30 Things Every Enterprise Marketing Ops Leader Should Be Able to Answer About Their Own System — A Self-Assessment

There’s a version of marketing operations leadership that’s reactive — managing what’s in front of you, fixing what’s broken, shipping what’s due. And there’s a version that’s proactive — knowing your system deeply enough to anticipate problems, make deliberate architectural decisions, and answer confidently when leadership asks hard questions about pipeline, attribution, or data quality.

The difference between these two modes isn’t just experience. It’s operational knowledge — a specific set of things you should be able to answer about your own system, off the top of your head or with minimal investigation. This self-assessment covers 30 of those questions, organized by domain. It’s not a comprehensive audit checklist. It’s a diagnostic for where your operational knowledge gaps are.

Database & data quality

1. What is your current database size, and what is the active-vs-inactive breakdown? You should know roughly how many records are in your Marketo instance, and what percentage are actively engaged versus dormant. If you don’t know this, your database health is not being actively monitored.

2. What is your estimated duplicate rate? Not the rate you’d like it to be — the rate that a deduplication analysis would actually find. If your last dedup was more than six months ago, assume it’s higher than you think.

3. What is your email deliverability health? Current bounce rate, spam complaint rate, and unsubscribe rate by program type. If these numbers aren’t in a dashboard you review regularly, you’re flying blind on deliverability.

4. What are the top three data quality issues in your database right now? Specific, actionable issues — not “we have some bad data.” Which fields are most frequently empty or incorrect? Which record types are most affected?

5. When did you last run a full database hygiene review? If the answer is “I’m not sure” or “more than six months ago,” it’s due.

Lead scoring & lifecycle

6. What is your current MQL threshold score, and when was it last calibrated? You should be able to state the score and the last date the threshold was validated against conversion data.

7. What is your MQL acceptance rate? What percentage of MQLs sent to sales are being accepted versus rejected? If you don’t know this, you don’t know whether your scoring model is working.

8. Does your scoring model have decay logic? Yes or no. If yes, what’s the decay cadence and at what inactivity threshold does it trigger?

9. What are the top three behavioral signals that most frequently drive leads to MQL threshold? If you can’t answer this, you don’t have visibility into how your scoring model is actually functioning in practice.

10. Can you describe your lifecycle stages and the data criteria for each transition? Not just the stage names — the specific field values or trigger events in Marketo and Salesforce that move a lead from one stage to the next.

Marketo–Salesforce sync

11. How many unresolved sync errors exist in your instance right now? You should be able to answer this within 24 hours at any time. If sync errors aren’t being monitored, they’re accumulating.

12. What is the sync lag between Marketo and Salesforce for standard fields? When a field is updated in Marketo, how long before it appears in SFDC, and vice versa?

13. Which system wins in a field conflict — Marketo or SFDC? Is this configured at the field level or globally? If you’re not sure, your field precedence is probably set to a default that may not match your intent.

14. What is your sync filter logic? Which records sync from SFDC to Marketo, and based on what criteria? What records are excluded?

15. How are Marketo program successes mapped to SFDC campaign member statuses? Is this mapping documented? Is it consistent across program types?

Campaign operations & program architecture

16. Do you have a documented program template library? A library that team members actually use when creating new campaigns, not a folder of old programs that are used as informal templates.

17. What is your current QA process for campaigns before they go live? Is it documented? Is it followed consistently? What are the mandatory checkpoints?

18. How many active trigger campaigns are currently running in your instance? And when were each of them last reviewed for logic validity?

19. What is your naming convention for programs, campaigns, and assets? Is it documented and consistently followed by all admins who access the instance?

20. Do you have a global suppression list, and is it current? What are the suppression criteria, and when was the logic last validated?

Attribution & reporting

21. What attribution model do you use, and is it documented? First touch, last touch, linear, or something else — and is the definition in writing that marketing, sales, and finance have agreed on?

22. What is your marketing-sourced pipeline number for the current quarter? And do sales and finance agree with that number?

23. Can you trace a specific closed-won deal back to its first marketing touch? If your attribution data is accurate, this should be possible for any deal in the last 12 months.

24. What are the known limitations of your current attribution data? Every attribution model has limitations. Knowing and documenting yours is what separates credible reporting from contested reporting.

25. Do you have a reporting dictionary — a written definition of every metric you report on? If not, you’re at risk of reporting drift every time a person or tool changes.

Governance & team operations

26. Is your instance documented well enough for a new admin to be productive within two weeks? Not two months — two weeks. If the answer is no, the documentation gap is a business continuity risk.

27. Who owns each major system component — sync, scoring, templates, reporting? Is ownership explicit and known to the team, or is it effectively “whoever is available”?

28. Do you have a change management process for significant instance modifications? A log, a review step, a validation protocol — or do changes go live without a formal process?

29. When did you last do an architectural review of your Marketo instance? Not a campaign audit — an architectural review asking whether your current folder structure, program design, and integration configuration are appropriate for your current scale and complexity.

30. If you left tomorrow, would the person who inherited your instance be able to run it effectively? This is the governance question that subsumes all the others. The answer tells you more about the health of your MOPs program than any individual metric.

The questions you can’t answer are your action list. Not all of them need to be answered immediately — prioritize by risk and revenue impact. But the pattern of gaps will tell you where your operational knowledge is thin, where your documentation is insufficient, and where your governance has drifted from where it needs to be.

High-functioning MOPs organizations aren’t the ones that have perfect answers to all 30 questions. They’re the ones that know which questions they can’t answer yet — and have a plan to close the gaps.