Community Advisor

Question

Why are some leads skipping the Wait Step in our Lead Scoring Campaign?

Forum|Forum|6 days ago
March 12, 2026
3 replies
39 views

Hi Community,

We're experiencing an issue in one of our lead scoring campaigns in Marketo. The flow is set up as: Change Status > Wait 5 minutes > Change Score.

Most leads follow this correctly, but a few records are skipping the wait step entirely. They enter the campaign, the status changes, and their score updates within seconds - no delay observed.

I already reviewed there's no racing conditions. No one updated the campaign in between. I am assuming this can be a priority issue.

Has anyone seen this before? What could be the possible reasons? Any insights, troubleshooting tips, or solutions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Darshil_Shah1

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

I am sure you'd have checked this, but just to make sure, could you pls check whether the campaign allows people to run through the flow multiple times? If a person was already sitting at the Wait step from a previous run, a new trigger can move them forward immediately. In those cases, it may look like the wait was skipped, but in reality, the person was already past that step.

But if this checks out, and since you have already reviewed the campaign act logs, it could be a bug, in which case, you'd need to open up a support ticket. Also, could you add snapshots of the act log and the campaign flow so we can take a look?

Vinay_Kumar

Author

Community Advisor

@Darshil_Shah1 Thank you for your quick response. I was thinking the same, but before reaching a conclusion, I want to double-check. I’m reviewing the activity of a few other records as well to confirm.

Darshil_Shah1

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Oh yes, pls do test the campaign flow with a test record, and check act logs of people already ran through the campaign to be sure.

derelict_wombat

Level 5

@Vinay_Kumar I’ve been seeing issues where sometimes smart campaign members are not hitting specific flow steps. I have a ticket open with support. Its concerning if this is a wider issue though.

Vinay_Kumar

Author

Community Advisor

Unfortunately, the support team does not have an answer to this issue at the moment.

Maria_Cruz1

Adobe Champion

Hi @Vinay_Kumar,

I don’t think this is a priority issue. A wait step should not be skipped simply because of campaign priority.

If only a few records are behaving this way, a few things could be causing it:

The person qualified for the campaign more than once.The score change could be tied to an earlier run that was already past the wait step.
Another campaign is updating the score. It may look like it’s coming from this campaign, but I’d confirm in the activity log that the Change Score is actually being done by this exact campaign.
Repeat qualification is enabled. If so, that could explain why the timing looks off for some records.
There is downstream campaign logic involved. For example, another requested or related campaign could be updating the score sooner than expected.

I’d review the activity log closely to confirm which campaign is actually changing the score, whether the person qualified more than once, and whether any other campaigns are tied to that same status change.

My guess is it’s more likely duplicate qualification or another campaign path updating the score, rather than the wait step itself being ignored.

Maria Cruz

Vinay_Kumar

Author

Community Advisor

@Maria_Cruz1 Thanks for your response. You are correct, the person is qualifying for the campaign more than once.

To manage these cases, we have created a recurring batch campaign. However, I would appreciate your thoughts on whether there’s a more efficient way to handle this.

Maria_Cruz1

Adobe Champion

@Vinay_Kumar that makes sense, and I’m glad you were able to confirm the repeat qualification.

A recurring batch campaign can definitely help manage those cases, but if this is happening pretty regularly, I’d probably look at whether there’s a way to reduce the duplicate qualification earlier rather than relying on the batch campaign as the long term fix.

A few things I’d recommend you look at:

Tightening the trigger or Smart List criteria so the same person is less likely to qualify multiple times
Reviewing whether the campaign really needs to allow repeat qualification
Try adding a guardrail, like checking whether that score or status change was already applied before allowing the Flow to continue
Splitting the logic a bit more, if needed, so status handling and score updates are easier to control separately

If the new recurring batch you set up is only catching occasional use cases, that approach is totally fine. But if it is doing a lot of cleanup, I’d take that as a sign the campaign logic could be tightened a bit more.

I’d personally treat the batch campaign as more of a backup, with the main goal being to prevent the repeat qualification where possible.

Maria Cruz

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