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Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

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bjohnson
Level 3

Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

I have a Smart Campaign and I need to add an additional wait step. I actually need to extend the waiting period from two days to 6 days. How can I accomplish this without messing up the flow?

 

Here is the current flow:

 

Send email 1

Wait 2 days

Request campaign: send email 2

 

I need the wait step to change to 6 days, but I'm not sure how to make that happen without interrupting the flow.

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Darshil_Shah1
Level 10 - Community Advisor

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

IMO - if / when there are no people waiting in the campaign wait step, you can simply swap the wait period from 2 days to 6 days, but if there are people waiting in the wait step and you want them to wait for the additional period too along with the new people entering into the flow (like in your case) - you can add an additional 4 days wait flow step right below the existing 2 days wait step - so existing people waiting in the 2 days wait step upon coming out of it enter in to an additional 4 days wait step - leading to a total wait of 6 days.

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9 REPLIES 9
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

Not sure what you mean by “interrupting the flow.“ The people currently in the 2-day Wait will exit after 2 days. Future people who get to that step will Wait 6 days. What do you want to happen to the first group?

bjohnson
Level 3

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

Wait an additional 4 days.

Darshil_Shah1
Level 10 - Community Advisor

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

IMO - if / when there are no people waiting in the campaign wait step, you can simply swap the wait period from 2 days to 6 days, but if there are people waiting in the wait step and you want them to wait for the additional period too along with the new people entering into the flow (like in your case) - you can add an additional 4 days wait flow step right below the existing 2 days wait step - so existing people waiting in the 2 days wait step upon coming out of it enter in to an additional 4 days wait step - leading to a total wait of 6 days.

bjohnson
Level 3

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

@Darshil_Shah1 - I was thinking that if I had a step below the wait step (Request campaign or send email), and I add a wait step before that step, the reordering would mess with the people in the existing flow. Meaning, that they would go through all the steps that they were assigned upon entering the campaign, then go through the additional wait step after that step. Am I making sense, or am I completely wrong in that?

Darshil_Shah1
Level 10 - Community Advisor

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

Well - below is how the wait step functions in Marketo:

1. When a person enters in the wait step - they're stamped with the wait period and the serial # of the next flow step.

2. Upon completion of the wait step - person flows to the next flow step as per the set serial # (doesn't matter if the flow step after the wait step was send email/Request Campaign when the person started off in the wait step - what the flow step is post the completion of wait period at the stamped serial # matters and which is what is executed)

 

Also, Marketo doesn't process/cache all flow steps ahead of time.  It's done sequentially, in real-time.

 

In case you add the flow step before the wait step that can possibly do more harm (at least in your case). Read this article FYR.

 

I hope this makes sense.

 

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

I’d say the only reason to not add the second Wait of 4 days in addition to the existing 2 days is because it’ll look strange later.

 

That is, if you don’t consolidate carefully, then 6 months later you’ll wonder why it looks that way, mash them into one step, and not realize the side effects on people already in the flow — so you may just be putting off that moment.

 

So you may want to clone the campaign and activate a new one instead, so you don’t have this (mild) accident waiting to happen later.

Darshil_Shah1
Level 10 - Community Advisor

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

Agreed - this is something you definitely wanna consider.

If this is the trigger campaign - you can clone this campaign, update the wait step (new campaign can have a single 6 days wait step and old campaign can have the two wait steps - 2 days and 4 days) , and phase from the old campaign to new campaign (deactivate the existing campaign and activate the new campaign at same time) - people already in the older trigger campaign's wait step would progress through the steps (i.e., 2 + 4 days of wait step followed by rest of the flow steps) as usual, deactivating the trigger campaign would simply stop this campaign from any new acquisitions.

 

Else if this is a batch campaign, you can update the flow to have the second wait step of 4 days right below the 2 days wait step so that people in already in flow go through a total of 6 days wait step, and when there's no-one in the campaign's flow/wait steps - you can simply update the original wait step from 2 days to 6 days and remove the second wait step - alternatively, in-case of the scheduled batch campaign you can clone existing campaign, update the wait step to 6 days and switch to the new campaign (schedule the new campaign appropriately and stop the campaign recurrence for the existing old campaign), again people already in the wait step of existing campaign would continue to progress through the campaign's flow (2 + 4 days wait step followed by rest of the campaign flow step).

bjohnson
Level 3

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

@Darshil_Shah1 @SanfordWhiteman Thank you both for your help in this! Much appreciated. I'm switching most of my new campaigns from Engagement programs to Smart Campaigns for the flexibility they offer. And being a newish Marketo user (since August), I'm still having these little hiccups happen and I'm learning along the way! So I'm definitely relying on this handy Marketo forum. 🙂

 

Thank you again!!

Darshil_Shah1
Level 10 - Community Advisor

Re: Adding additional wait step to smart campaign

Sure - happy to help!