Right now, most Marketo customers are looking at a shiny new Marketo experience, or hearing about it a lot. Reality is sinking in – things are not exactly as they were.
In part 3 of my MEUE blog series (you can read part 1 and part 2 here) we are going to talk about all things drag and drop, and what we can do to minimise the impact.
Everyone keeps talking about the drag and drop going away?
It’s true. When you switch to MEUE, you lose drag and drop within the tree (even within programs). Drag and drop from the tree to engagement programs has not yet been released either.
Adobe’s official line on the reasons for this are as follows:
“We acknowledge that due to the higher priority of accessibility compliance (and drag-and-drop is not WCAG 2.1 compliant because it relies on a mouse), we chose to do Move context menu actions first. Drag-and-drop will be restored in a future release.”
I think it’s important to acknowledge that anything that makes Marketo more accessible is a good thing, and I applaud Adobe for really pushing for the WCAG 2.1 compliance.
That being said – this is temporary! It will return!
Safe Harbor obviously applies, but Adobe has published a timeline for drag and drop to return in the first half of H1, 2021. I tend towards a “we’ll see it when we see it” approach to these things, so you should get used to working this way for a while. We may find different types of drag and drop functionality return in a staggered way across 2021, similarly to how they were introduced originally.
How do I move things now?
Adobe has focused on making the context menus (the buttons and right-click menus) more feature-rich to compensate. In order to move something in Marketo now, you need to manually right click the asset, folder or program you want to move, and select MOVE, then follow the options.
This manual MOVE function has been in Marketo for years. It was initially designed to move assets between Marketing Activities and Design Studio. It’s now been enhanced in MEUE to include being able to move all kinds of assets to within a specific folder within a program.
Can’t I just create things where I want them?
Yes, you can! The big thing that’s arrived with this release is the ability to create assets and smart campaigns directly into the desired program folders, which should minimise your need to drag and drop things around. This is a huge update, and has been the number 1 requested navigation feature for as long as I can remember.
Marketo users have spent a lot of time building assets in programs, and then almost as a reflex after they’re built we pick them up and drag them into the right folders. Well no more! Now, you can right-click on the folder you want to create the asset in, and voila! It falls into the correct folder.
TIP – Make sure you create your program folders first (as is best practice)!
We have all relied on the drag and drop for so long, that forgetting to create your program folder structure first wasn’t a big deal before, as you just dragged things where you wanted them later. Now Marketo users really need to get into the discipline of creating program folder structures first to minimise the number of move steps you need to take.
Unfortunately cloning an individual asset from one program to another is still a two-phase process. You first clone the asset into the program you need it in, then you need to “Move” that cloned asset into a program folder. Again, Marketo has assured us this is temporary and will be updated soon to enable you to clone into the correct program folder.
Let’s talk about program templates
There’s less chance of building things in the wrong order and wrong place (and hence needing to move them and clean them up) if you move to a system of program templates and cloning.
If you don’t already use this technique as an essential governance practice, we recommend you start today. MEUE has simply made pretty much essential something that most Marketo users view as best practice.
Essentially you build a complete, empty “shell” version of all the program structures you and your users need on a regular basis, and make them available in a templates folder for everyone to clone, intact.
The ability to clone entire programs and minimise the amount of building you need to do is one of the clear benefits Marketo has over all other Marketing Automation platforms out there, and we should use it to our advantage.
The Bottom Line
The change is coming (or for some people it’s already here), and it does bring some gains and some short term pain. The BluprintX team is here to help, so if you are struggling with MEUE, want to build better instance governance, or just want to work with someone on planning your rollout for the next year of changes, let us know and we can guide you through it.
