Are Marketo Segments static?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm currently testing the Segmentation option in Marketo (for use with Snippets and Dynamic Content), and noticed that my test Segment isn't refreshing the numbers? Does a Segment in Marketo need to be unapproved first before it can be refreshed, or does the refresh happen automatically? I would have assumed the latter (the same way it does for other MAPs like Eloqua), but that doesn't seem to be the case, unless this is just a bug. 

I created the above "SFDC Campaign Membership" Segment last week, and since it was approved, there have been additional members added to some of the other campaign member rules (i.e EMEA Autos & EMEA Commodities). I also verified the numbers in a regular Smart List, and they are showing up there. When I try to refresh the Segment without un-approving, the numbers aren't updating.

I guess the other thing I should ask is whether it's even possible for a Person in Marketo to be in more than one Segment at once? So referring to the screenshot again, three of the five people who are in the US Chemicals Segment, should also be in EMEA Autos and EMEA Commodities. Seems a bit strange that they are only being added to the first Chemicals Segment, so I'm wondering of this could be the issue.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

Timo

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

A lead can only be in one Segment in a given Segmentation, so this is the source of your confusion. It's explained well enough in the docs

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the confirmation.

That's quite a limitation. So if you are building Segments based on multiple Campaign memberships, and you want the option to show multiple Dynamic Content (one piece of content in the Email for each Campaign membership), I suppose the only way to do this is to create a unique Segment for each membership. Not a very scaleable solution unfortunately.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yes, if you're only using Segmentations, you'd need a different Segmentation for each Campaign. Or you'd need to populate all the combinations of possible Campaigns as Segments in a single Campaign. (This can work for small numbers of key Campaigns but becomes maddening as you try to precompute the combinations for more and more Campaigns, and then you'll eventually overrun the 100-Segment limit.)

The other way to do it, which I prefer, is to have a field that maintains a list of all the person's Campaigns (semicolon-delimited, managed via webhook) then use Velocity to output based on their different memberships.