Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Anonymous
Not applicable

Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Hi everyone! I'm trying to figure out the best way to integrate our 250ok seed list into our email send process and am concerned about the emails we send to this list skewing our overall email performance numbers. I was wondering how you all manage this? It sounds like some people use segments to exclude them from email sends, while others will create a test version of their email to send to their seedlists, then create final version to send to their audience when everything's ready to go.

Really interested to hear your thoughts on this -- thanks!

10 REPLIES 10
Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

I only do specific 250ok sends. The volume is so small it's meaningless for reporting.


I also set a flag Seedlist Member=T which can be used to filter out people in reports or in other sends.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Alternatively to adding a "SeedList" flag field, you can also use a static list.

-Greg

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Thanks Josh! We're trying to start getting more and more targeted in our email sends, so many of them are to 500 people or fewer -- about half the size of our 250ok seed list. I'm afraid that over time this'll start to seriously skew our results.

As I mentioned in my reply to Greg, I'd like to delete seed list email addresses once they're no longer active (so about once a month, from what I understand); do you know if Marketo can still reference the criteria "Seedlist Member = T" for leads after they've been deleted?

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

And also, in addition the suggestions above, in case you would not know, in email performance reports, you can use a smart list to include / exclude some leads from the stats:

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so, in this smart list, you can use the "seed list member" field or static list.

-Greg

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Thanks Greg!

I was wondering how you roll this out to your users? Right now, other Marketo users generally pull their own email performance reports. To ensure that these leads are excluded, would you send a training document to your users to show them how to do it, or do you create email performance reports for them that they can then duplicate?

One other thing -- right now, I have all seed list members as members of a static list. Since the list is updated monthly, and our mailable database is relatively small, I'd like to delete out the old seed list members and replace them with the new list. Will Marketo be able to reference these deleted leads as members of that list (or, if I use Josh's method, will Marketo still be able to reference that Seedlist Member = T), so that they'll still be excluded when I run reports referencing emails sent before the leads were deleted? Or should I update the email performance report smartlist to say "Member of List not in Seed List" AND "Marketo Deleted is False"?

Thanks again.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Hi Katie,

It takes training indeed, as it will not be possible to fully control nor automate the whole process. As a center of expertise, I would prefer to train and control rather than do for the end users, but it is your call at the end of the day

if you delete the leads from Marketo, they will be completely removed from Marketo and from all statistics. Meaning Marketo will no longer be able to reference these leads, but, AFAIK, they will also be removed form the email stats. This is easy to test and check. If you do not delete the seedlist leads but simply remove them from the static list then you will end up with wrong stats indeed.

-Greg

Dan_Stevens_
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

When permanently deleting leads from Marketo, I believe the metrics will remain with some of the metrics-only reports - like "email performance report" - but are indeed removed from any reports/smart lists/RCE where actual lead data is presented.  This is why people sometimes notice a discrepancy in their reporting (when comparing the variety of reports available in Marketo).

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Thanks, both! Do either of you have a good method for excluding deleted leads from your email performance report? The smartlist only has options like "Is SFDC deleted", but doesn't have a similar option for "Marketo deleted". I want to have a way to keep historical email metric reports as accurate as possible since my team will be referring to them frequently.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Preventing 250ok seed list from skewing email reporting

Hi Katie,

I have never found or heard of such a possibility unfortunately. I usually tell my customers not to delete leads until they are sure they no longer need them for any reporting purpose.

suggestion: move the old seedlist to another smart list ("Old seed list") and use both the "seed list" and "old seed lists" as exclusions in your reports. Keep them in the "old seed list" Smart List 1 year and then delete them.

-Greg