Understanding the Impact of High-End Velocity Scripting on Email Delivery in Marketo
Velocity scripting in Marketo allows users to perform complex operations, including integrating Custom Objects, sorting, filtering, and performing math operations within email scripts; all of these, in turn, allow hyper-personalization. While velocity scripting provides immense value, it also introduces potential delays in email delivery and other challenges. In this blog post, we will delve into the implications of using high-end Velocity scripting in Marketo, addressing latency, smart list sizes, and soft bounces, and offer best practices for efficient email delivery.
The Power and Pitfalls of High-End Velocity Scripting
Velocity scripting in Marketo allows for sophisticated personalization and dynamic content generation. By leveraging Custom Objects and their properties, marketers can create highly tailored email experiences. However, the complexity of these operations can lead to increased processing time.
1. Latency in Email Delivery
When you incorporate extensive Velocity scripting, such as integrating Custom Objects, sorting, and filtering, the system requires additional processing time. This added complexity can cause latency in email delivery. The delay can range from milliseconds to several seconds, depending on the extent of the operations and the size of your smart list.
Factors Influencing Latency:
Complexity of Scripts: The more intricate the script, the longer it takes to process.
Size of Smart Lists: Larger lists require more time for processing each email, leading to potential delays.
Custom Object Operations: Utilizing Custom Objects in your scripts adds to the processing load.
2. Managing Smart List Sizes
The size of your smart list significantly affects processing time. While sorting a small list of fewer than 100 items may have a negligible impact, handling larger lists, particularly those with thousands or millions of recipients, can result in noticeable delays.
Best Practices:
Optimize Smart Lists: Keep your smart lists as lean as possible by filtering out inactive or irrelevant contacts.
Test Scripts with Smaller Lists: Before scaling up, test your Velocity scripts on smaller lists to gauge processing time and make necessary adjustments.
3. Understanding Soft Bounces and Velocity Scripting
A common concern is whether high-end Velocity scripting causes soft bounces. Soft bounces occur when an email is temporarily undeliverable. It’s important to note that correctly functioning Velocity scripts do not inherently cause soft bounces. However, parsing errors within Velocity tokens can result in soft bounces.
Script Integrity: Ensure your scripts are error-free to avoid parsing issues.
Error Handling: Implement robust error-handling mechanisms to manage potential parsing errors effectively.
4. Sending Large Email Batches
Sending a high volume of emails, such as 1,000,000 emails at once, is significant. Regardless of the Velocity functions used, sending such large batches can lead to throttling and increased bounce rates.
TL;DR
Using high-end Velocity scripting in Marketo for complex operations like integrating Custom Objects can introduce latency in email delivery, ranging from milliseconds to several seconds. Larger smart lists increase processing time, but well-functioning scripts do not cause soft bounces, though parsing errors can. When sending large email batches (e.g., 1,000,000 emails), expect potential throttling and higher bounce rates. Optimize smart lists, ensure script integrity, and prepare for large sends to maximize the benefits of Velocity scripting without compromising delivery efficiency.