The Mess
A Series C B2B SaaS company had attempted a Marketo migration 18 months prior. The migration failed halfway through, leaving the marketing team operating on a hybrid of broken automation and manual spreadsheets.
No lead scoring existed. Attribution was impossible because campaign membership data was incomplete. Lead routing was done manually by an ops person who was also managing events. Sales and marketing hadn't shared a dashboard in over a year.
Pipeline had been flat for three quarters despite a 40% increase in ad spend. The board was asking questions.
What Got Built
Marketing Automation Rebuild
Complete Marketo rebuild from scratch. New instance architecture with proper folder structure, naming conventions, and program templates. Legacy data was cleaned, deduplicated, and migrated with full audit trail.
Lead Scoring Model
Behavioral and demographic scoring model built from 12 months of closed-won analysis. Score decay implemented at 30/60/90 day intervals. MQL threshold validated against actual conversion rates before launch.
Attribution Framework
Multi-touch attribution model in Salesforce using custom campaign influence objects. First-touch, last-touch, and weighted models available for different reporting contexts.
Lead Routing
Automated routing with round-robin and territory-based logic. SLA alerts for untouched leads. Escalation paths for high-score accounts.
Nurture Architecture
12 nurture sequences across 4 segments (by industry and buying stage). Dynamic content personalization based on firmographic data. Engagement scoring feeding back into the lead scoring model.
The Result
Pipeline grew 3.2x within 6 months of the new infrastructure going live. MQL to SQL conversion improved from 12% to 47%, meaning sales was spending time on leads that actually converted.
The sales team reported spending 30% less time on unqualified leads. Marketing could finally prove channel-level ROI to the board. The system now runs with one part-time ops person maintaining it.
The technology wasn't the problem. The architecture was. Same tools, completely different outcome.