Re: Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

Anonymous
Not applicable

Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

How do you add new members into an email campaign flow to join existing members who are already mid-flow?

Here's the problem I've run into:

I have an email campaign with 3 emails in the flow separated by "Wait Until this date" steps.

Wait Until Date 1

Send Email #1

Wait Until Date 2

Send Email #2

Wait Until Date 3

Send Email #3

On Date 1, I send Email #1 out to 40 campaign members.

The next day, I have 10 new campaign members that I'd like to include when sending out Email #2 on Date 2.

However, when I click "Run Once" for these 10 new members, they start off by receiving Email #1. This even occurs if I hit "Run Once" after Date 1 has already passed since it's a "Wait Until" command.

In order to circumvent this, I tried removing "Wait Until Date 1" and "Send Email #1" from the flow, after it was sent to the original 40 campaign members. I then clicked "Run Once," and the 10 new members successfully joined in at the step "Wait Until Date 2" since the previous 2 steps were removed. HOWEVER, the original 40 campaign members incorrectly received Send Email #3! This is even with the "Wait Until Date 3" step in place to prevent this from happening.

Marketo clearly does not like its flow to be messed with once running; is there another way to add new members into an email campaign, and have them jump right into the flow at the same step as the existing members?

6 REPLIES 6
Dory_Viscoglio
Level 10

Re: Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

Hey Steven, you're touched on a couple of issues here... let's break them down individually:

1. Adding additional people after you've already set a campaign up

When there are multiple emails like this I will typically just set the campaigns up independently of each other, and then schedule them to send on a specific date. This way, you can always capture the people who correctly meet your send criteria at the time of the send. Otherwise, I often find myself having to create "remove from flow" campaigns which basically eliminate the benefits that I was getting from having all of my sends in one campaign anyway. This means that once your date 1 batch sends, people can only be eligible to fall into date 2 and 3 batch sends. After date 2, they'll only be eligible for date 3 batch send.

2. Messing with flow steps while people are in wait steps

This can be a tricky one, and hopefully you only found out about it for your original 40 people.. Anytime someone is in a wait step, after they exit they will immediately go to the next numbered flow step. So, when you had people in step 3 below and you deleted steps 1 and 2, step 6 became step 4. Upon exiting step 3, they went to step 4. That's why the wait until date 3 step was completely ignored -- since it was now step 3, which people had just exited.

1 - Wait until date 1

2 - Send email 1

3 - Wait until date 2

4 - send email 2

5 - Wait until date 3

6 - Send email 3

I hope this clarifies things a little, and will help you with future programs!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

Thank you for the thorough response, Dory! I appreciate you touching on all aspects of my question.

Just to clarify, when you say "just set the campaigns up independently of each other," do you mean to create separate campaigns for each email I send?

I can definitely see how this would ensure I don't encounter the issues I've been having, but I guess I was just curious to know if Marketo could handle such things in a single campaign.

Dory_Viscoglio
Level 10

Re: Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

Yes, I will set each of the emails as its own smart campaign if I want them to go on a specific day and contain anyone eligible on that day. I don't know if there's a great way to set it up in a single campaign using specific send dates, but as I mentioned in my original response, the thing that usually dissuades me from trying to create it is the idea that I will normally need plenty of "remove from flow" options/campaigns if everything is in one smart campaign. Lots of things can change as far as eligibility for a send from one day to the next.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

That makes sense, better safe than sorry. Thank you very much for your quick response and follow-up!

Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

Just to clarify, you can clone the original campaign and have it run for each cohort.

Dory Viscogliosi​, I assume you meant that each email send was to be run as a separate campaign? Or did you just mean clone the main one for each new cohort?

Dory_Viscoglio
Level 10

Re: Adding new campaign members to a flow in progress

Yes Josh Hill​, each email send would be run as a separate campaign on the appropriate date that you'd want them going out. Cloning the main campaign would potentially create similar headaches to what Steven ran into initially, and I guess I don't really see the benefit of it if you have to create multiple campaigns anyway.