Ongoing exclusion lists for a smart campaign?

[Broderick_Klem1]

We use smart campaigns to trigger an email flow based off of a contact taking certain actions. For example, they request a credit card trial -> they are sent a series of emails informing them how much they have left in the trial. HOWEVER, if at any point during this series of emails they pay us, we want them to drop from the flow. I haven't found an elegant way to do this in Marketo. I've only found three ways to do this:

1. Create a smart list that contains everyone who has paid us, then before every email in the flow, have a remove from flow option that removes them from the flow they are in if they are now in the smart list that contains all payments.

2. Use send email "options" to not send an email if they are now in the smart list that contains all payments.

3. Have a separate smart campaign that watches for payments as a trigger and then removes from the trial flow when that happens.

Each of these 3 options works, but none are very scalable, as they quickly become overwhelmingly complicated when you have multiple exclusion parameters.

What I'm really missing is the ability to set "if contact no longer meets requirements of initial smart list, remove from flow immediately" or the ability to have some program or smart campaign level "exclusion list" where I can say if contact becomes a member of this smart list, remove them from said smart campaign.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Darrell_Alfons2]

I think your current options are fine and probably would scale fine.

Another option would be to use the engagement program and transition them out of the stream, use the "data value changes" trigger and whatever field you have that marks them as paid.

[Nicholas_Hajdin]

Hi Broderick,

I agree with Darrel. Why is option 3 not scalable? Create master smart campaign (Existing Customer: Exclude) that listens for payment and then removes the customer from the flow. There should only be one trigger, such as Data Value Changes --> New value "Customer" Is True, with one flow step, Remove from Flow.

Another option I've had success with is creating a Master Exclusion smart list. This list contains any triggers or filters that you would want to include in your marketing campaigns. As you build out your Target list, include the filter "Is not in Smart list: Master Exclusion list". You can also clone the master exclusion list into the program itself, so you can remove certain filters and triggers if you only want certain criteria to apply.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Broderick,

I would go for option 2. Is is very easy. You just set up a smart list and on each send email flow step, you add a choice that says :

"if member of smart list then do nothing else send email". If you need to evolve the criteria, just change the smart list filters.

-Greg