Ability to trigger activity based on click stream or sequence of events?

[Joey_Forcelli1]

Hi,

I am wondering if there are any suggestions on how one could trigger Marketo activities using a specific sequence of events as a trigger.  For example, lets say I want to trigger an activity after someone completes the following sequence:  Opens email xyz, visits webpage abc after opening email xyz, and visits webpage def after viewing page abc.

If there a way this can be achieved? 

Thanks in advance

--JF

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

HI Joseph,

Create a "Sequence Score" field, type = score. Set a series of trigger campaigns that add +1 to the Sequence Score field when people do the things in the right order, using combinations of triggers and filters in the campaigns. e.g:

• Trigger : Opens email XYZ -> +1
• Trigger : Visits web page abc + filter : score = 1 -> +1
• Trigger : visits page def + Filter: score = 2 -> +1
• Trigger : data value changes, field = Sequence Score old value = 2, new value = 3 -> your Marketo activity

You would do it will a text field in which would would log sequence steps such as "step 1", "step 2", "step 2".

-Greg

[Joey_Forcelli1]

Hi Greg,

This is very helpful and seems to be leading me down the right path.  I have a couple follow up questions though.

1. How would you prevent the scoring triggers from counting the same action multiple times?  Lets say someone opens the email 3 times, this would get them to that lead score of 3 which would in turn trigger the activity.  If you limit the amount of times a person can enter the campaign to 1 you may miss the sequence if it happens on a second visit.
2. How would you ensure that the actions took place within a reasonable amount of time?  Lets say we only want to activity to trigger when the contact hits the entire sequence in a 15 minute window.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Joseph,

1. If you limit the campaign to only once, you may not miss the sequence, since the first visit was recorded the first time it occurred, the the second step the first time it occurred, etc..
2. This is more tricky. You will have to log the first event date in a separate field and use a "first event dat" in past "...."

The really difficult thing is that if you record the 1st occurence of the first event and not the second one, you may miss it.

So, if you need to do both the sequence and the duration it gets harder. You will have to use the date field and will need some changes in the campaigns:

1. Trigger : Opens email XYZ and score <2 -> score =1 and first event date set to {{system.date}}. Make this one to run every time. It will fire if the score = 0 or 1 and will always set the date to the most recent event
2. Trigger : Visits web page abc + filter : score = 1 + filter "First event date" in past X days  -> score +1
3. Trigger : visits page def + Filter: score = 2 + "First event date" in past Y days -> score +1
4. Trigger : data value changes, field = Sequence Score old value = 2, new value = 3 -> your Marketo activity

-Greg

[Joey_Forcelli1]

Greg,

This is great stuff.  I am going to try building this out and if I have any questions I will reach out. 

Thanks again,

--JF

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Joseph,

Giving it a second thought, you could event do this with a 3 static lists (names "Event 1", "Event2" and "Eve,t 3") and without the need to create fields to manage it.

1. Trigger : Opens email XYZ + filter "Member of list" IS NOT "Event 2" -> flow steps :
   1. Remove from list "event 1"
   2. Add to list "event 1". The remove then add will make sure that you have a recent "added to list" event in the activity log. See below.
2. Trigger : Visits web page abc + filter : "Member of list" IS "event 1" + filter "was added to list" IS "event 1" in past X days  -> "Add to list" "Event 2"
3. Trigger : visits page def + Filter: "Member of list" IS "Event 2" + "Was added to list" IS "Event 2" in past Y days -> Add to List "Event 3"
4. Trigger : "is added to list" IS "Event 3" -> your Marketo activity

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Another way to do this is to use filters that require all three steps to be completed to be placed in the list.  So I would trigger on step three, but have Step one and two be used as filters to make sure all three steps were completed.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Jamie,

The limit of using triggers is that you cannot check that things occurred in the expected time order. You just know that they all occurred 🙂

The other limit with filters only is that some of these activities are archived after 90 days. but may be the whole sequence is not supposed to last that long

-Greg

[Joey_Forcelli1]

Thank you Jaime. 

This is the route I initially was treading down but I realized that there wasn't a mechanism that would ensure the 3 events happened in a particular order and within a certain time frame.

--JF