Marketo List Import Modes

When leads are imported into a static list with the "Skip new people and updates" mode selected, Marketo not only skips importing and updating existing people to the database, but it also skips the activity logging as well.

In other words, there would be no trace of "Added to List" activity in the leads' activity log, people would just be added to the respective static list during the import process with this mode selected.

Now, since a smart list looks at the lead activity log, people added to the list via the ("Skip new people and updates") mode would not qualify for the "Added to List" trigger and "Was Added to List" filter. Now you know why that trigger campaign didn't fire/people didn't qualify for that batch campaign when people were imported to a list using this mode.

There are a few isolated use cases where people would want to go for this mode rather than the normal and widely used "Default" mode for importing the list. Quite honestly, I feel that because this mode is not widely used, marketers in general, are unaware of the small caveats associated with it!