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Rich_Miller2
Rich_Miller2
Level 2
August 19, 2015
Solved

Wait Step Processing and Impact on System Performance - Scalability of Marketo

  • August 19, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 3235 views

Hello,

Does anyone have any architecture documentation, etc. for wait steps: How they are processed, do they have an impact on Marketo performance, general best practices for global/scaled deployments, etc.

I have never had an issue with them, meaning they have never slowed the delivery of mails to leads later in the smartcampaign (after the wait step) for campaigns with <50K leads in them.  But I am getting ready for a large deployment. (500K records in an engagement program). The send will be from a program (with smart campaign) inside an engagement stream.

These leads are in different timezones, so the idea is:

  • Trigger the first mail
  • Wait 7 hours
  • Trigger the second send
  • Wait 8 Hrs
  • Trigger the third send

I would love to do it in one smartcampaign, but only if it will not slow the performance of the mail sends. They still need to go out at the right time. e.g. I cannot have the third mail be delivered 20 hrs after the first trigger, when it should have been 15 (8+7).

Thanks,
RM

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Best answer by Casey_Grimes2

Hi Rich,

So, you actually hit the nail on the head: the big issue for Marketo in terms of lag for email sends is actually in list qualification. As such, I'm tempted to do a very cheap workaround to ensure the list counting can be queued separately: have your flow step send to USA leads immediately and actually have the other regions compile into static lists. Set up timed campaigns that correspond to the deployment times that the records in that region and have them email anyone on the static list, then have a small cleanup campaign that removes records from the list afterwards. This way, you're pushing all the buffering time to generate the list in the waiting period rather than having all leads sit through a wait step and then re-qualify.

1 reply

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
August 19, 2015

Well, the Wait Step itself will have nothing to do with the processing time. After 8 hours, the lead comes out.

If I am reading this right, you have a Program dropped into an Engagement Stream that you intend to use with 500k records. Right?

If you send your campaign this way, each record will get 3 emails at the end of the time. I am hopeful you are splitting this so it says if in Member of Smart List IN "Asia" send email, etc.

Questions:

1. Do you have other programs in the stream?

2. Is this a batch/one off in reality? (Please do not use engagement for this).

3. Why could you not use 3 batch campaigns to schedule this properly?

Rich_Miller2
Rich_Miller2Author
Level 2
August 20, 2015

Thanks for the response. Here is some additional info.

  • Yes. It is a program that I dropped into the stream.
  • There are conditions in the smartcampaign that limit the geos.

e.g.  if asia, send this mail.

Wait 7 hrs

If Europe, send this mail.

Wait 8 hrs

If US or blank region, send this mail.

  • There are other programs in the stream that would work the same way. Different emails/content, but the same general flow.

  • It is going to be an ongoing effort. i.e. we will continue to add content (programs) to the stream.

With your #3, are you thinking of three programs in the stream. One for each geo. Their smartcampaigns would still need the delays in them, since they all have to go off the stream cadence.

But it sounds like you are not aware of any general best practices for using wait steps with large sends. i.e. will the number and length of wait steps will not cause delays with larger numbers of leads in the stream.

Do they do something like this:

Filter entire qualified list, process entire list (but really only send what is applicable), wait, filter whole list again and process whole list, etc. If it was doing that, I could see how it could slow things down, especially with large lists as it may have one send piled up on another. But I am not an app architect.

Because if is was a simple filter, process and send only to applicable, wait, filter, process and send only to applicable, etc. it should not matter how many wait steps you have, how long they are, or how many leads you are processing.

Thanks! I know we are going deep in this one.

Casey_Grimes2
Casey_Grimes2Accepted solution
Level 10
August 20, 2015

Hi Rich,

So, you actually hit the nail on the head: the big issue for Marketo in terms of lag for email sends is actually in list qualification. As such, I'm tempted to do a very cheap workaround to ensure the list counting can be queued separately: have your flow step send to USA leads immediately and actually have the other regions compile into static lists. Set up timed campaigns that correspond to the deployment times that the records in that region and have them email anyone on the static list, then have a small cleanup campaign that removes records from the list afterwards. This way, you're pushing all the buffering time to generate the list in the waiting period rather than having all leads sit through a wait step and then re-qualify.

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