Qualification rules

[Anonymous]

Hi there Marketo,

I wondered if someone could explain simply for me the difference between flow every time and flow once under Qualification rules? and how and when to use either.

Kind regards

Di

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Aslihan_Ayan_Ha]

Hi Diane, the qualification rules control how many times someone can be treated by a smart campaign. The default - flow once- is that even if someone triggers a smart campaign multiple times, they will only be sent through the flow once.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ashley

So what is the difference between the two I am not quite understanding:

Flow once

Flow every time

Regards

Di

[Anonymous]

Hi Ashley,

Essentially the key difference is whether you want a person to run through the campaign multiple times or just one.

For instance, if you were scoring leads and you wanted to give someone a point every time they visit your "Contact Us" page, then your smart campaign would have a trigger like "visits page" and every time that action occurs, the lead would run through the campaign and score points.  If you set the smart campaign to only allow leads to flow through once, then they would only get points the first time they visit the "Contact Us" page and not any other times they visit the page.

An example where flow through only once is useful is when you have an email you only want to send a user once or action that only occurs once, e.g. maybe when they register on your site or the very first time they log in you might want to send them a welcome email, but you only want that to happen once per lead so that they do not get multiple welcome emails every time they log in.

Hope this helps.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Most of your non-operational smart-campaigns should be set to "only once" - especially those where the primary flow step is to change program status.  Once someone has reached a specific program status, there's no need for them to run through the smart campaign again.  If you're ever in doubt, just ask yourself "why would I want a lead to run through a series of flow steps more than once?".  As Simon mentioned above, the perfect use case are scoring campaigns - where you do want leads to build up their lead score each and every time they exhibit specific behavior.

Also, the more qualification rules that are set to "only once", the more efficient your Marketo instance will run.

[Anonymous]

OK thank you all. So in the case of an event invitation EDM where we send a first invite and then a follow up reminder invitation EDM.

If I set it to “Flow once” will the contacts still be able to receive the 2^nd email invitation or will that exclude them from receiving it?
Or does the rule simply relate to the change of status that are set in the campaign ie “if contact registers, then mark as “registered”?

[Dan_Stevens_]

If you have your smart campaign built so that everything is contained in a single smart campaign, for example:

• Send first invite email
• Wait 5 days
• If program status is not "registered"
  • Send wave 2 of invite
• Wait 2 days prior to the event
• if program status is "registered"
  • Send reminder email to attend the event

...having it set as "only once" is perfectly fine since a lead will not complete running through all of the campaign flows until 2 days prior to the event (since they'll be stuck in wait steps).  A lead will not complete running through the flow until they have reached the final flow that they qualify for; or if you explicitly remove them from the flow.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan,

I am still not quite understanding the difference between the two?  I need to know the version for Marketo for Dummies, i have not done any official marketo training and picking up on the fly.

Regards

Di