Creating a Birthday Campaign with Recurring Batch

[Tamara_Johnson]

I've found info on creating campaigns to send an email on a client's birthday. The campaign is launching correctly. However, we have more campaign members added and I did not see the list increase. The original run started @ 626 with 549 in waitstep. Once we update the DOB for clients the members should be 1,347 with others in the pending waitstep.

The Flow step is the same for both - just a different email sent.

I have 2 Trigger Campaigns since the groups need to be separated for 2 different emails:

1 group has 1,247 members, the other will be 100 members.

The trigger campaign that has 626 members worked without stacking the Data Value Changed trigger + filter - we want to make sure it is secure - so we added the filter to the logic. The remaining logic that you do not see has filters used for most campaigns and have worked in the past.

The recurring batch has 1,246 and is scheduled for every day @8am. 

The second Recurring batch has 100 members.

Yet, this is not showing for the trigger campaign

#recurring batch campaign‌ #birthday‌ #trigger smart campaign‌  #campaign is requested‌

[Ellie_Lewis3]

This is kind of difficult to visualize and I feel like Marketo documentation doesn't do the concept justice. When you're using filters with triggers for a smart campaign, whatever filters you designate is the group Marketo will listen to for the triggers to occur. In this case, your trigger campaign is:

Listening to everyone whose date of birth went from empty to not empty (Filter)

For the action of date of birth data value changing from empty (Trigger)

That said, are you saying that the member numbers aren't adding up for your smart campaigns?

[SanfordWhiteman]

This is kind of difficult to visualize and I feel like Marketo documentation doesn't do the concept justice. When you're using filters with triggers for a smart campaign, whatever filters you designate is the group Marketo will listen to for the triggers to occur. In this case, your trigger campaign is:

Listening to everyone whose date of birth went from empty to not empty (Filter)

For the action of date of birth data value changing from empty (Trigger)

Eh... that's not really how it works. (I'm not just nitpicking, if you conceptualize it that way you won't be aware of some edge cases.)

Listeners aren't attached to everyone who matched the filters in the past. (That would destroy performance if it were so, it would be in practice impossible to build a system like this.) Triggers listen for activities in the now.

[Tamara_Johnson]

Good insight - thank you, the great news is the campaigns worked as anticipated. The recurring batch populated the campaigns, the wait steps show the pending sends - so we are good to go. Checking our emails sends over the weekend, and they were perfect.

[hoandigicor]

Hi TJ,

Just want to ask why did you set the Recurring Batch to be scheduled everyday at 8am? Does this mean that the Trigger Campaign will run again everyday at 8am? And why would it work (?), because I think if we set the Recurring Batch to run again everyday, the waiting time of the Trigger Campaign is going to be reset everyday and thus, there would be no reoccurring emails.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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And why would it work (?), because I think if we set the Recurring Batch to run again everyday, the waiting time of the Trigger Campaign is going to be reset everyday and thus, there would be no reoccurring emails.

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The batch only qualifies someone once every 364 days.

However, I don't advise anyone (else) use this setup. 

[hoandigicor]

Why do you think this is not ideal and are there other ways to create recurring birthday messages?

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's prone to errors (leap years, for one). And I just hate long-running Wait steps. A Wait IMO is a good fit for short-term (but not too short) dynamic nurtures: you get an email today, one in 2 days, another one 10 days later. Waits of < 1 hour or > 90 days are almost always better done another way.

More predictable is maintaining a field that's that's always set to the next anniversary. Set Next Birthday = {{lead.Next Birthday}} + 1 year. Then run daily batches.