Issue
There are discrepancies in the leads activity logs within Marketo, where the Email Delivered activity timestamp is sometimes recorded a few seconds before the Email Sent activity. This sequencing issue causes confusion for analytics teams, particularly when using external analytics platforms like Tableau, as the logical sequence would typically show that an email is sent before it is delivered.
Solution
Understanding email statuses and utilizing Campaign Run ID for analytics:
The confusion arises from a misunderstanding of how Marketo logs email activities and the meaning behind the statuses Sent and Delivered.
- Email Sent Status: In Marketo, when an email status is logged as Sent, it indicates that the email has been considered for sending or queued for sending. The status does not mean the email has been physically sent through the servers but rather is prepared to be sent. The logging of this event happens shortly after the email is queued, which could be almost instantaneous.
- Email Delivered Status: The Delivered status is an acknowledgment from the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) infrastructure, signifying that the recipient's email server has accepted the email. This status is logged after the event has occurred and the email has been accepted by the remote server.
It is important to note that while both statuses are recorded after their respective events, they come from different systems within the email delivery process. This can sometimes result in the Delivered status being logged before the Sent status, although such instances should be rare.
To correctly analyze and interpret the email activity logs, users should adhere to the following guidelines:
- Recognize that the timestamps for Sent and Delivered may not always be in the expected order due to the separate systems involved in logging these events.
- Focus on the Campaign Run ID for analytics purposes. This ID is unique to each campaign run and can be used to accurately reassemble the sequence of events, regardless of the order in which Sent and Delivered statuses are logged.
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