Hack for keeping smart campaigns from being auto-deactivated

[Kim_Wieczner]

I am well aware that there is no way to exclude smart campaigns from the regular trigger campaign clean-up, and I do not wish to turn that feature off entirely. Has anyone had success with a hack to keep certain important but perhaps low traffic smart campaigns alive? Perhaps a regularly scheduled request campaign trigger that would fake traffic here? Any ideas welcome!

[Devraj_Grewal · Accepted solution]

Kim,

Just deactivate and activate it again and the 6 month clock resets. This is the easiest way. Don't bother with running fake people through the flow just to keep it live, because once they run through the 6 month clock will begin again until another person runs through.

You also get a warning of which campaigns will be deactivated, so you only really need to deactivate and reactivate during this warning period and the 6 month clock resets.

And of course, vote for the idea:

[Devraj_Grewal · Accepted solution]

Kim,

Just deactivate and activate it again and the 6 month clock resets. This is the easiest way. Don't bother with running fake people through the flow just to keep it live, because once they run through the 6 month clock will begin again until another person runs through.

You also get a warning of which campaigns will be deactivated, so you only really need to deactivate and reactivate during this warning period and the 6 month clock resets.

And of course, vote for the idea:

[Kristina_Wrigh1]

We're running into the same thing recently - is there a warning we get from Marketo which outlines which campaigns will be deactivated? maybe I'm not seeing it? Hoping you can point me in the right direction. Thanks!

[JD_Nelson · Accepted solution]

There is an alert sent to Admins via email (I believe -- I get one), and it's also listed in your "Notifications" alerts at the top of your Marketo Instance. They will identify which campaigns are scheduled to be deactivated (a to-do list to comb through, for sure), and then a list of those that were deactivated once that day comes.

[Tracy_Boesken]

Speaking of hacks...I have a list of 95 collateral items that are on our website that I need to have "always on" (active, Triggered). I am going through the list one by one deactivating then reactivating so that I know for certain none of them have been overlooked.

My question is: is there a way to keep these campaigns in one location to mass/batch deactivate/reactivate? I am aware of Campaign Inspector listing active or inactive campaigns (the instance is old and has a lot) but my goal is to have lists of the triggered campaigns by themselves to check if active/inactive.

Ideas?

Thanks,

--Tracy

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Tracy_Boesken and @Rush ,

This is slightly off topic, but I think it is worth bringing up as it might make your life a LOT easier.

why have a triggered campaign for each piece of collateral?  

I'm guessing that you use a standard form (or maybe a couple of forms) for all the gated content?  Why not have a single campaign that relies on a hidden field on the form being populated to ID the piece of collateral in question, and then in the triggered campaign either supply the collateral directly, or request a campaign that then puts them on a nurture journey based on the collateral requested.

This has two key benefits:

• It means you have less campaigns to worry about auto-deactivating
• It means the likelihood of the triggered campaigns deactivating is greatly reduced, as all the basic stuff is going through one (or at worst a small handful) triggered campaign.  If someone isn't downloading collateral at least once every six months, you've got other problems 🙂

Cheers

Jo

[Rush]

@Jo_Pitts1 Thanks for the suggestion! I'm always looking for new and improved ways of simplifying a global instance.
Are you aware of an example that is available for review ie blog, case study, etc? There are multiple variables taken into consideration for our exact setup (CRM, CMS, reporting, etc.) and I would love a closer look in order to determine its potential.

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Rush ,

I'm not aware of any blogs or case studies.

It is probably better if you expand your use case a little further and see if the community can provide guidance.

[Jo_Pitts1]

Oh... and as a third benefit, it also means you have less forms to manage/maintain.  Imagine if the business requests you capture a new piece of information.  In my world, I'm updating one or two forms and having my first beer whilst in your world you're updating 95-300 forms and cursing a lot (at the business for the change, at the forms, and at me because I'm REALLY enjoying that beer).

[Tracy_Boesken]

@Jo_Pitts1  Excellent points!! This instance is old and needs a lot of work but implementing your ideas would certainly clean the instance (and I'm sure would function 110% better!) Definitely will be on my 2022 ToDo list!

I owe you a beer! 🙂

[Katja_Keesom]

The use case for global forms is a strong one for sure and it just got stronger! 😉

With all that's being said in the thread though, there is a use case for perhaps having a flag to "not auto-deactivate". My use cases often are around operational processes where niche scenarios need to be catered for, so not related to customer facing activities most of the time.

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Katja_Keesom ,

if they are 'operational processes' are they in fact triggered, or running on a schedule?

Cheers

Jo

[Katja_Keesom]

Of course where possible these would be batches, but in some cases triggers are in fact the better choice.

[Jo_Pitts1]

@Katja_Keesom ,

Of course - there are always edge cases.  I'm quite keen (on my journey to never stop learning) what kind of edge cases we're talking here.

Cheers

Jo

[Rush]

My company does the same, requiring that all content be active regardless of engagement rates. The volume of gated assets on our site hovers around 300. Updating 300 individual trigger campaigns is everyone's least favorite task... we are in need of the mass batch updating capability as well.

[JD_Nelson]

I'm curious if the Marketo Sky roll-out will have a better way to do this en mas. You'll be able to deactivate and re-activate many campaigns at once, I'm just not sure if you can filter them in a way that would flag them. Possible use-case would be to include a key phrase in your naming convention "-keep-on-" then you can filter by those and either turn them off/on before they deactivate, or simply go back after they deactivate and see if any were turned off. Ultimately the use-case of them being inactive for 6 months should be a trigger for you to do some better promotions or discover reasons why there's no activity...