Many-to-many Custom Objects for Subscribers and Beneficiaries

[Anonymous]

I wonder what type of the Custom Object (one to many or many to many) we should use in our situation.

We have a list of Subscribers (parents) and each Subscriber can have either one or multiple Beneficiaries (children). Also, each Beneficiary can belong to multiple Subscribers (for example, one child may be a Beneficiary of  Mom, Dad and Grandma).

In addition, each Beneficiary may have multiple Plans. Also each Beneficiary belongs to one of 4 segments.

We need to send out 4 email campaigns (one for each Beneficiary segment) targeted to Subscribers. Each Subscriber should receive an email with the list of his/her Beneficiaries' names and their Plan IDs, and the Beneficiaries listed in the email should be only from a specific Segment (depending on the email).

I understand that I need to use Email Script Tokens for this but my concern is how to create the right relationships between Subscribers, Beneficiaries, Plans and Segments. Could you help figure this out?

Thank you.

Please note that i initially started this discussion here Many-to-Many Custom Object for Event Info Sanford Whiteman​Grégoire Michel​

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Olga,

The answer depends on whether a plan has only 1 subscriber or can have many.

If the plan has only 1 subscriber, this can be done with 2 objects:

1. Plan object, linked to the person table with a "subscriber" field
2. Beneficiary object, linked to the person object with a "beneficiary" fields and linked to the Plan object with a "plan" field

If the plan can have more than 1 subscriber, you will need 3 objects.

1. The plan object which is a second level object
2. the Subscriber object, linked to the lead with a "subscriber" field and linked to the plan object with a "plan" field
3. The Beneficiary object, linked to the person object with a "beneficiary" fields and linked to the Plan object with a "plan" field

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Greg, thank you so much for your response!

I am a bit confused why we need to create a Subscriber object. Subscribers are "leads" or "people" in our database. We wonder if we can simplify the task by creating just one Beneficiary object that will have a Subscriber ID field linked to the Subscriber ID on the lead (subscriber) record. As far as Plans are concerned these will be unique for each Beneficiary and Subscriber. If a Beneficiary has multiple plans we are planning to import them as a single value, with individual plans separated by comma, for example.

Beneficiary Name	Plan Number
John	11111, 12121
Tom	33333, 44444, 55555

Would that work with a single Beneficiary object?

Also, I wonder how to use this custom object with the email campaign. Our business requirement is to generate a separate email based on each Beneficiary. So if one Subscriber has several Beneficiaries, this Subscriber should receive several emails for each (the Beneficiary Name and Plan # must be inserted in the email). I know that Marketo cannot send more than one email to one address in a single batch but I saw your recommendation about using the "Request Campaign" flow step and even tested that method. It worked when I have duplicate records in Marketo with the same email address but different Subscriber IDs, for example. Each Subscriber ID would receive his/her copy of the email and these emails would arrive in the same mailbox simultaneously. Is it possible to use the same method to send multiple emails to the same email address based on the data sitting in the custom object?

Also, my team is wondering how fast such a campaign would get executed, if let's say the list has ~20,000 subscribers, with 1-4 Beneficiaries each. Would it it be sent out with the same speed as a regular batch campaign sent to the same # of people?

Thank you,
Olga

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Olga,

The reason why you need a subscriber object is because of the limitations of the Marketo data model and custom objects. 1 lead can have many CO, but one CO can only be linked to 1 lead.

Therefore, if you do not create the Subscriber CO, the you are not able to have multiple subscribers for 1 same plan. But may be this is not needed.

Similarly, if you do not create the beneficiary object, you will not be able to have multiple beneficiaries in one plan. I proposed this because my understanding is that beneficiaries would also be leads in the database and you might need to email them as well about the plans. And managing them as leads would be much faster than switching email addresses for each subscribers.

So at the end of it, my recommendation would be that both beneficiaries and subscribers be leads in the DB, and you use the model I recommended to link them.

Now, in every case, on high volumes speed will have to be tested, especially if you trigger a "request campaign" to benefit from the Velocity tokens.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Greg, thank you for clarification! The part i still don't understand is how to send multiple emails to each Subscriber that will display different Beneficiary info for each Beneficiary linked to the Subscriber. Let's assume that Beneficiaries are added as lead records. But the email has to be received by Subscribers (and not Beneficiaries). So how will Marketo know that each Subscriber must receive several emails for each Beneficiary? Is this done through the filters of the Triggered Campaign that is requested, or in the Smart List, or through the Email Script Tokens?

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

So how will Marketo know that each Subscriber must receive several emails for each Beneficiary? Is this done through the filters of the Triggered Campaign that is requested, or in the Smart List, or through the Email Script Tokens?

Velocity can decide which content a lead receives if they enter a Smart Campaign, but it can't decide whether a lead will be included in the Campaign in the first place.

So if each Subscriber needs to receive an email per Beneficiary, that must be done at an "outer" level (i.e. not inside the email itself).

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Sanford, that's what I thought. I have an idea on how to do this, and if it works I will post it later here.

[Chris_Morris1]

"So if each Subscriber needs to receive an email per Beneficiary, that must be done at an "outer" level (i.e. not inside the email itself)."

Any tips on determining this at the outer level? I have a situation where a list of leads will receive an email (confirmation of a payment plan).

The list may consist of, say, 50 unique leads, each with their own unique payment details to confirm. No big deal.

The list may also consist of, say, 40 unique leads, five of whom have two different payments to confirm. I'm uploading these as a batch, with a data vaule change as my trigger, but the triger only catches one of the data value changes, so only one of the payments is confirmed via email.

Any suggestions?