Unsubscribed leads still receiving emails

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I've set up a very straightforward engagement program in Marketo. People are added to the engagement program (Stream 1) if they are a member of a specific smart list setup in the Lead Database and if their email address doesn't contain the company's domain name.

I have another smart campaign which removes people from the program if they are a member of an exclusion list. The flow step would set their status to "Not in program" for the engagement program.

The email program under the engagement program all have smart campaigns to control the Email Send and track progression. The Send Email batch campaign checks to see if the lead is a member of the engagement program in Stream 1. If so, then the first email is sent. The remaining emails are set up similarly.

After the first email went out, we discovered that out of 4072 emails sent, 26 of them went to leads who were marked as unsubscribed. These leads are not duplicates or anything like that. I looked at the lead records and unsubscribed is ticked.

I'm trying to understand why this might have happened because Marketo should have automatically not sent these people emails if their lead records who them as unsubscribed. Any help or guidance would be appreciated. For now the only solution I have in mind is to include an "Unsubscribed=False" filter on the Send Email campaigns to ensure the emails only go out to people who are not unsubscribed.

Thanks!

[Jim_Thao7]

Is the email configured as operational?

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hey Danish, as Jim suggested I would look at whether the email was operational, and also if the people you sent to were marked as Unsubscribed in the Marketo system Unsubscribe field, or another unsub field. Marketo will only recognize its own system field for blocking from sends.

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

My understanding is that ANY email attempted to be sent to someone with a valid (active) unsubscribe = true will not receive the email, even if set to operational.

Per the comment below by Tim Cerato​, it is more likely a case that the user unsubscribed post-send

[Kenny_Elkington]

This is not the case.  Operational emails will bypass Unsubscribe and Marketing Suspended by design.

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

Wow!  Guess we'll have to be more careful.

I thought unsubscribe was a master field.

Thanks for the clarification Kenny Elkington​

[Anonymous]

You're thinking Blacklist. Blacklist will suppress even operational emails.

[Anonymous]

I checked and the email is not operational.
Also the below is the Unsubscribed that is ticked, which is the system field.

[Anonymous]

Hi Danish! It looks like the unsubscribe was somewhat recent. Is it possible that the emails were sent prior to the when the lead was unsubscribed?

[Josh_Hill13]

Check if there are duplicates or Name duplicates under a different email address.