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Marketo Feeds

Adobe Marketo Engage is a marketing automation platform for lead management, email marketing, and campaign orchestration. The Marketo Feeds connector is a source-only ELT connector that ingests the Marketo instance as a set of feeds: rather than configuring one endpoint at a time, you select the Marketo objects you want — such as leads, programs, campaigns, lists, segmentations, and activity data — and Nexla ingests each selected object as its own feed on a schedule. To read from or write to individual Marketo REST endpoints instead, use the REST-based Marketo connector.

Marketo Feeds icon

Power end-to-end data operations for your Marketo Feeds API with Nexla. Our bi-directional Marketo Feeds connector is purpose-built for Marketo Feeds, making it simple to ingest data, sync it across systems, and deliver it anywhere — all with no coding required. Nexla turns API-sourced data into ready-to-use, reusable data products and makes it easy to send data to Marketo Feeds or any other destination. With comprehensive monitoring, lineage tracking, and access controls, Nexla keeps your Marketo Feeds workflows fast, secure, and fully governed.

Features

Type: API

SourceDestination

  • Seamless API Integration: Connect to any endpoint as source or destination without coding, with automatic data product creation
  • Visual Composition & Chaining: Build complex integrations using visual templates, chain API calls, and compose workflows with data validation and filtering
  • API Proxy: Expose curated slices of your data securely with a secure and customizable API proxy that validates and transforms data on the fly
  • Request optimization with intelligent batching, retry, and caching to minimize API calls and costs

Prerequisites​

The Marketo Feeds connector authenticates to the Marketo REST API using 2-legged OAuth 2.0. Marketo issues a Client ID and Client Secret through a custom service defined in LaunchPoint, and Nexla exchanges these for an access token at your instance's Identity URL. Before creating a credential in Nexla, gather the following from your Marketo instance.

API Base URL and Identity URL​

Both endpoint URLs are found in your Marketo admin under Admin > Integration > Web Services, in the REST API section:

  • Endpoint / API Base URL — the base URL for REST API calls, in the format https://<domain>.mktorest.com. When configuring the Nexla credential, omit the trailing /rest.
  • Identity URL — the base URL used to request an OAuth access token, in the format https://<domain>.mktorest.com/identity.

Client ID and Client Secret​

The Client ID and Client Secret are provided by a custom service:

  1. Sign in to Marketo as an administrator.

  2. Navigate to Admin > Integration > LaunchPoint.

  3. If you do not already have a custom service, click New > New Service, choose Custom from the Service list, enter a descriptive name, and select an API Only user whose role grants the permissions needed for the objects you plan to ingest. Click Create.

  4. Select the custom service and click View Details to reveal the Client ID and Client Secret.

Authentication Scope​

The scope is the API-Only user that owns the custom service used to authenticate — usually the email address of that user.

Treat the Client Secret as a sensitive credential. Provision a dedicated API-Only user with only the permissions required for the feeds you plan to ingest, and rotate the secret if it is exposed.

For more information, see the Marketo REST API authentication guide and Create a Custom Service for Use with the REST API.

Authenticate​

Credentials required​

FieldRequiredSecretDescription
API Base URLYesNoMarketo REST API Base URL, found in Admin > Web Services > REST API. Omit /rest. Format: https://<domain>.mktorest.com.
Identity URLYesNoYour Marketo Identity URL. The Identity URL is found in the Admin > Web Services menu in the REST API section.
Client IDYesNoYour Marketo API Client ID. The Client ID and Client Secret are found in the Admin > LaunchPoint menu by selecting the custom service, and clicking View Details.
Client SecretYesYesYour Marketo API Client Secret. The Client ID and Client Secret are found in the Admin > LaunchPoint menu by selecting the custom service, and clicking View Details.
Authentication ScopeYesNoScope for authentication permission. Usually this is the owning user of the custom service that was used to authenticate.

Create a credential in Nexla​

  1. After selecting the data source type, click the Add Credential tile to open the Add New Credential overlay.

  2. Enter a name for the credential in the Credential Name field and a short, meaningful description in the Credential Description field.

    Resource descriptions are recommended but are not required. Use them to identify the Marketo instance or the custom service represented by this credential.

  3. Enter your Marketo REST API base URL in the API Base URL field, in the format https://<domain>.mktorest.com (omit the trailing /rest).

  4. Enter your Marketo Identity URL in the Identity URL field.

  5. Enter the Client ID and Client Secret from your LaunchPoint custom service in the corresponding fields.

  6. Enter the API-Only user that owns the custom service in the Authentication Scope field.

  7. Click the Save button at the bottom of the overlay. Nexla uses these values to request a 2-legged OAuth access token from the Identity URL and to authenticate all subsequent feed requests. The newly added credential will now appear in a tile on the Authenticate screen during data source creation.

Use as a data source​

How This Connector Works​

The Marketo Feeds connector is a source-only, whole-instance ELT connector. Rather than configuring one endpoint at a time, you select the Marketo objects you want from a single catalog of feeds, and Nexla ingests each selected object as its own feed.

  • Discovery: When you create the source, Nexla discovers the objects (feeds) available from your Marketo instance — including a feed per Marketo activity type — and presents them for selection.

  • Sync strategies: Each feed is ingested using one of three strategies, applied per object based on the object type: full ingest reads the complete current set of records on every run; incremental reads only records changed within a lookback window; and auto-increment tracks a cursor between runs so each run reads only what changed since the last successful run.

  • Bulk export for high-volume objects: Lead, Program Membership, and activity feeds are ingested through the Marketo Bulk Export API — Nexla creates an export job, enqueues it, polls until the export completes, and then reads the resulting file.

  • Parallel ingestion: Selected feeds are ingested in parallel, so a single source can pull many Marketo objects on the same schedule.

Create a New Data Flow​

  1. To create a new data flow, navigate to the Integrate section, click the New Data Flow button, select the ELT flow type, and click Create.

  2. Select the Marketo Feeds connector tile from the list of available connectors. Then, select the credential that will be used to connect to your Marketo instance and click Next; or, create a new Marketo Feeds credential for use in this flow.

Select the Objects to Ingest​

After authenticating, Nexla lists the Marketo objects available from the connector. Select one or more of the following objects to ingest. Each selected object becomes its own feed.

  • Form — Marketing forms defined in the instance.
  • Folder — Asset folders.
  • Email Template — Email templates.
  • Tag Type — Tag type definitions.
  • File — Files stored in the instance.
  • Segmentation — Segmentation definitions.
  • Segment — Segments within each segmentation.
  • Static List — Static lists.
  • Smart List — Smart lists.
  • Program — Marketing programs.
  • Campaign — Smart campaigns.
  • Lead Describe — Field metadata (schema) for lead records.
  • Activity Type — Activity type definitions.
  • Usage — API usage statistics.
  • Lead — Lead (person) records, ingested through the Bulk Export API.
  • Program Membership — Program membership records, ingested through the Bulk Export API.

In addition to the objects above, Nexla discovers a separate feed for each activity type in your instance, ingested through the Bulk Activities Export API.

Lookback Windows​

For incremental and auto-increment feeds, the source exposes lookback settings that control how far back each run reads:

  • Lookback Time (ISO): Lists, Programs, Campaigns — the earliest updated timestamp for auto-increment ingestion of lists, programs, and campaigns, in ISO-8601 format.
  • Lookback Time (ISO): Leads, Program Memberships, Activity — the lookback time used when leads, program memberships, and activity are exported with the auto-increment strategy. Defaults to {now-1} (one day).
  • Lookback Time (Hours): Leads, Program Memberships, Activity — the maximum number of hours to look back when leads, program memberships, and activity are exported with the incremental strategy. Use this for high-volume feeds where a full auto-increment scan might time out.

Schedule and Activate​

Use the default sync schedule or adjust the schedule in the source settings before activating the flow. On each run, every selected feed is ingested using its configured strategy, and Nexla organizes the results into one or more Nexsets.

Reference​

For object schemas, field definitions, and additional detail on each Marketo endpoint, see the Marketo REST API reference and the Marketo Bulk Export documentation.