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.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Agree, Christina -- this was not supposed to happen per the pre-release discussions, and I'm still uncertain whether there's an upcoming release that is truly going to turn this off.

[Danni_Holleran]

Thanks for this info Christina! That's good to know re: the filter lead is created.

[Aubrey_Morgan]

I just noticed this as well! So weird and frustrating. We changed all of our campaigns to accommodate this change, just for this to go back to how it was before the Feb release

[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.

[Josh_Hill13]

Thanks Dan, I saw your discussion with Greg and also had a serious problem which took a week for Support to confirm with engineering:

1. Is Anonymous is removed from the UI. Once you remove it, it's gone.
2. Is Anonymous=F is now ignored in smart lists, BUT Marketo still allows Anonymous leads to go through many campaigns related to Visits Web Page, scoring, etc.
3. Is Anonymous=T we were told also no longer works, but it actually seems to break a smart list. You can no longer pull a list of Anonymous either.
4. The original docs said that Scoring on Visits would occur at the time of Known, and backfill scores in the past at the Known moment. This is NOT true. The reality is that Visits Web Page still triggers on Anonymous until the next update (or later) when the backend changes are completed.

Basically, the docs on the main site are wrong and you must use workarounds like Email Address IS NOT EMPTY and others to ensure Anonymous don't go through the wrong flows. The risk is that many leads aren't scored until after Known, if you do things like Email Address IS NOT EMPTY. And that part could be a big deal.

[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

[Dan_Stevens_]

I think this is why we need further clarification from Marketo (Mike Reynolds​).  There seems to still be a lot of confusion on how this will play out once Munchkin v2 is fully rolled out to everyone (and when that will take place).  Ideally, this would have happened at the same time as the removal of the "is anonymous" filter and then we wouldn't have all of these questions.  But understand, this wasn't feasible from an operations perspective.

Maybe Marketo should consider having a live webcast around this for their customers.  And unlike their typical webcasts, keep the lines open so that we can ask questions in real time.  Let's have a real dialogue around this (vs. just one-way).