Make your Marketo Smart List Filters Efficient!
When working with Adobe Marketo Engage, the efficiency of your Smart Lists is critical for the speed and performance of your campaigns. Every time you run a Smart List, a database query is executed under the hood, and the time it takes to deliver results can vary based on how well you structure your filters. With a busy Marketo instance, optimizing your filters isn’t just a best practice—it’s essential for ensuring smooth, timely operations.
But what does efficiency really mean in this context? Let’s dive into some best practices to help you get the most out of your Smart Lists and keep your database queries running at peak performance.
1. Prioritize Filters That Narrow the Database Most
One of the most important tips for Smart List efficiency is to arrange your filters in a way that narrows down your dataset as early as possible. Think about it this way: if your first filter dramatically reduces the number of people in your database, the subsequent filters have a much smaller set of people to process.
Example:
Let’s say you have two filters:
Filter 1: “Last Name is Doe”
Filter 2: “Has Opened Any Email in the Last 90 Days”
If you start with the “Last Name is Doe” filter, Marketo will first reduce the total database to a tiny subset. Then, it only needs to check who among those people opened an email in the last 90 days, speeding up the entire process. In contrast, if you start with the broader “Has Opened Any Email” filter, Marketo will need to evaluate a much larger number of people before checking if their last name is “Doe,” which could significantly slow down your query.
2. Organize Filters by Specificity
The rule of thumb is to place the most specific, restrictive filters at the top and broader ones further down. This approach ensures that Marketo limits the number of records it has to process with each subsequent filter, leading to faster query times.
While this may not make much of a difference with small databases, as your instance grows, this practice can drastically cut down on query time. In large databases, inefficient filters can result in smart campaigns that take hours to process, impacting everything from campaign execution to your team’s ability to act on real-time insights.
3. Keep an Eye on Query Complexity
Complex queries take longer to process, especially when multiple filters and custom logic are involved. As your database scales and campaigns become more sophisticated, it’s important to monitor how long it takes for your Smart Lists to return results. If you notice a slowdown, it could be a sign that your queries need to be optimized by rearranging filters or removing unnecessary conditions.
Apart from these, make sure you don’t nest smart lists and use exact match instead of broader operators in your smart list (e.g., use “is” over “contains” wherever possible).
Why Efficiency Matters for Your Marketo Instance
Inefficient Smart Lists don’t just waste time—they can have a cascading effect on your marketing operations. Slow campaigns can delay your outreach, impact reporting accuracy, and frustrate your team as they wait for results. By taking a few extra moments to arrange your filters more efficiently, you can prevent bottlenecks and ensure smoother, faster performance.
By applying these best practices, you’ll ensure that Adobe Marketo Engage delivers results as quickly and efficiently as possible, no matter how complex or large your database becomes.