Marketo activity data retention policy - Impact on reporting
Marketo retains marketing activity data on a rolling basis. Activity and Campaign Membership data is stored for a rolling 25 months past the activity date, and high-volume activity data is retained for a rolling period of 90 days past the activity date by default, which can be adjusted per user. Beyond these retention periods, the data is no longer available through the Marketo UI.
Marketo Analytics reports
Because activity data is retained for up to 25 months, some Marketo Analytics reports are affected by this policy while others are not. Reports that draw data from person activity logs will only show data for up to 25 months. Reports that do not reference person activity at all are unaffected.
However, even reports that do not reference person activity by default can be affected if filters are added to the report’s smart list. Filters that reference person attributes (information in fields on the person record) do not cause any change to the report. Filters that look for activities the person has taken can only access activities within the retention window, so if the activity occurred longer ago than that, the results of the report will be altered.
The table below summarizes how each report behaves, including common filter scenarios.
Report reference
Reporting workarounds
Activity data older than the retention window may be considered stale by many users. However, you may have a use case where this information is needed. Below are ways to retain this data beyond the standard retention period.
Export the data
Marketo offers the Bulk Extract REST API, which lets you export person activities and house them locally. Once the data is extracted over the API, you can store and sort it however you need for your use case.
Use custom fields
Person field values are not affected by the Data Retention Policy. You can use Smart Campaigns to populate custom fields with values based on activities your people take. This lets you filter people by these person attributes (not subject to the retention policy) rather than by the activities themselves (which are subject to the retention policy).
An additional benefit of this approach is that searching by person attributes is faster than searching through person activity logs.