Marketing Suspended Cause not accessible in flow

AFAIK, this is a system managed field.

Not entirely sure, but I know that I've never been able to use that field. 

You can see that it's a system managed field because you can't import into it or use it inside of Marketo.  If you try to import a list with that field and a value, you'll see that you can select the field, but you can't update it because it's blocked (system managed).

Found this doc that outlines Marketing Suspended, but no mention of the cause field: Understanding Unsubscribe - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Marketing Suspended

This field is set by the user for placing leads on a temporary unsubscribe. Leads can only attain this status if they are manually changed, or a change data value flow step is utilized.

And, furthermore, there is no mention of "marketing suspended cause" in the docs AT ALL!

Search - Product Docs

Did Support ever get back to you? I'm having the same issue.

Hi Geoff,

The "Marketing Suspended Cause" is only populated with a reason for Marketing Suspended if Marketo suspends a lead through an automatic process. This almost never happens which is why this field is almost always empty. The example I was given was this:

• A Sales Insight plugin user has sent a sales email to a new email address (an address not currently in the Lead Database). They will see the following message:

"Lead created by Sales Insight with unknown name"

@Geoffrey Krajeski - Production​

Here’s all the info we’ve gotten from our Product team about this field and how it’s managed:

"The purpose is to provide additional details about why a lead may have been marked by Marketo as “marketing suspended”. This does happen from time-to-time, for example in the following situation:

• A Sales Insight plugin user has sent a sales email to a new email address (an address not currently in the Lead Database). They will see the following message:

I can’t find other examples of when the system sets this field, but this is why it exists and one example of how it can get populated. The customer can also create a Smart List in their subscription with “marketing suspended = true” to browse through leads that have been marked this way and understand more about why it is happening in their particular instance. If it is blank, it almost always means a Smart Campaign changed the field through a Change Data Value flow step (maybe by a lead disqualification campaign)."

@Jamie Carey​​ This is the expected behavior for how the field operates, so it wouldn't be considered a bug at all. Best way to get the behavior changed would be through submitting an idea in the Ideas section of the Community here. Of course, if you'd like to make the field do specific things depending on specific circumstances, you could do what @Josh Hill had suggested and create a new custom field. Then you can use smart campaigns to populate the field however you want for whatever the circumstances.

-Mike

I encountered this today.

Have you considered creating an Interesting Moment > Milestone 

and fleshing out the Description with details eg "Marketing Suspended due to Inactivity (Six Months)" ?

Alternatively, you could have a Person Field created called "Marketing Suspended Cause" and you'll use this field along with criteria to "Change Data Value" to change the status of those Suspended once they meet the criteria you call out.