Trigger Smart Campaigns Aren't Working

[Anonymous]

In mid-December all of our trigger smart campaigns in our account stopped working. We've been operating off batch smart campaigns since then, but it's obviously not ideal. We've been dealing with a support ticket and our account reps, but they have been anything but helpful.

Has anyone else ever had this happen to them? If so, were you able to solve the issue and can you provide your resolution? I'm afraid that it's a setting that got touched on our account, but can't seem to find anything that would cause this type of impact.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Danielle,

There is absolutely no reason why all trigger smart campaigns should stop working only on your instance

What do you mean by stop working? Not triggering? Be deactivated? Other?

Can you give us precise examples?

-Greg

[Anonymous]

All of the smart campaigns in our account stopped triggering any leads and therefore stopped sending any emails. There were leads that should have qualified and leads were not deactivated.

As a interim solution we created batch smart campaigns using the exact same logic (but just switched from using a trigger to a filter) and the campaigns have been sending correctly (for the most part).

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi again Danielle,

But is this because they are deactivated or because the leads do not qualify ?

-Greg

[Anonymous]

All of the smart campaigns in our account stopped triggering any leads and therefore stopped sending any emails. There were leads that should have qualified and leads were not deactivated and neither were the campaigns themselves.

As a interim solution we created batch smart campaigns using the exact same logic (but just switched from using a trigger to a filter) and the campaigns have been sending correctly (for the most part).

[Anonymous]

Hello Danielle Boenisch​!

I have taken a look at the case you have open with us. I believe your support engineer has answered a lot of the questions about why leads didn't qualify for the trigger campaigns but they did for the batch campaigns.

The things to remember about trigger campaigns are

1. They will only fire when the action happens in real time (ie if you create the campaign in December, an action that would have triggered the campaign that happened in November, will not make your lead go through the campaign - however that lead would qualify for a batch campaign as those don't distinguish when the action took place unless you specify a time frame)

2. Data value change triggers do not apply when the lead is created with a value in that field. This is considered part of the original lead is created action and doesn't register in the same way as i you go to that lead the next day and change the value again.

Essentially the important elements are

1. That the trigger action happens after the trigger campaign is activated

2. That the lead fulfills any filters you have added on top of the trigger in the smart list

If in doubt, have a look at the activity log of a lead. Any activity that would trigger will be noted there. For example if you change a value, a "Data value was changed" activity will be registered. If you do not see that and your trigger is "data value was changed" your lead will not qualify.

If that doesn't cover it - please reach out to us in support, we're always happy to help!

[Josh_Hill13]

It sounds like you may have come from Pardot, where campaigns affect all leads, all the time. This is NOT the case in Marketo.

Trigger - Future, real time actions

Batch - affects anyone who qualifies, (historical).

So if you need to back fill data or run complex lists once a week, you go with Batch.

If you want an autoresponder, you go with Triggers.

[Anonymous]

Josh,

You have missed the issue entirely. That is not the issue. The issue is that none of the triggers are triggering. We have trigger campaigns for our welcome series that is set up to trigger to send when a lead is created, but the it's not creating a trigger.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Danielle,

Could you provide screenshots of your campaigns smart lists ?

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Here's one campaign. It's our welcome campaign smart list.

Here's the flow.