Limits to Date Based Segmentation
Marketo segmentations don’t work well with date based filters. If you have tried to use a date or datetime field type in a segmentation, it will look like it’s working at first but over time will no longer update.
Example: Customer Date Segmentation
Let’s say you want a segment based on when a lead became a customer. You want to be able to segment by:
- People that became customers in the past 90 days
- People that became customers in the past 6 months
- People that became customers in the past 9 month
- People that became customers in the past year or longer
- Default (non customers)
When you create the segmentation and approve it, everyone will be in the correct segment. As time passes though, people won’t update because Marketo won’t see any events that act as a trigger to update the segmentation. This means that five months after you approve the segmentation, people will still be in the same segmentation that they were in when you first approved it.
If you want to use dates in segmentations, a best practice would involve some type of alignment smart campaign that would look at the date of activity from the field you’re using and the segment a lead is in and if they are misaligned, either add to a list or data value change that would force the segment to update.
