Question about the way Marketo Sends out emails

[Charlee_Chayata]

To begin, I'm still a novice with Marketo, please bear with me. I would appreciate it if you explain it to me like the six year old Einstein refers to .

TL:DR; Marketo is sending a single email from my batch send at random dates/times, does anyone know why?

Background to the problem:

I'm playing around in "Revenue Explorer" to see how my email sends are going for a webinar series. I send invites out for the bi-weekly (1 in 2 weeks) series on the Monday the webinar occurs. In doing so there, I noticed in the report that there were 1 off email sends during different times of the week. I tried looking further into these emails, some of the emails not even existing in the program that is going to be sending it the week of. I'm wondering why these emails are going off, and what is the system doing?

I'd be more understanding if it was different sends on the Monday, but some of the sends seem random around the week or sometimes not even the week of the webinar. Technically, it's ok, because it is an invite email that sends you to a signup page, but it's worrisome that I don't have control over it. 

For those wondering, here is how I setup the report:

In Revenue Explorer:

1. Clicked "New Report"

2. Select the "Email Analysis"

3. Clicked on the "Filter" section to expand it

4. Dragged: "Program Channel" over to the filter selection and typed in the appropriate channel "Webinar"

5. Dragged: "Program Name" over to the filter selection and typed in the appropriate name "Selected program names"

6. Dragged: "Email Name" over to the filter selection and typed in the appropriate email names "Invites - Monday"

7. Dragged: "Email Name" over to  "Layouts" and dropped it in the "Rows" area

8. Dragged: "Sent(week)" over to  "Layouts" and dropped it in the "Rows" area

9. Dragged: "Sent, Delivered, %Delivered, Opened, %Opened, Clicked, %Clicked, %Clicked to Open, Unsubscribed, % unsubscribed" over to  "Layouts" and dropped it in the "Measures" area

For those wondering about the Six year old and Einstein:

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” ~ Albert Einstein

Thanks in advance!

[Jay_Jiang]

Go to the email asset itself and look at the "used by" tab and see what smart campaigns are using it

Alternatively, create a smart list to show the people who have received the email in question and look in their activity logs for information

[Charlee_Chayata]

Hello Jay,

Thanks for that! It lead me down a rabbit hole, but I may have figured part of it out. Some of the emails addresses in question (to be particular; the ones that are not sent on the appropriate date), clicked a link/filled a form that was in the invite email, but were never on the list of people that we were going to email. 

That lead me to question; if someone was forwarded this email, say from one team member to another, it is my understanding that Marketo (MKTO) would lose vision on that forwarded email. Is that correct?

Then if said person opened the email and clicked links/filled out form, we would be lacking info about sending the person the email. Would MKTO then just backfill the date, to the date that the link press/form filled?

Please check and advise.

Thanks in advance.

[Jay_Jiang]

That lead me to question; if someone was forwarded this email, say from one team member to another, it is my understanding that Marketo (MKTO) would lose vision on that forwarded email. Is that correct?

No, Marketo would assume the action was made by the intended recipient instead of the person who received the forwarded email

Then if said person opened the email and clicked links/filled out form, we would be lacking info about sending the person the email. Would MKTO then just backfill the date, to the date that the link press/form filled?

The activity log of the new person who fills out the form will start with Filled out Form, not link press

[Charlee_Chayata · Accepted solution]

Hello Jay (& anyone else who runs into this issue),

Being that this is beyond my skills and the initial findings didn't turn up anything solid, I reached out to the support team. Please explore their findings below. I redacted some private information, but other than that it is a direct copy and paste.

Again to re-iterate the issue; I was under the belief that Marketo was sending out emails outside of the smart campaign that I was using the email in. It was only 1 - 5 emails per program, but it was at a rate that was alarming enough to ask for help. The answer below was to explain why these strange sends were being seen, and a little bit about how Marketo works. 

Thank you for your patience. We were able to determine why we are seeing these email sends in RCE on ***Date*** and ***Date***, for leads that were not sent the email via the Smart Campaigns.

RCE (and Marketo Analytics in general - Email Performance Reports, etc) will generate different email activities based on other various activities.

For example, a 'Click Link' activity will associate an 'Opens Email' count for that asset, if a message is clicked or Unsubscribed, it is counted as Sent, Opened, and Delivered.

In the case of the leads we are seeing in the RCE report for ***Date*** and ***Date***, these leads do have 'Unsubscribed From Email' Activities in their Activity Logs. This occurred because:

1. They were forwarded the email (either from a colleague, or via auto-forwarding configurations for their email)

2. They visited the Landing Page with the Registration Form

3. They Filled out the Form, using their email address (that wasn't sent the email via Marketo Campaign)

4. They clicked the Unsubscribed checkbox

These actions associated the 'Unsubscribe from Email' to the second lead (the ones we see in RCE for ***Date***-***Date***), and the Analytics behavior 'creates' a send count/activity in the Report to accommodate this activity.