smart campaign sends the email twice after a wait step | Community
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Tom_Liolios4
Tom_Liolios4
New Participant
July 25, 2017
Solved

smart campaign sends the email twice after a wait step

  • July 25, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 5415 views

Hi there,

I have a smart campaign set up that needs to send an email after a wait step. In the wait step I use tokens to specify when the wait is over.

The wait step works properly, however, when it is time to send the email, Marketo sends the email twice.

That is not how I set it up.

See below the flow steps:

And here the results of this campaign:

As you can see, the time of sending is correct. However, it is strange that the same lead gets the email sent twice.

Any thoughts on why this is happening?

Thank you!

Tom

Best answer by Steven_Vanderb3

Hi Steven,

Thanks for helping out!

This could be a reason yes. I did see, however, the support agent having the same issues with the email being sent twice.

I think for now I should set up another campaign, and test it again. See if the issue happens again.

Thanks,

Tom


Her situation was different.  Your wait steps are set to wait for a specified date, but that date is now in the past, so her lead record just kept moving through the flow. Step #6 and Step #8 send the same email so she got them in succession. If you check the Step IDs on those emails you'll see they are different.

4 replies

Grégoire_Miche2
Grégoire_Miche2
New Participant
July 26, 2017

Hi Tom,

I strongly suspect that you are having duplicates in your database. The lead Tom Tolios is present twice in the campaign and therefore the trigger is called twice.

To check this hypothesis, click the lead name in the results. The lead detail pages will open and you will be able to check form the URL if the lead ID's are the same.

-Greg

Tom_Liolios4
Tom_Liolios4Author
New Participant
July 27, 2017

@Grégoire Michel​ @Steven Vanderberg Thanks for helping out here.

The strange thing here is that:

- the lead is not a duplicate

- the smart campaign is not used for other webinars then only this specific webinar

I did request a support ticket, but the support agent is facing the same issues as I am. They have not been able yet to resolve.

The smart campaign is triggered by "Fills out form X". A lead can only run through it once.

After the wait step with the token, the email should go out.

The only 'new' thing about this set up for me is the usage of tokens in the wait step, but I cannot imagine that to cause an email to be sent twice.

Steven_Vanderb3
Steven_Vanderb3
New Participant
July 27, 2017

I sent a message to the agent helping you as well, but it looked like you triggered the campaign twice a few minutes before you switched the campaign setting to only allow someone to run through the flow one time.  You've had two iterations of your record hanging out and exiting together in your Wait steps.

Steven_Vanderb3
Steven_Vanderb3
New Participant
July 26, 2017

I'd say file a Support ticket.  It's going to be hard to diagnose without being able to see the whole campaign, how the lead qualified for the campaign, and the source of the qualification (if it's a trigger campaign that is sending the email).

Dan_Stevens_
Dan_Stevens_
New Participant
July 26, 2017

We, too, have been experiencing some issues with how flow steps are supposed to function.  For example, when we call (request) a smart campaign in the middle of the flow, we're finding that the subsequent flow steps are being executed before the requested campaign has finished.  The way flow steps are supposed to work - when a "request campaign" flow step is used - is similar to a sub-routine in code: the flow branches to the campaign that was requested, runs through all of the flows in that campaign, and then returns to the source campaign (if necessary, and if not "removed from flow") to continue on with the rest of the flow steps.  All in a sequence.  And that's not happening for us.  Where this is causing an issue is when the requested campaign includes a "removed from flow" - or even specific flow steps that need to occur before returning to the source campaign - and the flow steps are causing errors and/or executing on actions that shouldn't take place. 

I know this isn't what's going on here for you, but perhaps there's a larger, underlying issue with how Marketo processes flow steps.

Steven_Vanderb3
Steven_Vanderb3
New Participant
July 26, 2017

Hi Dan,

I don't believe that is how Request Campaign is expected to work.  The action you're telling the flow to make is to trigger the corresponding campaign - that's it.  When it's done doing that, it moves on.  The requested campaign is added to the campaign queue to execute in order of priority.

    Josh_Hill13
    Josh_Hill13
    New Participant
    July 26, 2017

    That's correct. Once requested, the original flow continues and the Requested Campaign is triggered and runs on its own according to the Queue Priority.

    This is why Requested Campaigns can be carefully setup such that the race condition is controlled.

      A
      Anonymous
      July 25, 2017

      It seems like the config is right and there might be something else causing this. Is this happening to all leads in this campaign or only some? Can you check if Step ID is same for both the entries (by clicking on 17679601 & 17679602)?

      Also, are the leads set to run through this campaign once or multiple times?

      Josh_Hill13
      Josh_Hill13
      New Participant
      July 25, 2017

      It sounds like the person registered twice, and as Chirag noted, your flow may allow the person to qualify every time.

      Could be another reason.

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