Auto email based on anniversary date

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know how to send an email based on an anniversary date. eg every year on a birthday or 1 month prior to a custom date field.

I am new to Marketo and cannot seem to work out how to do it. A smart campaign with a wait step wouldn't work as described here Release Notes: June 2012 - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Any ideas greatly appreciated.

Regards

Ken

[Anonymous]

see error message when attempting to schedule a daily recurrence.

[David_Desrosie2 · Accepted solution]

Sorry for deleting my initial post - Just realized I was initially logged under an anonymous account...

Hi Ken,

I heard that campaign using date tokens can only be used with triggered campaigns, which may explain the error message.

I'd like to suggest another way to achieve this using a simpIe smart campaign - I ran a small test and it worked great, but make sure to test too!

Smartlist: Date of Birth is "In Future" X days (you can use 0 days to get it to go out on the birthday date

Flow: Send Email

Schedule: Recurring on a daily basis

Go through Flow: Run each lead through the campaign flow: once every  12 months

Best,

David

[Anonymous]

Thanks David

This is a great help. It didn't make sense to me that the "Date of Birth" occurred in the future. I was looking for an anniversary function instead.

I am setting up a test now and feel much more confident.

Thanks again.

Ken

[Anonymous]

Hey there David.

Thanks for the suggestion on how to handle the birthday email.

It seems pretty straight forward and, I'm working on it more today...still a little confused tho. I was able to easily create the smart list -

• birth date,
• 0 days in the future.

However, I get the following smart list status: 'Set to affect around 0 existing people'

From what I can tell it seems to be looking for a true future birth date, not an anniversary of it.  Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Chris

[William_Moudry1]

David,

The Date of Birth field includes the year the lead is born, so when I set the Smart Campaign to use "In Future" x days I get no results because everyone's actual Date of Birth is in the past. How do I get it to only evaluate the month and day of the Date of Birth field?

Thanks,

Bill

[Anonymous]

Bill, I'm working w/ my support person and he's given me some good (new) info...i haven't set it up yet but thought I'd share it with you. In our system we have set a different field name for date of birth so you'd want to use the field you are using for your own set up, most likely it's 'Date of birth'; {{lead.Date of birth}}

You have to set up two smart campaigns and the lead token, {{lead.Birthdate}}, can only be used in a trigger campaign.

Step 1. Create a Trigger campaign with the Campaign is Requested trigger in the Smart List and Source 'Is' 'Marketo Flow Action.'

Step 2. Configure Wait Step in the Flow:
- Add token {{lead.Birthdate}}. Remember a token can only be used in a trigger campaign.
- Remember to click the "Use next anniversary date" to check the box
- Set time for when you want the wait step to end. This will be the time the email will be sent out. Under Advanced Wait Properties, you'll see 3 rows and a checkbox. First row should be Type and then enter 'Date Token'. The second row is End On: {{lead.Birthdate}}. Next row is checking that box and last row is Time: where you'd select the time of day to send the email.

Step 3. Add Send Email to the Flow steps.
- Drag over a Wait Step and put {{lead.Birthdate}} at 6:00PM EDT (next anniversary) - of course this is whatever time you wish to set it for.
- Drag over Send Email flow step and select your Happy Birthday Email that you want sent.

Step 4. Activate it

Step 5. Next create a batch campaign with the request campaign in the flow step.

Step 6. Set the Smart List to Birthdate 'is not empty'

Step 7. Request the first campaign in the Flow by dragging over the Request Campaign flow step and it will look similar to Happy Birthday Program.Send Birthday Message Request Campaign

Step 8. Run the campaign

[William_Moudry1]

Thank you, Christopher! That cleared it up for me.