Best way to skip content in engagement program?

[Anonymous]

When using Programs within an engagement program, what is the best way to skip content based on past behavior so content is not consumed twice? Any other pros/cons to consider?

Example

There is a Blog Signup Engagement landing page program in the engagement program with an email that promotes a blog signup. However, if someone has already signed up for the blog through other methods, we want to skip that content.
 

Options

Which one works best?
 

1) The Exclusion Progression Option.
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.
 

Get more details with Ed Unthank’s Summit must-watch Summit preso: 
 

The pro of this model is it’s extremely simple to setup. The challenge is it’s a workaround as related to option #2. Members are added to the local program even though they did something somewhere else. For example, someone who signed up for the blog organically would also get added to the Blog Signup Engagement program. This would inflate program membership reporting. For anyone using this method, how do you deal with this?


 

2) Email Send Suppression.

Using this method, the program’s send campaign would include a suppression list of people who signed up for the blog.

This method also seems pretty straightforward. However, according to this post and others, this method would cause the lead not to receive anything during the cast. So if the blog email was supposed to go out in week two, the engagement program will not automatically go to the next piece of content. The person would have to wait until week 3? Is this limitation still exist? If so, this is a major drawback and is why option 1 becomes the recommended workaround.

Other Resources

https://community.marketo.com/MarketoIdeaDetail?id=08750000000Izy1AAC

[Alex_Stanton1]

Hi Jeff,

I had a similar question and I received a pretty brilliant explanation from Marketo Support:

"Casts of a nurture stream are independent of the success or failure of the campaign inside the cast. So if you have a program in a nurture stream and a lead fails to qualify for the campaign, Marketo will still consider the cast accomplished for that lead and will move them on to the next cast in the stream according to the cast schedule."

That explains why the lead would not receive anything in your scenario 2.

I hope this helps.

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hi Jeff, my understanding of things is if you have programs in your engagement programs, at some point you need to mark that someone is a member of that program in order for them to move onto the next program in the list. Otherwise, in scenario #2, at the time of the cast they will not receive the cast due to the suppression, but at the next cast Marketo just looks for the first program that they are not a member of (which is the same program that they were excluded from the week before), and essentially they're stuck in a never-ending loop of being excluded but not moving to the next program.

This was sort of covered by Phillip at the Summit University day, although they haven't posted any of those tracks for consumption. The fact that at each cast Marketo looks from the top down for the first program that someone is not a member of has been confirmed by Cheryl Chavez.

For all of these reasons, I use the exclusion method that Edward Unthank suggested. For reporting purposes, I don't count people in the exclusion status.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. Looks like the Exclusion method is the way to go.  Just wish you didn't have to add it to the local program's membership.

It's almost like there should be another action called something like: Exclude from Engagement. where someone lives in the Program purely for Engagement stream suppressions. This seperate status would remove the lead from any membership reporting.

[Michelle_Tizian]

Jeff I'm with you on your suggestion, perhaps you should post it as an idea. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Michelle. I just wrote up the idea for an Exclude from Engagement flow step that would populate a special Program status designed specifically to suppress leads from getting certain engagement content.

Idea: Exclude from Engagement flow step
https://community.marketo.com/MarketoIdeaDetail?id=08750000000JvPqAAK