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A
Anonymous
March 7, 2013
Question

Smart Campaigns sending slowly

  • March 7, 2013
  • 11 replies
  • 2724 views
Is anyone else having issues with their smart campaigns taking a long time to send? We have a basic smart list with only 5000 campaign members and yet it took close to 3 hours for the campaign to send. In the past I've sent campaigns with much more complicated smart list and tens of thousands of members and it sent it a matter of minutes.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what may be causing this issue?

Thanks
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11 replies

A
Anonymous
March 7, 2013
Try adding all your leads in the smart list to a static list. Then in the smart list of the smart campaign, just use the one step "member of list is..."

Once the leads are added to a static list, marketo does not have re-calculate the members when you go to send.
A
Anonymous
March 7, 2013
Thanks for the reply Gary. But having to add every lead to a static list for every single campaign isn't using Marketo for what it's been designed (marketing automation). This is happening for every single campaign we send, and it seems a bit pointless to have to use automation software in such a manual way.
    A
    Anonymous
    March 7, 2013
    I understand it's an extra step, but it only takes a minute (as opposed to waiting 3 hours). 

    Isn't every outbound email campaign you send a manual process? The automation part comes in when you setup triggers in your programs and smart campaigns to automate the process of what happens when a lead does or doesn't respond to one of your campaigns.

    Hey, just saying....I used to have that problem and now I don't :)
    A
    Anonymous
    March 8, 2013
    If I create a static list, any new members that would be added to that campaign will be missed. The smart list would need to be re-calculated and new members added to the static list in the send. The time between campaign creation and campaign send can take anywhere between a couple of days to a few weeks, so using the various filters in a smart list just makes more sense. Even running smart lists for simple counts is taking hours and keep timing out.

    Something is clearly not working properly.
    A
    Anonymous
    March 8, 2013
    I don't have all the details for your specific case, but if it were me I'd either create the inclusion lists right before you send out the email, or create a quick smart campaign with all the criteria of your smart list, then have the flow step add leads to your static list. That way, if you set it up days or weeks before you send, all of the qualified leads will automatically be added to your list and run through the flow steps of the campaign. Otherwise i'd contact support. Hope this helps!
    A
    Anonymous
    March 8, 2013
    I also use static lists for all my smart lists in all 29 of my user group programs and it really did cut the loading time down tremendously! I also don't know your specific case, but I'd encourage you to try it. Thanks for your advice Gary. 
    A
    Anonymous
    March 8, 2013
    I have experienced tremendous slow down of late, as well...half the time the smart lists I need won't even load in order for me to create a static list. And I agree, this isn't an acceptable answer to me....all those extra "one minutes" really add up. Also, if a user changes and should no longer be part of a certain list, it is easy to forget to remove them.

    One thing I have done with ongoing static lists -- where users will not likely move out of -- is create a little smart program that says "when the lead has this criteria, add it to this list." I have a few of those.

    But there definitely has been a slow down of late, I 100% agree...lists that used to take me only minutes to load now take literally hours to load/send.
    A
    Anonymous
    March 8, 2013

    Hi Ann,

    I'd strongly encourage you to open a support ticket online about this. Lists shouldn't be taking that long, and we want to get to the bottom of it!

    Please let me konw if I can assist in any way.

    Best,
    Liz

    Jep_Castelein2
    Jep_Castelein2
    Level 10
    March 8, 2013

    If you are emailing the same group over and over again, I would strongly recommend using a Segmentation. Segmentations combine the best of smart lists and static lists: 
    - you define smart list rules, so new names will be added to the list automatically (just like smart lists)
    - it updates continuously, so there is no wait when you send out a campaign (just like static lists)

    When you first use the segmentation or change the filters, there will be a recalculation that can take multiple hours (based on the database size), but that's only a one-time wait. 

    More on segmentations here: https://community.marketo.com/MarketoTutorial?id=kA250000000Kz0rCAC

    On a side-note: please realize that you can only run 2 batch campaigns at the same. So lets assume that you have 2 data fixup batch campaigns running and - at the same time - launch a Smart Campaign to send an email, then the email will only go out after one of the two batch campaigns has finished. Use the Campaign Queue to keep an eye on the active and queued campaigns. 

    A
    Anonymous
    March 10, 2013
    I am only running one batch campaign at any one time. I also utilise segmentations, but these make the campaign send time even longer. As has already been mentioned, changing to static lists is not an acceptable answer. And as Ann also mentioned, some lists don't even load and constantly time out.
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