Is there a built in delay for the "Forward to a Friend" capability? | Community
Skip to main content
May 2, 2013
Solved

Is there a built in delay for the "Forward to a Friend" capability?

  • May 2, 2013
  • 5 replies
  • 1610 views
I've been testing the Forward to a Friend capability.  I'm using a couple of my own email addresses, and the Activity logs for both the sender and receiver show that the messages are reported as being sent/received.  However, I'm not actually receiving the forwarded email.

I've also checked the junkmail folder, and the messages are not showing up there.

1. Is there some sort of batching or built-in delay and I'm just not wating long enough.
2. Is the FTAF capability subject to a campaign's "Send Only Once" limits?
3. Is there a way to check the overall email stats on hard or soft bounces, delivery/open status, etc. as I can with regular email campaigns.
This post is no longer active and is closed to new replies. Need help? Start a new post to ask your question.
Best answer by
Hello Steve,

There is no built in delay with this. That said, what it does is create a lead in the system that is marked unsubscribed after the first send. This is to prevent forward to a friend from causing you to mistakenly send out unsolicited emails to these leads. We're looking out for your overall deliverability by preventing these leads from joining your regular mailing list without opting in. This means that you will only be able to test to a given address once, unless you go in and remove the unsubscribed status between tests.

As for your stats, I don't believe there's a specific data point on forwarded messages. You could cobble this together with several smart list filters together, though.

5 replies

Accepted solution
May 2, 2013
Hello Steve,

There is no built in delay with this. That said, what it does is create a lead in the system that is marked unsubscribed after the first send. This is to prevent forward to a friend from causing you to mistakenly send out unsolicited emails to these leads. We're looking out for your overall deliverability by preventing these leads from joining your regular mailing list without opting in. This means that you will only be able to test to a given address once, unless you go in and remove the unsubscribed status between tests.

As for your stats, I don't believe there's a specific data point on forwarded messages. You could cobble this together with several smart list filters together, though.
May 3, 2013

Autumn,

Thanks for the reply.  

I sent the test to four different email accounts, three of which were existing opt-in leads in Marketo, and one a new email account created for this test). All were all sent between 11:00 and 11:30 AM yesterday.

I understand the point on creating the new lead as unsbuscribed.  

I think there's a bigger issue:  I received the forwarded message in all four accounts this morning--about 18 hours after clicking "send".   All  had an idential timestamp of 5:00 AM.

There appears to be a programming bug which is causing  FTAF leads to be delayed.    

May 3, 2013
Hello Steve,

I would encourage you to contact support on this. We'd need to do some testing and possibly work with engineering to resolve this. From my understanding, there shouldn't be a delay on this, so something else was going on.
May 9, 2013
Thanks - I initiated a support request.
May 14, 2013

Just in case anyone is following this issue, or stumbles onto it through a community search, here's the status from Marketo support:

Thanks for your patience with this.

Engineering looked into this, and found an issue with the implementation in regards to this feature. They are working on a fix, but are speculating that it can take some time - the June release would be the earliest.

If anything changes, I will let you know!

Regards,
Jim
Marketo Support