The question of how to suppress/skip leads who have done things in the past from receiving certain engagement program emails has been a common question in the community. For example, there is no need to send someone an email promoting a blog signup if they have already signed up for the blog.Many Marketo users leverage an Exclusion status workaround that causes reporting challanges. The proposed solution revolves around creating a special Exclusion status that is used exclusivelly for engagement supression .
Current Solution/WorkAround – The Exclusion Progression Option
Marketo uses program membership to help exclude leads from receiving content sent via programs. To summarize, anyone who had previously signed up for the blog (or signs up in future) could be added to the Blog Signup Engagement program with a progression status of Exclude. Since they are a member of that Blog Signup Engagement Program, the stream will know to skip the email and send the next piece of content instead. This method is simple, easy and works.
Get more details with Ed Unthank’s Summit must-watch Summit preso.
The Issue with the Workaround - Reporting
Basically, you are using a progression status as a workaround. Members are added to the local program even though they did something somewhere else. For example, someone who signed up for the blog organically via the generic blog signup program would also get added to the Blog Signup Engagement program.
Yes, this solves the issue of leads receiving duplicate/similar content but it creates another problem where Blog Signup Engagement program membership is unnecessarily inflated..
Proposed Solution – A Seperate Exclude from Engagement Program Status
This proposed solution revolves around creating a separate Program status that is used exclusively to exclude leads from getting engagement emails. The key is this status would NOT feed into the Program reporting. Having this separate status would make reporting more accurate while also excluding leads from receiving nurturing engagement emails. It also simplies how to accomplish this goal.
Under this scenario, the engagement engine would skip the content if A) the lead is a member of the program or B) the lead has Exclude from Engagement Program membership.
See below for a few examples.
Other features to consider include: Smartlist Filter, exclusion reporting (if needed).
Other features to consider include: Smartlist Filter, exclusion reporting (if needed).
Other Resources/Related Ideas
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