Using Custom Objects in Marekto to Trigger Emails to Leads

[Laura_Lynch]

Hi Everyone - hoping someone with more Marketo expertise can help me better understand how to use custom object triggers to send emails to our customers.  I'm relatively new to Marketo myself and have never used custom object before.  Here is the situation: 

• We will be pushing product data nightly into Marketo using Census (API).  Our customers can create & host virtual events in our product and our marketing team wants to send a recap email to the person who is hosting each event after those events happen.  We will be syncing in "event created date", "host email", and "event date" as part of the details on the custom object.
• Each lead or person can create and host multiple events on the same day and should receive 1 email for each event that they have including recap/analysis. (data will be on custom object)  So if a person had 5 virtual events yesterday, they should receive 5 separate recap/analysis emails - one for each event. 

I've read over using triggers on custom objects and using custom object to create smartlists for a scheduled recurring batch, but I'm not sure how to approach set-up to make sure all our emails are sent appropriately.  

I'd love any recommendations and advice!!

Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

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• So if a person had 5 virtual events yesterday, they should receive 5 separate recap/analysis emails - one for each event. 

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This is good, because the opposite requirement — everyone gets a single email with all their objects created in a time period — is very hard to get right.

Just trigger on Added to {Custom Object Name}. 

You will also need to use a Velocity {{my.token}} ("Email Script" token) to output the data from the ${TriggerObject} (Marketo sets the special variable ${TriggerObject} to the object that triggered the flow, which is very convenient!).

[Laura_Lynch]

Thank you!  Is there a way to use a date filter with the trigger?  The data we will be sending in will be added to the custom object before we actually want the email to send.  We want the email to send the day after the event is hosted, but the event details will be added to the custom object way before then in most cases.  

[SanfordWhiteman]

You'll need to use a batch, then (to filter by notification date = today).

This causes the complications I alluded to above, though. If you have more than one record that is supposed to be sent "today" you will not be able to qualify the person more than once.

You'll need to add another field to the CO. For example, an Integer field Index. You increment that by 1 for each new record added during the same day.  Then have multiple batches running, each filtering by a different Index. (there will naturally be a hard-coded max number of records based on the number of batches).