Wait Step and Recurring Batch Campaign

[Conor_Fitzpatri]

Hi Everyone,

I'm having a bit of trouble with my smart campaign, specifically I have a ton of Leads stuck in a wait step, and I can't quite figure out how to fix it.

Originally, I created this program because we had a large list of Leads and wanted to randomly send out communications to a certain amount per day (ie we had a list of 10,000 and wanted to send to 100 of them per day). Therefore, I set up a program with the following components:

Static List (titled, "Segementation List")

Smart Campaign 1

• Smart List
  • Filter: Member of List - Lead in "Segementation List"
• Flow
  • Send Email
    • Choice 1: Random Sample is X % - Email is Email 1
      • X changes depending how many Leads are left in the segementation list. I created a decay formula in Excel and manually change it every couple of days so (approx) the same amount of Leads are sent emails per day.
    • Default Choice: Do Nothing
• Schedule
  • Each Lead can run through the flow every time
  • Repeats every weekday at 6 am

Smart Campaign 2

• Smart List
  • Filter: Was Sent Email - Email is "Email 1"
• Flow
  • Remove from List
    • List Name: Segementation List
  • Wait
    • Until: 7 Days, must end on Mon-Fri at 6 am
  • Send Email
    • Email is Email 2
• Schedule
  • Each Lead can run through the flow once
  • Repeats every weekday at 7 am

Everything works great (the right amount of Leads are sent Email 1 and are being removed from the Segmentation List) until the wait step. None of my Leads are being sent Email 2 despite the fact that I started the campaign a week ago. The first batch of Leads have been in the wait step for over 7 days now. My only thought is that since it's a recurring campaign, it's waiting until all Leads, not just batches of them, have been in the wait step for 7 days before sending Email 2.

Does anyone know where my logic is failing? Any help or thoughts is greatly appreciated.

-Conor

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Conor,
How long past 7 days have they been in the wait step? It could have something to do with the way Marketo is calculating time:

• Marketo calculates 1 day as 24 hours - not just when the clock hits midnight of the next day. 
• The wait step will wait longer than 7 days to meet the exact criteria - so if you're saying it only can meet the criteria if it's Monday through Friday at 6am, and the 7 days (168 hours) doesn't come up until Friday morning at 8am, the wait step will wait until the next time the criteria matches to continue - that could be Monday morning at 6am. 

Sorry if that doesn't make sense, this is hard to articulate! Can you give more details around when the campaign started and when you expected the 7 days to end? 

PS I love the idea with the excel decay formula, I may borrow it in the future!
 

[Conor_Fitzpatri]

Thanks for the reply Caitlin, I didn't realize the system calculates it in exact hours! Great to know in the future.

However, my first batch was sent Email 1 on 5/8 at 6am so they should have been sent Email 2 at 6am on Friday, right? Unfortunately, no Email 2's went out this morning.

What I really wanted to happen was the first batch should recieve Email 1 on 5/8 at 6am and Email 2 on 5/15 at 6am.