TROUBLESHOOTING Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Workaround

Similarly, the "Not Lead Was created" filter (no time constraint) enables to run smart campaign only on anonymous leads that have not yet been promoted to know leads.

-Greg

Greg,

You're correct, using the "Not Lead Was Created" filter will allow you to run campaigns on anonymous leads only, but I would advise against using this method. The reason I recommend against it is because it will only work between now and when the Munchkin V2 upgrade is rolled out later this year. The roll out of that piece is a staggered roll out over time and we don't have a firm schedule because it will vary depending on how each server group responds.

Yes, it will work right now to target anonymous leads, you're correct about that. However, as soon as anonymous leads are fully removed in that Munchkin V2 roll out, it will break it wherever used, the same way that using the "Is Anonymous" filter (set to true) would. You can use it right now, but ultimately it's just delaying the inevitable of having to change the process to stop targeting anonymous leads (which will no longer exist after Munchkin V2 rolls out), so putting it in place now only creates more work later since it will have to be removed again later. Sorry.

Hi Mike,

Basically, this is the intend when adding this filter : preventing any triggering of the event during the replay phase.

But would this also block the campaign to trigger if the triggering event occurs again AFTER the lead has been promoted ? If this is true, this is a real trouble.

Time to consider the urgent need for this idea:

-Greg

I like the idea of the email address filter. But it may happen that Known leads without an email address are created in Marketo from the CRM. These will be excluded from the flow step.

-Greg

Greg,

That's true, but having leads without email addresses syncing from CRM into Marketo is not a best practice. Without an email address, there's no way to de-duplicate against that known lead record (form fill, list import, etc.), or to email the lead to get them to click a link to associate the anonymous record to the known lead either. Yes, those leads would be excluded from the flow step, but a bigger issue in that case would be a data integrity issue of whether your lead acquisition practices are helping or hurting your marketing practices.

Greg,

If the lead is a known lead and then later after promotion takes the action that triggers the campaign, the "Lead Was Created" filter would not stop them from going through the campaign. So, no, after the lead has already been promoted, it would not be excluded from the campaign

Hi Mike,

I agree about not sync'ing the empty email addresses being a best practice, but users are not always observants of best practices.

-Greg

This may be fine for preventing alerts from being sent out (assuming the lead has no email address yet - but as Greg mentioned, not everyone adheres to these best practices), but what about all of the other flow steps that will still trigger?  That's why I preferred the "lead was created" filter since it's contained within the smart list and stops the lead right then and there from qualifying. Until Munchkin v2 is rolled out, without the "lead was created" filter, these leads will still qualify for the other 20 or so flow steps we have in our lead lifecycle campaigns.

The issue now is the delay in having Munchkin v2 rolled out alongside the way Marketo treats anonymous leads - and having these temporary workarounds in place (which affects 20 or so smart campaigns in our instance). Is it just technically unrealistic to roll it out now for all customers?

@Dan Stevens​,

On lead promotion, only 5 flow actions will be executed during the reply process:

1. Change Score

2. Interesting Moment

3. Change Data Value

4. Add to List

5. Remove from List

More details in Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Under The Hood

That's on lead promotion post-Munchkin V2 though, and I think you're referring to the time between now and then when the anonymous lead still exist. Honestly, it's a tough call. You can block all anonymous leads from ever going through the campaigns by using the "Lead was Created" filter. In your use case, that would probably work best. However, for others who are only concerned with stopping the Send Alert emails from going out--people who still want to have the leads go through the scoring changes or data value changes--the choice in the flow step is a better way to go because it doesn't block the entire campaign, just that one flow step.

The trade offs here are what happens after Munchkin V2 rolls out. If you don't want to change anything later on, if you want to just make one change now and not have to worry about it, use the choice in the flow step. For folks who want the campaign to still trigger on the campaign replay at lead promotion, the campaign will still be replayed without needing to make any more changes.

However, if your use case is different and you want to block all anonymous leads from the campaign across the board, then the "Lead Was Created" filter is a better way to go. All flow steps are still executed now, pre-Munchkin V2, so this would stop all anonymous leads from having any of those actions taken. The trade off is that, after Munchkin V2, the "Lead Was Created" filter being used will stop the entire campaign from being able to be replayed at all--it won't even be called. Use cases differ, so ultimately it's a judgement call that everyone is going to have to make themselves depending on their particular scenarios.

As far as the time before Munchkin V2 rolls out, it would be nice if we could push all upgrades out at the same time. Sure would make everyone's lives easier. However, on the back end, there are a very large number of other upgrades going on right now (system upgrades, not customer-facing) and they need to be done in sequence. The UI changes to remove access to Anonymous leads was part one. The back end system upgrades are the next part needed to lay the foundation for the Munchkin V2 part that comes after that. The back end upgrades are already going on now and I've been hearing that they're going really well, so we're getting all good news so far, but it still takes time. These back end upgrades are actually much much larger than the UI changes done to remove visibility to anonymous leads, so they have to be staggered out and monitored to ensure they're 100% before moving on.

Hi @Mike Reynolds​,

So if the "lead was created filter" block all un-promoted leads from entering the campaign and allows all promoted ones to run it, then the filter plays it's role of preventing replays to happen. So could you please elaborate more on the issue you want to raise ?

-Greg