Stop turning off workflows after 6 months

[Robb_Barrett]

First off, "Smart Campaign" should be called a Workflow. A Campaign is something very different in all of our worlds.

Second off, quit turning them off. Some get less use than others, but it's a PITA to have to check through them. My Marketers freak out when they see they're turned off. It's dumb. Stop doing dumb things. If it's a Smart campaign it should do smart things.  But really, it's a workflow.

[Anonymous]

Down vote. I'd rather avoid having surprises from trigger campaigns that hadn't seen any activity in 6 months. There's a notification that's created when the auto-turnoff happens (check your Notifications area at the top of the screen in Marketo). It's just a little hard to believe that you would "freak out" when a campaign that had been inactive for 6 months turns off.

Also - I'd avoid the whiny tone. Everybody gets frustrated sometimes, but the Community isn't a very good place to go on a rant.

[Anonymous]

It can be difficult to make adjustments with naming conventions.  When it comes to opposing products - SFDC, Marketo, Par Dot, Eloqua, etc.  Not all of the names for conceptually the same thing are identical.  This does not just apply to the Marketing Automation world.  As long as we are on the same page conceptually this is just a language issue.  Clunky and at times frustration, but something we can all adjust to.

However, I would also not want to support the non-deactivation of unused campaigns.  In fact, I think we could probably and should do more.  For example, the archiving process does not by default de-activate campaigns.  I am sure we all know how difficult, if not impossible it is to find an archived campaign.  If something is archived, it should be de-activated by default.  We do very little policing currently to ensure the number of active campaigns does not cause a situation where the sheer volume of active triggers slows an instance due to the volume of validation that must be done for every possible activity that can take place for leads.  We allow as many campaigns as you could possibly built to all be active at once.

This gets very overwhelming, and based on some of the instances I have seen in support, it would take the employ of at least 1-2 persons to manage.  Not a job I would personally want to have.  We must run some sort of check to make sure your instance is optimized, and part of this means checking to make sure everything that is ON should be ON.

Possibly it would be possible to introduce an option to have 'persistent' campaigns/workflows.  You could be allowed a certain number of "always-on" campaigns, that are exempt from the 6 month rule.  But doing it globally would almost certainly cause more issues in large instances than it solves.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I'm more in favor of this approach: (which James touches upon in his reply).