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September 29, 2017
Question

Automated birthday message

  • September 29, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 3191 views

Hello,

Does anyone know how to setup a program in Marketo to send automated birthday message on a client's child birthdate? Please note that clients may have many children and children's info including birthdate is stored in a custom object

Thanks!

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3 replies

Level 3
September 29, 2017

Hi Olga,

You could create a smart campaign where the flow would have a wait step with a date token {{lead.Date of Birth}} and check "Use next anniversary of this date."  Details here (they even use the birthday example): Use a Date Token in a Wait Flow Step - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

BUT

The child birthday is stored in a custom object and you can't use a token from the custom object.  (Since it's a one-to-many relationship, one parent can have several children custom records). I think you need some custom set-up that whenever the custom objects are updated, it would also update custom fields on the lead - something like "child name with nearest birthday" and "child DOB with nearest birthday". If this is possible...

I hope this helps,

Liz

Josh_Hill13
Level 10
October 2, 2017

There are several dozen threads on how to do Birthday and Subscription Renewal using various methods. Please search!

Now the Custom Object question is new. You may need to do some sort of Talend flow to do what Liz suggests. @Grégoire Michel​ ?

October 2, 2017

Thanks, Josh. Please also note that we manually import data in custom objects via csv import.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10
October 2, 2017

Hi Olga,

The problem is that you cannot easily select all persons with a "child" custom object on the anniversary date of this custom object, since there is no possibility to precisely set such a constraint oon the "has child" filer.

As Josh points out, it will require and external tool to update the dates in the custom objects. Talend, Workato or any other ETL with a Marketo connector that supports custom objects would do it. A rest API dev would also do the work.

BTW, as soon as you have such a tool in place, you would also, use it to automate the CSV import

-Greg

January 14, 2018

Hi Grégoire Michel

I wonder if I can use the method described here Sending a Birthday Message but instead of {{lead. token use {{my. token and reference the DOB from a custom object?

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
January 14, 2018

No, because there's no such token for COs.