the integration is enabled, a Marketo Forms section will appear in the Customize panel. Here you can choose which form to display in your video either by selecting it from a drop down list or entering the form’s name, when to display it, and add helpful prompt text to encourage viewers to complete your form. Here’s what that looks like:
Collect Leads from Videos with Turnstile
Remember that time you configured Turnstile to connect to your Marketo account? Well now when people enter their names and email addresses (or just email addresses, if you’d prefer) into Turnstile, they’ll get passed from Wistia to Marketo as new leads with the lead source set to “Wistia Video: (name of the video here).” All you have to do is select one of your Marketo Static Lists inside of the Turnstile menu. Afterwards, we’ll start passing those Turnstile submissions into the list of your choice!
Here’s what Turnstile looks like:
So that video was just an example, but if that was your video, you’d probably have a brand new lead right about now. That would be cool.
“But Wistia,” you ask, “what if that person was already an identified lead in my Marketo account?” Glad you asked. In that case, only missing fields will be updated. For example, if you already had *bob@example.com as a lead in Marketo with a leadSource of Campaign X, but Bob filled out a Turnstile with his name, Bob Smith, only firstName and lastName would be updated. As a result, Bob would be a lead in Marketo with firstName Bob, lastName Smith, email bob@example.com, and leadSource Campaign X*.
Fun fact: All of a person’s engagement activity from before they entered their information into Turnstile will be associated with their lead record, so you can see exactly what the path to conversion was in the lead’s Activity Log in Marketo. In addition, if that person has any unidentified historical viewing and listening data in Wistia, it will be retroactively identified.
To get started with Turnstile, go to a video page in your Wistia account and open the Customize panel. For a more in-depth look at Turnstile, check out this page.
Sync Live Registration
If you’re using Wistia Live with registration enabled and would like to send registrants to a list in Marketo, head on over to your live event’s registration page. Here, click “Sync Registrations” to select your desired Marketo list. Then, click “Select.”
If you’d like to update the list, click “Update Registration” and select a new list.
Audio Files, Channels, and Marketo
Tracking listening data for podcast episodes or other audio files works somewhat differently from tracking videos since you can’t add a Turnstile or a Marketo form directly to an audio embed. That said, a Turnstile or form submission is always necessary to successfully identify listeners as known leads, so they’re still a part of the equation here. There are two methods for tracking listening data.
The most reliable way is to embed a Marketo form on a landing page. On submission, the form should take your user to a page where your individual audio episode or audio-only Channel is embedded. You’ll want to ensure that both the page with the form and the page with the embed have Marketo’s Munchkin tracking script on it.
The other option is to embed the Marketo form itself on the same page as the episode or Channel. This is less reliable since a user may listen to your content without submitting the form, in which case they wouldn’t be identified or tracked. Again, this page should have Marketo’s tracking script on it.
Channel Subscribers
When visitors subscribe to a Channel, they’re prompted to fill out their name and email address similar to how they would for a Turnstile. However subscribing to a Channel won’t identify a user as a known lead for the purposes of tracking listening data. You can sync your subscriber list with a Marketo list, but this will only send contact data to Marketo, not tracking data. Users still have to be identified by a Turnstile or Marketo form in order for listening data to be tracked.
Using Viewing and Listening Data for Marketing Automation
Wouldn’t it be cool if when a person plays at least 50 percent of a certain media on your website, you could automatically send them an email about that product a few days later? Or if a person entered their email address into Turnstile, you could have a salesperson get notified to follow up? What else can we do?
- Automatically add leads to a Marketo List via a native Marketo form in your videos.
- Create Smart Campaigns based on engagement data, including scoring, triggered email, alerts to sales, and Interesting Moments.
- Be a multimedia marketing superstar 🌠
“Why yes, yes those things would be quite cool indeed,” you say? Phew! Good thing we built this integration. Here’s how to set the automation up:
- Head to the Marketing Activities section in your Marketo account.
- Create a new Smart Campaign. Choose a folder, and give the campaign a name. A description too, if you’d like.
- In the campaign screen, go to the Triggers section in the panel on the right.
- Now here’s where it gets a little weird, but hey, that’s what this tutorial is here for. All events related to how people interact with your medias are recorded as “Visits Web Page” triggers in Marketo, even though they don’t have much to do with visiting a web page (beyond the fact that the media is embedded on one). The details of the type of event will be in the Trigger’s Detail description. So, find the Visits Web Page trigger, and drag that little guy into the “Drag triggers and filters from the right” area.
- Now it’s time to define the specific media event trigger. If you wanted to run automation when a person plays 25 percent of a media called Making French Toast at Wistia, you’d tell Marketo to set the trigger to Web Page — > is — > website.com - Wistia Video - “Making French Toast at Wistia” - 25 Percent Watched.
- Alternatively, you can set broader triggers for when an event occurs on any media across your website. For example, Visits Web Page — > contains — > 50 Percent Watched or, contains — > Played. This is particularly helpful for scoring, as you won’t have to specify each media name.
- Once you’ve picked the right event for the right media, move onto the Flow step. That’s all Marketo’s domain, so check out the Marketo documentation for details.
You can choose from a number of media event triggers to build your automation:
- Played
- 25 Percent Watched
- 50 Percent Watched
- 75 Percent Watched
- 100 Percent Watched
There are also a lot of other things you can automate, like:
Bravo, Marketo. 👏
Send Email Marketing Embeds to Marketo Leads
Email is a wonderful way to engage with your customers (and future-customers) … but email with thumbnail links is an even better way. Using our Email Marketing Campaign Links, when people receive your email and click through to play the video, their email addresses will automatically pass through to your Wistia stats.
Learn all about about multimedia + email marketing with Wistia.
Migrating from Marketo v1
The first Wistia-Marketo integration was built on Marketo’s SOAP API. We’ve updated the Marketo integration so it’s instead built on Marketo’s REST API, which offers a lot more functionality. If you’re ready to upgrade the data flow between your Wistia account and your Marketo account, we’ve got the steps below to make that happen.
To migrate over to Marketo v2 you’ll first need to disconnect your Marketo v1 integration. You can do this by visiting the integrations page of your Wistia account settings and selecting the Marketo (SOAP) integration: Account > Settings > Integrations. (Keep in mind, only the Account Owner can get into Account Settings.) You’ll see an option to Disconnect in the bottom right corner of that menu.
Once you’ve disconnected your Marketo v1 integration, you can follow the normal steps for setting everything up to connect to the Marketo v2 integration. Make sure to select the version that asks for your Marketo REST API Endpoint (since that’s the Marketo v2 integration).
Once finished, you’ll be able to use the more advanced parts of the integration listed below, like sending data to specific lists with Turnstile, and setting up Marketo Forms right within your video.
Marketo Integration Troubleshooting
Is the media embedded on a page where Munchkin is present?
As mentioned above, the integration relies on Marketo’s Munchkin tracking script to sync viewing and listening data to Activity Logs. Third party scripts cannot be added to a Wistia media page. As a result, medias must be embedded on your site for the integration to work.
Is E-v1 present on the page?
If you are using an iframe embed on your page, it’s possible that your CMS
has removed the E-v1 script from the embed. E-v1 is the Wistia JavaScript file and is essential for data transfer. The E-v1 script is found after the <iframe>
element of the embed and looks like this:
<script src="//fast.wistia.net/assets/external/E-v1.js" async></script>
If there isn’t an instance of E-v1 outside of the iframe, the Wistia and Marketo scripts will not be able to get the correct information from each other.
The good news is that this is easy to fix by adding the E-v1 script to your page. We recommend adding it to the <head>
element of your page.
How do I track listening data if I can’t overlay a Turnstile or Marketo form right on an audio episode?
Even though you can’t put a Turnstile or a Marketo form on an audio episode, it’s still necessary that your listeners submit one for tracking to work. This sounds counterintuitive, but the good news is that Marketo tracking can cast a wide net.
As long as the Turnstile or form is submitted on a page with Marketo’s Munchkin tracking script, and as long as your audio episode is embedded on a page with the tracking script, then we can capture listening data from your audience and send it to the correct contact record in Marketo. They can be the same page or different pages - tracking will work either way.
A surefire way to guarantee tracking is to embed a Marketo form on one page and on submission, have it take the user to another page where the audio episode is embedded. The great thing about Marketo tracking though is that even if a user doesn’t fill out a Turnstile or form until after they listen to your audio episode, Marketo will backfill the listening data once the user is identified.
Blank Forms List in Wistia
If you’re seeing a blank list instead of your forms in the Customize panel, this is likely because of insufficient permissions granted to your Marketo API User. To solve this, you’ll need to go into your Marketo account and navigate to the Admin page. You can modify the permissions in the Users & Roles section, specifically in the Roles tab.
The Roles tab allows you to modify the permissions for the API user you’ve entered in your Wistia-Marketo integration. There are a lot of different permissions you can grant, but the key permissions to get your forms appearing are the Access Admin and Access API permissions. Make sure that those are checked, and save the user to update their permissions.
Form Styles Look Strange
If you’ve added custom styles to your forms, it’s possible that they will affect the styles within your Wistia media page or pages where the media is embedded. This is because those styles are injected in a blank <style>
element to the page. Sometimes, those styles may appear differently than expected when the form is embedded directly into a Wistia video.
We recommend using the default Marketo themes for forms when possible. If you need to add styles to your forms, try to avoid the use of tools like !important
attributes. This will help minimize potential CSS conflicts.
Still not working? We’re happy to take a look! Give us a holler, and we’ll jump on the case.
What API permissions does a Marketo role need?
If you are looking to set up specific security measures for your Marketo API role to only provide the minimum access necssary, then the following permissions will be needed for our integration to function:
- Read-Only Lead
- Read-Write Lead
- Read-Only Assets
- Read-Write Assets
Those permissions will cover everything Wistia needs in order to pull in Marketo lists and forms, collecting leads via Turnstile, and sending viewing and listening data over to Marketo as lead activity.