How to detect when a lead is in two engagement programs at once?

[Anonymous]

We put leads into engagement programs through manual list import primarily. We are handling multiple lists and thus there is always a chance of duplicates. Currently, we don't dedupe before uploading contacts from these lists to Marketo. As a result, there is a chance a lead is unintentionally added to a second engagement program. We keep our communication limits set to 1 email per day and 1 email per week, so in our case, the lead would just receive emails from one of the two engagement programs, depending on the timing of the streams. Still, having a lead switch unintentionally to another path is less than ideal for us. We'd prefer to have control over this.

Is there a way for Marketo to tell me when a contact imported in a list and added to an engagement program is already in another engagement program? Ie. Can you do this via a Smart Campaign? Marketo Support was unsure but suggested I try the Community. 

Our other approach would be to dedupe all contacts before starting to upload them to Marketo, though this manual effort would create some serious overhead. 

David

[Dory_Viscoglio]

David, it sounds like you're adding people to a list, and then saying if they're in this list, then add them to an engagement program? Could you use a choice option that only adds them to the engagement program if they aren't already a member of another engagement program? Another (more complicated) option would be to set up a traffic cop or segmentations that would ensure a person could only be in a single engagement program at a time. 

[Anonymous]

Good idea about using the choice option. How do I go about that?

My Smart List for each Add to Stream is Added to List: List name is [list name]

Would the best approach be to add Was Added to Engagement Program: Program is Any, Date of Activity: In past 60 days. (If I want to take into account that time frame, that is.)

Or am I better off setting this up a different way?

David

[Josh_Hill13]

You should use the Member of Engagement Program filter = TRUE/False to accomplish this.

So the smart list filter would say, If you are already a member of an Engagement Program (X OR Y), then do not proceed. In Marketo this would be:

Member of Engagement Program = FALSE, IS "X,Y"

In the flow, you would then use Add to Engagement using the Choice Step. You could also use Member of Engagement Program in the CHoice Step. I'd say it's better to use the Choice to route the lead to the correct Engagement though.

When you say you do not dedupe, what do you mean? Are you importing CSV files and just auto adding them to Engagements? Marketo will dedupe for you in that case.