Does Marketo unsubscribe all Forward-to-a-friend recipients - even if they are existing leads who are already opted-in?

[Dan_Stevens_]

I understand that Marketo marks all new leads who receive FtaF emails as unsubscribed.  But what if those recipients are already leads in our DB and have already opted-in - is Marketo marking them as unsubscribed as well?  I sure hope not.

But if so, would a solutions be to have a trigger campaign always listening for when a FtaF is sent an email (although, I haven't determined how to listen for that in a smart list yet).  And then if lead source IS NOT FtaF (meaning, they're already in our DB), "change data value" of Unsubscribed to FALSE?  I just tried this, but "lead source" isn't something that you can select when building a smart list.

[Bruce_Jeffers · Accepted solution]

Dan, a couple different answers for you:

1.  Marketo does NOT automatically unsubscribe a Forward to Friend recipient if they already exist in your database. So no need to worry there.  (I had wondered this earlier myself, and did some testing to find out)

2. For the filters, you might try looking for just the field "Source".  That could be the label for the Lead Source field in Marketo (depending on how your field mapping is set up).

And "Sent Forward a Friend Email" is also its own filter and trigger that you can use. See my screenshot below for these examples.  (However, they listen for when a current lead SENDS a FtaF email, so you will have to click through into the Activity History to see the recipient.)

You may not even need to build the campaign you explained, since existing leads won't be unsubscribed. But if you still wanted to search for them just in case, you should be able to with filters and triggers shown below.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Thanks Bruce - this is very helpful!