List of people who have unsubscribed, then been sent an email

[Julia_Rosentha3]

Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, but could I have some help please? I need to generate a list of people who have unsubscribed, and since then, have been sent an email.

But because there's no "then" option in the filter rules of a smartlist i think this might be impossible. The only filter rules currently available are "any" or "all",but they won't help in this case. And, even if I date stamped the unsubscribe action, I still wouldn't be able to setup the smartlist rules to say;

Unsubscribe = true

Was sent email = true

     Date = after unsubscribe date stamp

I know i could generate a list of unsubscribes and export with interesting moment fields, then do a clunky vlookup or IF statement to work this out, but preferred method is to do it in MKTO if possible.

Any ideas would be much appreciated! Thank you

[Floyd_Alvares2]

Hi Julia,

Is there any specific reason you are looking for this information? When a record is unsubscribed - and I hope you mean the system unsubscribe of Marketo, then there should be no reason why a record should receive any marketing related email.

Of course operational emails are different, but then again  you would not send an operational email  unless it was deemed "operational".

But other than that, there is no "easy" way to identify records that would have been sent an email after unsubscibing.

You should definitely leverage creating the "Unsubscribed date" field and "Last email sent date" and then you could query something like

Unsubscribe Date is "after" said date

Was sent email date "between" said date and today.

and run a month check to see if records meet this criteria and then export these from your Smart List.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Floyd

[Julia_Rosentha3]

This was more of an example, to represent multiple times where i've wanted to build a smartlist with a similar condition. i.e. generate a list a list of people who did 'x' , but only  AFTER doing 'y', but have never been able to find a decent solution. The unsubscribe example was just a simple way to represent this sort of scenario, we'd never actually have a need to run this exact smartlist [maybe for an audit or sense check]. I'm all for keeping tidy unsubscribe data, not worth the damage to do it any other way. If people don't want to hear from you, the worst thing you can do is keep contacting them.

Thanks for your reply. If i'm not mistaken, there's no way of running a list similar to what i've described here, in MKTO, correct? The only way is to create a few date/time stamps for various activities, and export to excel and do it there, correct?

Thanks again

Jules

[Alex_Venus]

Wouldn't the lead activity log act as your audit trail should you receive a complaint?

I appreciate this isn't a solution to your question, but this shouldn't be an issue due to system.unsubscribe.

I have witnessed marketers labelling promotional emails as 'operational' in my time though, so could be worth using the setup listed by Floyd.

[SanfordWhiteman]

It can't be your audit trail as-is, because the most important activities in this case are aged out.

If you keep an offline archive then you can use it as a reference (although technically it could be altered in transit, it's a good faith effort).

[Alex_Venus]

Ah so after 90 days they will disappear from the activity log too? Yikes.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The Filled Out Form will last for 25 months. But the proof of their Data Value Change only lasts 90 days. In my experience in regulated industry it's not sufficient to have a partial log, or really even to have to go to Marketo ad hoc at all. It needs to be stored offline continuously, at least every week.

[Erek_Bond]

I realize this is off the original topic, but what suggestions do you have for storing the activity log offline?

[SanfordWhiteman]

I realize this is off the original topic, but what suggestions do you have for storing the activity log offline?

Do you mean literally suggestions for storing? (That is, not the retrieval part but permanently storing after the file is downloaded.)

If you need both storage and reporting, I recommend storing activity logs in a timeseries db (OpenTSDB, etc.). People often make the mistake of trying to use a traditional SQL database, which is not the right fit.

However, for pure archival, a tsdb may be too obscure (like if regulators need to query it). A tsdb also rearranges the original data via compression and is geared toward aggregation, rather than individual lookups. So if you need a lossless one-to-one mirror of an Activity Log, you'd want a partitioned SQL table.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I hope you mean the system unsubscribe of Marketo, then there should be no reason why a record should receive any marketing related email.

Well, there is if they later resubscribe! And because of the lack of a permanent audit trail you can't after the fact determine the person's trajectory.

But, more likely in line with the OP's reasoning, it also can be useful to know just how many times you've ignored their Unsubscribed value. People can unreasonably twist the rules of what qualifies as Operational and rightfully get complaints.

[Floyd_Alvares2]

Yes I totally agree to this Sanford.

Guess it is time to start building out an Unsubscribe Program that allows you to capture this information due to the lack of activity information.

Floyd

[Darrell_Alfons2]

Julia,

You can use "data value changed" , attribute = unsubscribed , and then you will have date options.

And then was sent email = time frame.

Hope that helps!

Darrell

[SanfordWhiteman]

Except the Data Value Changes activity is aged out after 90 days.

I would say there's actually way to do this accurately within or without Marketo if you haven't already been archiving Activity Logs.

[Julia_Rosentha3]

Thanks Sanford, informative as usual

[Darrell_Alfons2]

Oh Man!! did not know that.

Thanks Sanford, sorry Julia Rosenthal​ guess it will not work.

[Floyd_Alvares2]

Hi Darrell,

Welcome to the new Data Retention Policy: Marketo Activities Data Retention Policy - Under the Hood 

Thanks,

Floyd