Multiple Trigger Smart List but only want 1 Email Sent | Community
Skip to main content
March 7, 2016
Question

Multiple Trigger Smart List but only want 1 Email Sent

  • March 7, 2016
  • 4 replies
  • 7335 views

I have a smart campaign setup that has multiple triggers. I thought that if only 1 of the triggers was met it would send only 1 email AND if more than 1 trigger was met it would send only 1 email. I attached the screenshot of the smart list. The problem we're experiencing is that some of the leads we receive would only ever meet 1 of the triggers. But today we realized that a lead could meet more than 1 of the defined triggers - when this happened, Marketo sent the same email twice to the same lead at the same time.

How do I set a restriction that says, only send 1 email even if more than one trigger is met? Note, this is an appointment based smart campaign, so leads could update their appointment times very frequently (minutes apart), and if that's the case I want to make sure Marketo still sends them the email.

I've played around with the Qualification Rules on the Schedule tab, but it doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for. Any ideas?

This post is no longer active and is closed to new replies. Need help? Start a new post to ask your question.

4 replies

Justin_Cooperm2
Level 10
March 7, 2016

No, a trigger is what initiates the campaign. The campaign will be initiated any time that any of the triggers occur.

You can add a series of filters as well with date ranges to ensure that those triggered events haven't happened in the last day so that you're only running the campaign once a day.

March 7, 2016

Thanks Justin. You're comment on only running the campaign once a day....unfortunately, this would not be a good solution for us. Our data updates every minute, so if any of these triggers are met at different times throughout the day, I would still need Marketo to send the email.

It's when we get a data single update instance and that lead qualifies for more than 1 of those triggers that we experience issues. In this situation, Marketo sends the same email to the same lead equalling the number of triggers it qualified for. But ideally, I want to to only send 1 email even if the lead qualifies at more than 1 of the triggers. Thoughts?

Justin_Cooperm2
Level 10
March 7, 2016

Amanda,

That's what I'm trying to explain..a trigger is not something you "qualify" for. If you setup a trigger campaign, whenever any of the triggered actions occur, the campaign will execute the flow steps. So, you haven't set it up the way you'd like. Why do you need all the different triggers? Why can't you just trigger off whether the "Appointment Time VS" has changed? It's not clear to me why you are including the 3 triggers? You can use filters in addition to your trigger if you need to validate some additional criteria before making sure they should be part of the campaign.

Josh_Hill13
Level 10
March 7, 2016

Let's try to clarify what is going on:

  1. When ANY of the three orange triggers happens, whichever one hits first AND the green Filter
  2. the workflow will be engaged and send the email.
  3. The Schedule>Qualification Rules can be set to Every time, Once a day, or other options. If you set it to Every Time, then any lead that has one of those Three Triggers AND the green filter will go through. Which means a lead can do this every second if desired.

Your specific question is that No, if all three triggers go off at once, the lead will only trigger one email. Marketo will only "hear" the fastest trigger.

What Justin is saying is "Do you want the lead to get the email every time they meet the conditions, or do you want the lead to get one email per day?"

March 7, 2016

Hey Amanda,

One thing you could try is adding the filter

Not Was Sent Email = Email Name

In the last 1 minute

I did a quick test on myself where I set the trigger to qualify from updating first and last name.  Then updated both first and last name at the same time in our CRM, saved, and synced to CRM.

As a result I only received one email.

Let me know your thoughts.


Thanks!

-Ryan

March 7, 2016

Ahhh I re-tested it and that isn't a reliable way to go.. Sorry :-(

Chris_Shaffer
Level 2
March 8, 2016

What was the reason that it wasn't working reliably ? This seems like the most straight forward solution to the problem.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10
March 7, 2016

Hi Amanda,

If the triggers are fired twice for the same event, it means that these 2 events are dependent, so you probably have 1 event that triggers the email and that also triggers the second event that triggers the email (I am no sure I am clear here, so let me know )

You should examine the activity log of your persons to see what are the 2 concomitant events that fire the trigger twice and try limit this dependancy. AFAIK, "Person is created" does not trigger any data value change, nor does it trigger any segmentation change.

Another solution would be to use a static list to send the email.

  • The first SC (the one you have set above) could add the lead to the list but woul not send the email
  • Another smart campaign (trigger: "is added to list") would send the email, wait 5 or 10 seconds and remove the lead from the list.

As a lead cannot be added to a list if it is already there, the campaign would not be able to fire twice within this range of 5 or 10 seconds

-Greg