What's the best way to track and alert inactivity in opportunity stages?

[Anonymous]

As our opportunities go through the funnel, we have a maximum number of days the opportunity can stay in the stage - what's the best way to track these in marketo and trigger alerts to go to the opportunity owner when the opportunity has exceeded time in that stage? Should it all be based around the opportunity not updated filter or does anyone have any other recommendations?

[Anonymous]

And added to this, would i need to create custom tags /fields so the alert can be customised to the opportunity? There doesn't seem to be default opportunity tags in Marketo

[Anonymous]

Hey Erin, 

I would use the "Opportunity Was Updated" / "Added to Opportunity" triggers combined with wait steps.

The idea being that you have a listener campaign that resets the clock each time a status changes and a wait campaign that will send the alert if nothing happens.  This will form an iterative loop. I would cap it off with a campaign that removes them completely once the opportunity is Closed Won/Lost. 

E.g.,

Listener Campaign

SMART LIST
Added to Opportunity
Opportunity Was Updated - Stage (new value is not Closed Won/Lost)

FLOW
Remove from flow [Wait Campaign]
Request Wait Campaign

Wait Campaign

SMART LIST
Campaign is Requested

FLOW
Wait [your max # of days]
Send Alert

Closed Campaign

SMART LIST
Opportunity is Updated - Stage is Closed Won or Closed Lost

FLOW
Remove from Flow [Wait Campaign]

This will work well unless there are multiple open opportunities at a time. Marketo won't be able to distinguish them. You could also try doing this via a Process or Workflow Rule in SFDC, which may make it easier to work with multiple open opportunities. 

[Anonymous]

With respect to the email alerts, you would have to use email scripting:

https://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000LB9MCAW