The new 90 day data retention policy is far too limiting

[Broderick_Klem1]

Just got the email from marketo a few days ago announcing that they will no longer be retaining "was sent" and "was delivered" activity data past 90 days. These are arguably the most important 2 data points for an ESP to keep long-term and having to back them up in our own database and then pipe them back in is extremely limiting and ridiculous. How is everyone else planning on work around/with these new rules? We'll most likely have to start adding users to lists when they are sent email that contain certain tags and then referencing the lists for long-term suppression instead of "was sent email".

[SanfordWhiteman]

While it's frustrating, in the wider view we have to ensure that such data points are represented via program membership (the date of a Program Status change is kept for 25 months).

(Also, the fact that Marketo doesn't store exactly what the email looked like that the person received on that day means it's largely been about the asset title.)

[Nicholas_Manojl]

I can definitely imagine it will change the way people operate in Marketo..

..but, I think it reaffirms more than ever the need to think about your customer lifecycle. Think about what your emails are trying to achieve - move people down the sales funnel.. this can be achieved with a lifecycle stage or an update to a field value, which isn't impacted by the data retention policies. Simiarly, as Sandy mentioned, using program membership will help address the need around attribution and influence. 

Does it matter if we have a view into if someone was sent a newsletter 18 months ago vs not? I'd argue.. probably not. 

What are some examples of some campaigns or use-cases that you have that will be impacted by the change in policy? We could help brainstorm around them?

[Broderick_Klem1]

I can definitely understand why you wouldn't need greater than 90 days for a sales/demandgen use case, but I'm using Marketo for customer lifecycle - welcome emails, onboarding emails, nurture drips, etc. The primary way this will impact me is webinar invites. We have a webinar cycle that ensures that all accounts are invited to a webinar at least once a year, but all new users are invited 1 month after account creation. We also occasionally do CS-led webinars. Whenever a user gets a webinar invite of any kind, we make sure the email name has "[Webinar]" in the email title. Then we use a smart list containing anyone that was sent an email containing "[Webinar]" in the past 6 months as a suppression before sending them another one.

[Broderick_Klem1]

As for how to brainstorm around them, I already have a clear workaround - my plan is to use a smart campaign that adds people to a list whenever they are sent an email containing "webinar", then that same campaign will remove them from the list 6 months later. Then we'll just use that list as our suppression. But that's still a workaround I don't feel I should have to do.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I don't understand why this can't result in a Program Status, which can be interrogated for 25 months?

[Broderick_Klem1]

The webinar emails are sent as part of a onboarding flow and not a dedicated webinar program (meaning we aren't using webinar-invited/webinar-registered, etc). In fact, in many cases the webinar data isn't in Marketo at all, and we're just sending a one-off batch send to invite people. Is there something I'm missing?

[SanfordWhiteman]

They could still be in a Program with a relevant channel + statuses.