Overview
Starting August 15, 2018, Marketo will be implementing a new policy for the retention of marketing activity data. Under this policy, Activity and Campaign Membership data will be stored for a rolling period of 25 months past the activity date, and high-volume activity data will be retained for a rolling period of 90 days past the activity date. Beyond these retention periods, the data will not be available through the Marketo UI.
Activities and Retention Settings
There are three components to the data retention policy: a retention period of up to 14 days for one activity, 90 days for twelve high-volume activities; and a retention period of up to 25 months for other lead activities.
Activity with a 14-Day Retention Period
Activities Retained for 14 Days
Delete Lead
Activities with a 90-Day Retention Period
These lead activities have a very high volume and will be retained for 90 days. After 90 days, these activities will be permanently deleted.
Activities Retained for 90 Days
Add to List
Change Score
Change Data Value
Visit Webpage
Click Link on Webpage
Sync Lead to SFDC
Sync Lead to Microsoft
Sync Lead Updates to SFDC
Update Opportunity
Request Campaign
Email Delivered*
Send Email*
* Email Delivered and Send Email activities change from 25 months to 90 days effective August 31st, 2020. More information here.
Activities with a 25-Month Retention Period
The lead activities listed below will be retained 25 months. After 25 months, all such lead activities will be permanently deleted.
The only exception is the New Lead activity, which will always be displayed.
Category
Activities Retained for 25 Months
Web
Click Predictive Content
Click RTP Call to Action
Fill Out Form
Smart Campaign
Add to Engagement Program
Call Webhook
Change Lead Partition
Change Engagement Program Cadence
Change Engagement Program Stream
Change Program Success
Change Revenue Stage
Change Revenue Stage Manually
Change Program Status
Change Program Member Data
Compute Data Value
Enrich with Data.com
Execute Campaign
Interesting Moment
Merge Leads
Remove from List
Resolve Ruleset
Reward Test Group Variant
Schedule Test Variants
Send Alert
Engagement Program Cast
Push Lead to Marketo
Social
Click Shared Link
Share Content
Vote in Poll
Email
Click Email
Email Bounced
Email Bounced Soft
Open Email
Received Forward to Friend Email
Sent Forward to Friend Email
Unsubscribe Email
CRM - Salesforce
Add to Opportunity
Add to SFDC Campaign
Change Owner
Change Status in SFDC Campaign
Click Sales Email
Convert Lead
Delete Lead from SFDC
Lead Assigned
New SFDC Opportunity
Open Sales Email
Receive Sales Email
Remove from Opportunity
Remove from SFDC Campaign
Resolve Conflicts
SFDC Activity
Sales Email Bounced
Send Sales Email
SFDC Activity Updated
SFDC Merge Leads
Add to Case
Add to SFDC Custom Object Test (Contact)
CRM - Microsoft Dynamics
Add to Opportunity (Contact)
Add to Opportunity (Account)
Remove from Opportunity (Contact)
Remove from Opportunity (Account)
Update Opportunity (Contact)
Update Opportunity (Account)
Delete Lead from Microsoft
Segmentation
Add to Segment
Change Segment
Data Access
Marketo’s data retention policy gives you a rolling 90-day view of certain high-volume lead activities and a rolling 25-month view of other lead activity data. To help prevent any actual data loss, Marketo has developed a Bulk Extract API that enables you to export this data directly if desired. Once exported, you will be able to host this information locally and utilize it in any way you deem necessary.
Areas Affected
Smart List filters
Smart List filters referencing high-volume lead activities beyond their 90-day retention period or other activities beyond their 25-month retention period will not have the activity to reference. Results from any Smart Lists or campaigns that use filters looking for lead activities that occurred past their retention period will not show results from those activities.
Example:
Say you have a Smart List with a "Was Sent Email" filter looking for leads that have been sent at least two emails.
Lead A was sent Email One 60 days ago, and was sent Email Two 30 days ago.
Lead B was sent Email One 60 days ago, and was sent Email Two 120 days ago.
In this scenario, only Lead A would qualify for this filter.
Lead A was sent both emails within the previous 90 days and will therefore qualify for the filter.
Lead B was sent Email One withing the previous 90 days, but the activity for Email Two being sent occurred more than 90 days ago. That activity will not be retained after 90 days. Therefore, since the activity log only shows one email send activity, Lead B would not qualify for the filter.
Flow Steps with Choices Added
Flow steps offer the option to add a choice to do different things depending specified conditions. In addition to searching for lead attributes, these choices may include looking for activities that the lead has taken. If the condition selected in the flow step is searching for an activity the lead has taken, that flow step choice will only be able to find activities that happened within the data retention period for that activity.
Lead Records
Activity Logs
Activity log data will be retained for 25 months and will not display any activities older than 25 months. This provides a rolling 25-month view of lead activities. The one exception to this policy is for the “New Lead” activity. That activity will be retained regardless of how long ago the lead was created.
Identifying Anonymous Lead Creation vs Known Lead Creation
There are two places in lead records where info is stored for when it was created - in the activity log, showing when the lead became known, and in the Lead Info tab, where it shows the first anonymous activity.
Known Lead Creation - Activity Log
In the lead’s activity log, the “New Lead” activity records when a lead became a known lead. This activity is the only one that is not deleted after 25 months. The “New Lead” activity will always be retained in the activity log, even after others are deleted.
Anonymous Lead Record Creation Date - Lead Attribute
In the Lead Info tab of the lead record, the first attribute listed is “Created”. This gives you the exact date and time when the lead record itself was first created. If the lead was anonymous first before becoming known, this will give you the date and time of the first anonymous activity. NOTE: If the lead did not first have have anonymous activity, but was instead created through list import or manual lead entry, this date and time will match the New Lead activity.
Custom Activities
Custom activities are included in the new data retention policy. All activities, even custom activities, will be deleted after 25 months.
Programs
Program Membership
Record of program membership will not be affected. Leads that became members of a program over 25 months ago will still show as members of that program.
Engagement Programs
Engagement Programs will not send the same email to a lead that has already received it, unless the lead was sent the email more than 25 months ago.
Engagement Program Transition Rules
Marketo’s Engagement Programs allow you to move leads into different streams based on criteria you set in the stream’s transition rules. The transition rules use triggers to activate the transition from one stream to the next. Filters can be added to the transition rule as well, including activity-based filters.
If you add activity-based filters to your engagement stream transition rules, they will only be able to access lead activities within their retention period. For example, if the activity you’re filtering for has a 25-month retention period and it has occurred more than 25 months ago, the transition rule will not be able to reference the activity and the lead will not transition to the new stream.
NOTE: This same condition applies to Revenue Cycle Model transitions. See the information in the section below for more details.
Recommendation: Review your marketing strategies. Do you really want a lead to be in the same engagement program for over two years? Do you still want the same email in circulation if it was drafted over 2 years ago?
Smart Campaigns
Records of campaign membership will be stored for up to 25 months. After 25 months, that information will not be available.
Smart Lists, campaigns and reports that use the “Member of Smart Campaign” filter will only be able to reference a lead’s membership in the campaign for up to 25 months.
While most activity information can be exported through the Bulk Extract REST API, campaign membership activity cannot be exported.
Revenue Cycle Model Transition Rules
Marketo’s Revenue Cycle Model allows you to advance leads through Revenue Model Phases based on criteria you set in the Revenue Model’s transition rules. The transition rules use triggers to activate the transition from one phase to the next. Filters can also be added to the transition rules, including activity-based filters.
If you add activity-based filters into your Revenue Model Transition rules, they will only be able to access lead activities within their retention period. For example, if the activity you are filtering for has a 25-month retention period and it has occurred more than 25 months ago, the transition rule will not be able to reference the activity and the lead will not transition to the next revenue model phase.
Reporting
Marketo Analytics reports can be affected by the data retention period of lead activities. Reports that directly draw data from lead activity logs will only show data for up to 25 months. Also, reports that do not directly reference lead activity, such as those with filters added to the smart list of the report, could be affected. Filters that look for activities the lead took are only going to be able to access activities for 25 months, so if the activity occurred beyond the 25-month retention period, it will alter the results of the report. Note, filters that reference lead attributes (information in fields in the lead record) will not cause any change to the report.
Example: The People by Status report does not draw data from lead activities by default. However, if you add filters to the Smart List of the report, the report results may be affected depending on the type of filter you apply.
Adding the filter, “Job Title” would not have any effect on the report results because lead attributes are not affected by the data retention limits.
Adding the filter, “Filled Out Form” does potentially affect the report results because its references data in the lead activity log which is retained for up to 25 months only.
To help you identify exactly how each report will behave, please see the detailed documentation on Data Retention Policy – Impact on Reporting.
Sales Insight
Sales Insight is a powerful tool for your sales reps to get information about your leads and contacts. The data in Sales Insight is not actually stored in Salesforce, it’s an up-to-date feed directly from the Marketo database.
When Sales Insight is opened, it makes an API call to Marketo to pull data into Salesforce. Since the data shown in Sales Insight is coming directly from the lead records within Marketo, it will only be able to access lead activities within their retention period.
Sales Insight on Lead and Contact Page
The Sales Insight window in your Lead and Contact pages has four tabs; Interesting Moments, Web Activity, Score and Email. All four of these actively retrieve data from the corresponding lead’s activity logs, so the data displayed in each of those tabs will only display information up to 25 months old.
Example - Interesting Moments:
Example - Email:
Marketo Sales Insight Tab
Aside from the Sales Insight you see within the Lead and Contact page, there is also the Sales Insight Marketo tab in the toolbar. In this section of Sales Insight, only one area is affected: My Email. The other tabs including Best Bets, My Watch List, Web Activity and Anonymous Web Activity are not affected
The activity found within the My Email tab is based on Marketo lead records. Therefore, it will only display records up to 90 days in age.
Areas NOT Affected
Custom Activity Sync
Marketo gives you the ability to customize the sync of specific activities to Salesforce. Sales Insight and Custom Activity Sync tend to go together, even though they’re different features. When you set up Custom Activity Sync, the activity data is sent to Salesforce and stored there inside of SFDC. Since the data exists inside SFDC at this point, this feature will not be affected in any way.
To set up Custom Activity Sync, go to Admin > Salesforce > Edit Sync Options. You’ll find a dialog box like this:
Once you’ve selected which activities to sync to Salesforce, they will appear in the Activity History of your Lead/Contact inside Salesforce.
Since the Activity History of a Salesforce Lead/Contact is contained inside of Salesforce, these activities will not be affected by this policy change.
Variations of Current Policy
Marketo’s Activity Data Retention Policy is intended to standardize data retention across all Marketo instances. Over time there have been three variations of data retention: Default Retention Setting, Legacy Retention Setting, and Custom Retention Setting.
All variations will be replaced by the new policy.
Default Retention Setting
The Default retention settings are the most current settings and are what most customers currently use.
The high-volume activities are displayed in the lead’s activity log for 90 days and can be referenced in filters and reports.
After 90 days, these activities are moved into an archive where they are no longer accessible in Smart Lists or reports.
These archived activities can still be accessed, but only when searching each individual lead’s activity log directly.
No other activities have retention limits applied.
Note: Once the new Data Retention Policy goes into effect, the high-volume activities will only be retained for 90-days and the archive tab/feature will be removed.
Legacy Retention Settings
The Legacy retention setting is an older default setting that was replaced by the newer Default setting listed above. Only a small number of long term customers may have this Legacy retention setting. This setting worked in the exact same way that the current Default retention setting except that the 90-day archive was applied to five activities, not the twelve activities that the Default setting above archives.
Default High Volume Activities Archived at 90 Days
Legacy High Volume Activities Archived at 90 Days
Add to List
Change Score
Change Data Value*
Visit Webpage
Click Link on Webpage
Sync Lead to Microsoft
Sync lead to SFDC
Sync Lead Updates to SFDC
Update Opportunity
Request Campaign
Email Delivered
Send Email
Add to List
Change score
Change Data Value*
Visit Webpage
Click Link on Webpage
Note: Once the new Data Retention Policy goes into effect, the high-volume activities will only be retained for 90-days and the archive tab/feature will be removed.
All variations will be replaced by the new policy.
High Volume Activity Archive
Some customers may use the archive view of lead activities. Even though it is being removed, below is a description of where it was to help you better understand the exact changes being made.
Archived activities are seen in individual lead records by navigating to the lead’s activity log and changing the filter setting to custom.
A dialog box will open where you can select which activities to display. Change the Activity Source to Archive and the only activities that will be displayed in the log will be the high volume ones that were archived at 90 days.
All variations will be replaced by the new policy.
Custom Retention Settings
Some Marketo customers have customized retention settings to extend the duration that high-volume activities are displayed in the activity log. Instances with custom retention settings will not have the archive option available in the custom filter. The Activity Source selector will not show at all.
All variations will be replaced by the new policy.
Where to go for More Information
Activities Data Retention Update Webinar
In the webinar, you'll get an introduction to the updated Activities Data Retention Policy, affects across Marketo, and options for extending the data retention period and/or exporting activities data. Also includes Q&A from the live session: Video Link : 2314
Overview & FAQ Documentation
This doc will give you an overview of what the policy changes and answers to the most commonly asked questions: Data Retention Policy Change - Overview & FAQ
Marketo Activities Data Retention Policy
The official Marketo Data Retention Policy can be found here: Marketo Activities Data Retention Policy
Data Retention Policy - Impact on Reporting
See how your Analytics reports will operate after the new policy goes into effect. Marketo Activities Data Retention Policy – Impact on Reporting
Sent & Delivered Email Activity
See policy change effective August 31st, 2020. Sent & Delivered Email Activity – Retention Policy Change FAQ
Ways to store activity data in custom fields
Here are two docs that can help you keep activity data inside of custom fields on the lead records
Storing Activity Data Beyond Retention Policy
Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails
Bulk Extract API
Check out the documentation here to find out how to use the Bulk Extract API
Contact Marketo Support
If you have additional questions, please Contact Marketo Support
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