Trigger Smart Campaigns Aren't Working

Hi Danielle,

There is absolutely no reason why all trigger smart campaigns should stop working only on your instance

What do you mean by stop working? Not triggering? Be deactivated? Other?

Can you give us precise examples?

-Greg

Hello Danielle Boenisch​!

I have taken a look at the case you have open with us. I believe your support engineer has answered a lot of the questions about why leads didn't qualify for the trigger campaigns but they did for the batch campaigns.

The things to remember about trigger campaigns are

1. They will only fire when the action happens in real time (ie if you create the campaign in December, an action that would have triggered the campaign that happened in November, will not make your lead go through the campaign - however that lead would qualify for a batch campaign as those don't distinguish when the action took place unless you specify a time frame)

2. Data value change triggers do not apply when the lead is created with a value in that field. This is considered part of the original lead is created action and doesn't register in the same way as i you go to that lead the next day and change the value again.

Essentially the important elements are

1. That the trigger action happens after the trigger campaign is activated

2. That the lead fulfills any filters you have added on top of the trigger in the smart list

If in doubt, have a look at the activity log of a lead. Any activity that would trigger will be noted there. For example if you change a value, a "Data value was changed" activity will be registered. If you do not see that and your trigger is "data value was changed" your lead will not qualify.

If that doesn't cover it - please reach out to us in support, we're always happy to help!

One other thing you could try (apologies if someone already mentioned this) is to go to Marketing Activities, and check your Campaign Queue. If there's a long list of trigger campaigns queued up there, it could be that you're simply trying to use too many of them and the system is getting overwhelmed.

If you're dissatisfied with Support's response, you might try asking them for a counter example of a smart campaign in your instance which IS triggering, to demonstrate that the problem must be with your campaign's smart list.

All of that said, in my experience, 99.9% of the time these issues are due to someone using a very complex smart list and logic when they're still new to the system and not comfortable with it yet. Also - Support doesn't have a magic super tool to see why a lead isn't qualifying. They have to analyze the lead's activity log, check filter by filter, and check the campaign's smart list (and all the other smart lists referenced using Member of Smart List) for changes since the lead should have triggered it. It's a process that quickly becomes exhausting the more complex the smart list is. I recommend that you avoid using the Member of Smart List filter whenever possible, and review Marketo's list of smart list best practices:

Best Practices for Smart Lists - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Grant

I'm not sure if this is related to the removal of "Is Anonymous", but if you take out the Anonymous IP filter does your campaign work? I have noticed that with this update, some things that previously functioned are now either not functioning, or are functioning differently than they used to.

Also, to check that trigger campaigns are actually working on your account (and it isn't a setting issue, although I've never seen this), you could create a very simple triggered campaign using a data value change or something similar, and then change the data value on a test record to ensure that the triggered campaign actually works.

I highly doubt there is a general issue with your triggered campaigns and think it's much more likely that you're dealing with a smart list issue, but it can't hurt to try this as well.