Warning: Anonymous Leads and Lead Lifecycle Alerts

[Anonymous]

I just had a number of anonymous leads run through my lead lifecycle campaign and send alerts to my inside sales team - except those alerts appeared blank because we have no information on the anonymous lead (aside from their extreme interest in our website!).

I spoke with support who explained that anonymous leads can still run through scoring and revenue model campaigns (which is the opposite of what was stated in some of the discussion posts from earlier this year, which talked about the removal of the "is anonymous" filter).

For anyone else working on their lifecycle / revenue modeler - support advised that for certain programs (like MQL fast track), add "lead is created" as a filter to ensure that anonymous leads can't meet scoring thresholds.

[Dan_Stevens_]

For anyone else working on their lifecycle / revenue modeler - support advised that for certain programs (like MQL fast track), add "lead is created" as a filter to ensure that anonymous leads can't meet scoring thresholds.

Beware of this approach - it's only temporary (as explained in the second paragraph below).

Something is really odd as I tried to refer to past conversations around this topic: I remember participating in the thread of the main discussion topic around this (removal of anonymous filter) and wanted to reference that here.  But when searching for it in the community, it's nowhere to be found (tried searching for "is anonymous", "anonymous", etc. - nothing).  I was finally able to find it in my Outlook inbox which provided a link to the original discussion: Removal of "Is Anonymous" filters. If you look on page 4, this is where it's suggested (by Grégoire Michel ) to use the "lead is created" filter.  However, this is only temporary until Marketo completes everything involved with this whole "upgrade" process around the removal of anonymous activity.

Also, check out the discussion here (TROUBLESHOOTING Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Workaround ) - specifically the last comment from Mike Reynolds.  Once that happens, (after Munchkin V2 has been rolled out to every customer), the "Lead Was Created" filter being used will stop the entire campaign from being able to be replayed at all--it won't even be called.  So we'll need to remember which campaigns we included that filter since it will need to be removed once again.

Mike Reynolds​, is there any update you can provide us as to when this will be fully rolled out?  We'll eventually need the exact date so we can remove the "lead was created" filter from those campaigns - which are our most important campaigns as these are the ones that sync, route and assign MQLs to CRM/Sales.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Dan,

Also, I am still to understand why using "lead is created" will be a problem. It prevents the campaign to be fired and it will continue to prevent the campaign to be fired for anonymous leads, but this what we expect anyway from campaigns that we do not want as replays.

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

Greg, right now, using the "lead is created" filter is working fine to prevent anonymous leads from qualifying in our lead lifecycle campaigns.  But once Munchkin v2 is rolled out, this will stop working and the leads - when they become KNOWN - won't run through the campaign as expected:

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Dan,

Sorry, but this is still not clear to me.

Let's say I want to create a SC that does something, but restrict it to leads that have been created recently. Then "lead was created in past X days" is the natural filter I would use. And if this campaign does not fire because the lead should have been through the flow when it was anonymous, then we have a problem.

More globally, if a known lead cannot go through a smart campaign which filter is "lead was created", just because it might supposedly have been through it when it was anonymous then this is a bug and will cause many problems to many people...

Now, if this is to say that the filter will prevent the lead to go through the campaign for any activity that occurred before it got promoted, then this is exactly what I expect it to be.

Or may be this will be a problem if the SC is set so that each lead can run only once...

-Greg

[Mike_Reynolds2]

There are two different parts to this, the current behavior before Munchkin V2, and the behavior later on after Munchkin V2 rolls out.

Current behavior:

If the "Lead was Created" filter is in use, all anonymous leads will be excluded from the campaign. Without having been converted from anonymous to known, there is no known lead record being, so there is no "Lead was Created" activity logged in the anonymous record. Therefore, if the "Lead was Created" filter is in use and set to true, the leads without that "Lead Created" activity (the anonymous leads) would be excluded.

Behavior after Munchkin V2 rolls out:

If the "Lead was Created" filter is in use, it will stop the campaign from going through the replay activity at the time of lead promotion. So, at the time a lead goes from being an anonymous record to being promoted to a known lead, during that promotion activity, all campaigns that could have previously been triggered by the anonymous activity will be triggered and "replayed" (the campaign replay activity). This takes the campaigns that could have been triggered by the triggering activity (ex: visit web page) and evaluates whether the anonymous record could have qualified for that campaign at that time using the current configuration of the campaign.So, let's say the campaign has a "Visit Web Page" trigger in combination with the "Lead was Created" filter. At the time the anonymous record visited the web page, it had not yet been created as a known lead, so there would be no "Lead Created" activity logged yet in the activity log. So, the anonymous record would match the trigger because it visited the web page, but the "Lead was Created" filter in the smart list would rule the anonymous record out because that activity would not yet have been logged at the time of the campaign replay.

It's all about the order of operations for the logging of activities. Check out the specifics in the Triggered Campaigns part of Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Under The Hood  The post-Munchkin V2 order of activity logging is given there:

In order to be able to identify which campaigns were triggered as part of the replay activity, they are logged right before the "Lead was Created" activity (New Lead in screen shot). So, since the campaigns are going through the replay process before the "Lead Created" activity is logged, the "Lead was Created" filter set to true would exclude them from that campaign and the campaign wouldn't be replayed.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Mike Reynolds ,

Thx, this is very helpful and also exactly the behavior I would have expected, BTW.

For me, when I add a "lead was created" filter, I do not expect the SC to trigger while the lead is anonymous (or, in V2, not yet promoted), but I do not expect this campaign to run in the replay phase either, since, as you stated, the "lead was created" event does not exist. It should indeed ignore all the potential triggering activities that occurred before it was created.

So, and please correct me if necessary:

	V1	V2
With "lead was created" filter	Does not run before lead creation as a known lead Runs after the lead is created	Does not run before promotion Does not Replay on promotion Runs after promotion
Without "lead was created" filter	Runs before lead creation as a known lead, each time it applies Runs after the lead is created	Does not run before promotion Does replay on promotion Runs after promotion

-Greg

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Dan Stevens​ yes, this matrix does look accurate.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Those are my expectations as well. For some reason, I was under the impression there would be issues in leaving the "lead is created" filter intact after v2 was deployed. So if we use it as Greg has stated, I'm hoping we're OK keeping the filter in place since we're not concerned with replay activity in our led lifecycle campaigns. Look forward to your reply, Mike.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "replay". Can you clarify what this means?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Christina,

The replay is a specific mechanism that occurs once, at the moment at which the lead is promoted from "anonymous" to "known". At that moment, (once the V2 is live), Marketo will replay some of the smart campaigns the lead would have gone through during it's anonymous life.

But only a few flow step will run during replay:

1. Change Score

2. Interesting Moment

3. Change Data Value

4. Add to List

5. Remove from List

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Ooooh, so is it possible that they could run through certain programs more than once (like scoring)? If I don't have filters to remove them from scoring, could they be re-scored once they replay?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Mike Reynolds​, thanks for providing more insight around the challenges of rolling out Munchkin v2.  Can you also let us know if what Grégoire Michel has outlined above is accurate?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Mike, any update on when Munchkin v2 will be rolled out to customers' instances?

[Mike_Reynolds2]

There isn't any kind of firm timeline on that rollout. The Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Release Schedule doc talks about this, but unfortunately there's not a lot of details I can give because it can't be determined yet.

The first phase was removing access to the anonymous leads. That's already done. The next phase is back end upgrades. There are improvements being made to many processes to pave the way towards the final move to Munchkin V2. In order for Munchkin V2 to perform as well as it is supposed to, multiple other server processes need to come up to speed as well. The tricky part is that each server group has to be deployed one at a time in a staggered release. Engineering has to ensure that each server group is successfully deployed before the next one so that there aren't any problems. It's safer that way, but does have the trade off of making it harder to pin down when the upgrades will happen.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Once this is known, will Marketo be notifying its customers as to when their instance will be updated?

[Mike_Reynolds2]

I'm not 100% positive on the specifics for that part, but Arjun Nair​ may have more details. Let me check in and get back to you with the specifics.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Thanks.  Can you quickly confirm if Greg's matrix below will be the correct behavior once v2 is deployed?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Good to know.  I misunderstood this comment that you cautioned everyone about:

"After the new lead promotion behavior is rolled out with Munchkin v2, using the "Lead was Created" filter will stop the campaign from ever being triggered during the REPLAY activity at lead promotion.  This means that no anonymous leads being promoted to known leads will ever go through these campaigns."

The keyword being "REPLAY".  So as long as we're using the "Lead was Created" filter to prevent ANY anonymous lead from EVER triggering our lead lifecycle campaigns, we're safe to leave this filter intact, even after v2 has been deployed, correct?

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Depending on your particular definition of "safe" LoL.

If your goal is to prevent anonymous leads from going through the campaign right now (pre-Munchkin V2), AND to prevent the campaign from being triggered during the replay of the campaign (after Munchkin V2) at lead promotion, then yes, that's the safe way to go.

Other customers may want to still let the leads go through these campaigns at promotion to known lead after Munchkin V2 rolls out, so that's a different scenario.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I'm confused again.  I have no desire in any replay.  I just want to prevent anonymous leads from ever going through these campaigns - both now and after v2.  Yet, once they become known, then they will qualify.  Are you saying that this will still be an issue if we keep the filter in place?