Marketo communication limits, rebuilt in Eloqua

What Marketo’s communication limits do

In Marketo an admin sets communication limits once for the whole instance under Admin > Communication Limits. There are three settings: a maximum number of emails per day, a maximum per 7 days and a Block non-operational emails checkbox that makes Marketo enforce them. Adobe’s own example is one email a day and five in any seven-day period. The daily limit runs on the calendar day, midnight to midnight, in the subscription’s time zone.

The limits then apply:

• To email and engagement programs automatically. An email program can opt out on its Setup tab.
• To smart campaigns that ask for them. A smart campaign respects the limits when Block non-operational emails is checked in its schedule settings and admins can make that the default.

Operational emails are the exception. They don’t count towards the limits and are never blocked by them, which is why Adobe reserves them for critical messages and autoresponders. Any other email to someone at their limit is simply not sent. Marketo doesn’t hold it back for later so the person never receives it, even once they have room under their limit again.

Communication limits don’t prioritize either. Once a person reaches their limit the next non-operational email is blocked, whichever program it comes from and however much it matters.

What Eloqua has instead

Eloqua has no setting that limits how many emails a contact receives and through the 26C release in August 2026 Oracle’s release notes describe none. It has four things that come close:

• Insight’s Email Frequency data shows how many emails each contact was sent by month and by email group.
• Fatigue Analysis scores each contact every week from Inactive to Oversaturated based on their sends and opens.
• Email groups let contacts choose which kinds of email they get, though not how many.
• Decision steps, shared filters and shared lists are what teams use to build their own caps.

The first three tell you who is getting too much email but they can’t stop it. A cap built from campaign logic can, in the campaigns that include it.

Rebuilding each part in Eloqua

How each part of Marketo’s communication limits works in Marketo, in Eloqua built natively and in Eloqua with the Email Governor

What the limit does	Marketo communication limits	Eloqua built natively	Eloqua with Email Governor
An email over the limit	Not sent	Takes whichever path the decision step gives it	Held back and retried for a period of time so the contact still gets it within their limit
Where it is set	Once under Admin > Communication Limits	In a shared filter, checked by a decision step in every campaign	Once in the Email Governor
Which campaigns it covers	Email and engagement programs by default and smart campaigns set to block non-operational emails	Only campaigns that include the check	Only campaigns that include the Email Governor step
Transactional email	Marked operational: not counted and never blocked	Sends uncapped when its campaign leaves out the check	Sends uncapped when its campaign leaves out the Email Governor step
Which email goes out first	Whichever comes first; later ones are blocked	Whichever campaign reaches the contact first	The one from the highest-priority campaign

The 7-day limit

The closest native equivalent is a shared filter that finds contacts who have been sent your weekly maximum in the last seven days, checked by a Shared Filter Member? decision step right before every email. Contacts in the filter wait or leave the campaign and everyone else goes on to the email. Our guide to Eloqua email frequency limits covers this and the two other native approaches in detail.

The daily limit

Add a second filter that counts sends over the last day and combine the two into one shared filter so a single decision step checks both. Marketo counts its daily limit by calendar day so expect your filter to behave a little differently around midnight and check it against a few contacts’ send history before you rely on it.

Which campaigns are limited

In Marketo, programs respect the limits unless someone opts them out. Eloqua works the other way round: a campaign is limited only if someone adds the check. A campaign built from scratch or cloned from an old template sends without it and nothing flags it. Build the check into every campaign template and audit active campaigns for it from time to time.

Operational email

Eloqua has no operational flag. Transactional email stays outside the cap when its campaign leaves out the check. Whether it still counts towards the cap for other campaigns depends on how your filter counts sends. Decide which you want before you build the filter. For the few emails that must reach unsubscribed contacts, such as legally required notices, the email step’s sending options include Send email to unsubscribed members and Send email to master exclude members. Only use those for transactional email.

An email over the limit

This is where Marketo and the Email Governor differ most. Marketo drops the email so a person at their limit doesn’t get it at all. A native cap in Eloqua can do the same by sending contacts over the limit out of the campaign. It can also retry them if you route them into a wait step that loops back to the check so that they get the email once they have room again. Give the loop an end date or contacts can circle until the content is out of date. The Email Governor retries for you as described below.

Which email goes first

Neither platform decides natively. In Marketo whichever email reaches a person after they hit their limit is blocked. In Eloqua whichever campaign reaches the contact first gets through. Native caps in Eloqua have another weakness as well. Each campaign checks separately so campaigns that reach the same contact within a short window can all pass the check before any of their emails has gone out.

Enforcing the limit in one place

The Email Governor is the closest Eloqua comes to Marketo’s single admin setting. You set how many emails a contact can receive in a given period, with tighter limits for the segments that need them and every governed campaign is held to the same count. The Email Governor adds a step to the campaign canvas just before the email step and a campaign you leave it out of, such as transactional email, sends without being held or capped.

It goes further than Marketo in two ways. The first and the biggest difference is what happens to an email over the limit. Marketo doesn’t send it. The Email Governor holds the contact back instead: they wait in a queue and the Email Governor retries them for a period of time, releasing them to the email step once the email fits within their limit. The contact still gets the email, just not on a day when it would take them over their limit.

The second is priority. Where Marketo blocks whatever happens to come next, each governed campaign has a priority so when more email is waiting than a contact’s limit allows, the most important email goes out first and the rest wait their turn.

Because the count is kept in one place, campaigns launching in the same minute can’t both get through.

A migration checklist

1. Write down Marketo’s settings: the per-day and per-7-day limits, which programs and smart campaigns ignore them and which emails are operational.
2. Measure Eloqua today. An Insight report on Email Frequency shows how much email contacts already get.
3. Sort your campaigns into capped marketing email and uncapped transactional email, the way operational emails were sorted in Marketo.
4. Choose how to enforce the limit: a shared filter and decision step in every campaign template or the Email Governor.
5. Decide what happens to email over the limit. Marketo didn’t send it. Natively you can drop it too or loop contacts through a wait step and check again. The Email Governor holds them back and retries for a period of time.
6. Check your send timing. If you plan to use Eloqua’s Send Time Optimization, read how it interacts with caps first.