FAQs
Why are Salesforce Campaign Member Statuses, Clicks and Opens different to Campaign Monitor?
📋 Summary of the Problem
You may notice that a Campaign Member in Salesforce shows a Status of "Clicked" but the Clicks field shows 0. Or you might see discrepancies between the Opens and Clicks counters in Salesforce versus what appears in Campaign Monitor. This happens when email tracking records are deleted from Salesforce based on your data retention settings, and the Campaign Member Status is not refreshed afterward.
💡 The Solution
This issue occurs due to the interaction between two settings in your Campaign Monitor for Salesforce integration:
How it happens:
The integration stores email tracking events (opens, clicks, bounces) in Campaign Activity records in Salesforce. When you configure a data retention period in the DaysToKeep_Email setting, older Campaign Activity records are automatically deleted to keep your Salesforce storage manageable.
When these tracking records are deleted, the integration recalculates the rollup fields on Campaign Member, such as Clicks and Opens. Since the underlying activity records no longer exist, these counters may drop to 0. However, the Status field on Campaign Member may not update, because it depends on your Campaign_Member_Refresh setting.
Understanding the Campaign_Member_Refresh setting:
This setting controls whether the Status field gets updated during sync:
- Always Update: The Status will be recalculated based on current data. If tracking records are deleted, Status may revert to an earlier state like "Sent" or become blank.
- Update Once: Status is only set the first time a member is synced. After that, it won't change, even if tracking data is removed.
- Never Update: Status is never updated by the integration.
When set to "Update Once" or "Never Update," the Status field remains unchanged even after data retention removes the underlying tracking records. This creates the mismatch where Status shows "Clicked" but Clicks shows 0.
To resolve or prevent this issue:
Option 1: Adjust your Campaign_Member_Refresh setting
Set Campaign_Member_Refresh to "Always Update" in CM Settings under General Settings. This ensures that when tracking data is removed, the Status field is recalculated to match the remaining data. Most customers who want accurate reporting should use this setting.
Option 2: Increase your data retention period
Increase the DaysToKeep_Email value in CM Settings to retain tracking records longer. This reduces how often the cleanup job runs and removes data. Consider your reporting needs when setting this value. Very short retention periods (like 7 days) often cause confusing mismatches.
Important notes:
The Clicks and Opens fields are dynamic rollups that always reflect the current state of your Campaign Activity records. Status, however, can be static depending on your refresh settings. This distinction is by design to give you control over whether historical Status values should be preserved or updated.
Manual deletion of Campaign Activity records will cause the same issue, so avoid removing these records outside of the automated retention process.
