Same smartlist across different programs -- high audience count discrepancy

[cjmendoza1894]

Hello,

I was just wondering -- I have used the same smartlist for two different email programmes (two months apart) that's part of a newsletter cadence.

Our data has not been cleansed, but the most recent campaign shows significantly lower audience count. What could be the cause for this? Does Marketo have an algorithm that automatically removes contacts based on a certain criteria?

Appreciate your help!

[Beth_Massura]

Hi there! Smart lists are dynamic - meaning people are automatically "added" and "removed" as they newly meet all the criteria - or no longer meet the criteria. Even if you didn't batch modify or remove records in Marketo, could that have happened in your CRM? How many people are in the smart list today?

There could also be fewer email sent in the second newsletter based on bounces and unsubscribes that happened in response to that first newsletter; Marketo automatically filters out invalid, unsubscribed, marketing suspended and block listed records from general email sends. But the volume (~28% reduction) makes me think that's probably not the only reason.

[cjmendoza1894]

Hi Beth!

Thank you for your response. Our company is new to Marketo and we are still in the works of integrating our CRM with Marketo. At the minute, we are doing manual data upload. So I don't think it's the first case.

As for the second theory, would these support that?

Our database grew by a few thousands due to manual data upload by our data team, but there are generally more people being pulled into the previous campaign. I'm so puzzled. 😞

May 2021

July 2021

[Katja_Keesom]

As Beth mentioned, a lot depends on the smart list criteria you used. Not sure to what extent we'll be able to help you trouble shoot that, but if you post a screen shot of your smart list criteria we may be able to help you find the reason.

[Vinay_Kumar]

The audience number depends on the smart list criteria. Could please share the screenshot of the smart lists set up for both the programs, then we can try to figure out what is causing the difference?

[cjmendoza1894]

Thank you for your answers. I know that smart lists are dynamic. And I used the exact same criteria for both campaigns--which is why I am puzzled 😞 I'm not able to share screenshots due to some privacy concerns...

[Vinay_Kumar]

@cjmendoza1894, Try creating a smart list to get the count of Unsubscribes from your last send. This could be one of the reasons for the low lead count.