Will existing campaign members receive new emails added to Smart Campaign flow?

[Guitarrista82]

Hello Community,

We created a campaign that has multiple Send Email and Wait steps. We are running this campaign daily and have already run it a couple of times before.

Yesterday, the team added new Send Email and Wait steps (11 in total), and I want to confirm if anyone who was run through the campaign previously will receive the new emails and be added to the wait steps?

I created a smart list to see what was the most recent email that was received, and it appears that the latest email that anyone was sent is in Flow Step 5, so these contacts are now in the subsequent Wait Step (Flow Step 6) and have not gotten any other emails in the campaign:

The newly created Send Email steps and Wait steps are Flow Steps 10-21. Each Wait Step is 21 days.

Since no one has gone beyond Flow Step 6, this leads me to believe that everyone who is currently a member of the campaign and is added in the future should be able to enter the new Flow Steps (10-21) and receive the new assets. 

Or is everyone who was previously added to the smart campaign stamped only with the existing flows and cannot receive any new emails added or enter any newly created flow steps?

Thank you,

LK

[uditmathur]

Hi,

Can you explain your use case in detail, as looking to your flow step it seems like your aim is to engage with your customers by sending them regular email about your travel offer & destination at regular intervals.

If this is your exact use case, I would suggest you to create an Engagement Program rather than the smart campaign & set its cadence to run every 21 day. This way you will not have to run your campaign daily & new member added to your SL will automatically start receiving your content from the next cast starting from your 1st active content at the time of cast. Also this will make sure that none of your customers receive the same content more then Once.

If your use case is something different, it would be good if you can share to have a better solution.

Thanks.

[Zoe_Forman]

@Guitarrista82, as @uditmathur says, an engagement program or even executable campaigns would be a much better way to send the emails you require.

With the number of flow steps and wait steps, you are looking at a recipe for disaster, especially if you continue to add to this process. You will encounter campaign queues and possible skipped steps and errors.

Try and see if an engagement program will serve your needs unless you have additional factors at play we are unaware of.

[Darshil_Shah1]

@Guitarrista82, to answer your question, yes, conceptually, Marketo will run the updated steps for the people already in the Wait step when they come out of it, as long as the new flow step(s) are added after the Wait step the person is currently in it. Also, Marketo won't go back in running the flow steps. When the person goes in the Wait step, the system updates the wait timeperiod and the number of the flow step after it, and hence, once the person comes out of the Wait step, Marketo would run the step number that was stored when the person was added to the Wait step.

[Guitarrista82]

Thank you Darshil...To confirm, as long as the people are in a Wait Step that is higher up in the Flow (in this case, they are in Flow step 6), they will be able to receive the emails sent from the new Flow steps that were added? Just want to be clear as I need to communicate back to the team.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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When the person goes in the Wait step, the system updates the wait timeperiod and the number of the flow step after it, and hence, once the person comes out of the Wait step, Marketo would run the step number that was stored when the person was added to the Wait step.

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This is true! And can also lead to some strange — verging on buggy — behavior.

Take this flow:

If someone is in the Wait step and you remove flow step 2, automatically changing step 3 → 2, 4 → 3, and 5 → 4:

Then when they come out, they’ll only run step 4 (previously step 5). They’ll never hit step 3 (prev. step 4), though if you only look at the current Flow you would have no idea why:

[Darshil_Shah1]

Yes, thank you so much for highlighting this, Sandy! @Guitarrista82, more supporting things for you to consider using Marketo's OOTB Engagement Program to run your drip/nurture style content delivery campaign instead.

[Guitarrista82]

Thanks for sharing this example, Sanford!

Couple of questions:

If we add a flow step after a Wait Step, my understanding is that anyone in that Wait Step would stay in it another X amount of time because now the order of the steps has changed. Would the member then go on to the next (new) step after that Wait Step has completed?

If we remove a flow step after a Wait Step, would everyone in that Wait Step likewise stay in it another X amount of time and go on to the subsequent flow step afterwards? What if the removed flow step was the last one? Would the contacts stay in their Wait Step again and afterwards just complete the flow?

[SanfordWhiteman]

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If we add a flow step after a Wait Step, my understanding is that anyone in that Wait Step would stay in it another X amount of time because now the order of the steps has changed

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No, that’s not the case. They exit the Wait and enter the step number they were waiting for.

If we remove a flow step after a Wait Step, would everyone in that Wait Step likewise stay in it another X amount of time and go on to the subsequent flow step afterwards? What if the removed flow step was the last one? Would the contacts stay in their Wait Step again and afterwards just complete the flow?

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This is like my example above. There’s no doubling up on Wait times. They go to whatever step number they were waiting for (even if that step number is no longer the same step type/step details as it was originally).

[Darshil_Shah1]

When a person enters the wait step, Marketo stamps the wait step duration and the next flow step number, so when the person is done waiting for the set wait time, they get out of it and run through the step number that was stored when the person entered the wait step. So, even if you swap the flow step after the wait step with a different flow step, the person would run through the updated step — Marketo looks for the step number and not the actual step (i.e., what the step was) when the person gets out of the wait step. Hope this is helpful. Please let us know if you have any questions. 🙂