Beware of the inability to select the email asset in smart campaigns of the new Email Program

[Dan_Stevens_]

Last week, I came across an issue that prevented me from creating any smart campaigns within an email program and selecting the actual email as part of any smart lists.  Specifically, when A/B testing is configured. 

For example, we've modified the Email Send channel to include additional progression statuses for us to track (open, clicks).  We then create individual smart campaigns to move leads into the appropriate status so they can be viewed in the Members tab.  We also typically create a separate smart campaign to send out a test to a common seed list internally prior to activating the program.  If A/B testing has been setup prior to doing any of this, you will NOT be able to select your email within any smart list of a smart campaign. 

I contacted Support about this, and they assured me this was intended behavior and that if this didn't fit our business needs, to submit a new Idea to the community for consideration for future enhancments.  I wanted to alert others in case they run into this same issue.

[Edward_Masson]

This is similar to what I found when trying to run an email performance report on those A/B emails as they wont display in that report, only non A/B emails in an Email Program....

https://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000PjgSAAS

[Dan_Stevens_]

I would have been fine if Support came back and said this was a bug that they would look into.  But why is this "intended behavior"?  For what benefit?

[Dan_Stevens_]

To provide an update here, I thought I could overcome this until this gets "fixed" by removing the A/B test, define my smart campaigns and then re-apply the A/B test.  Even though my email showed up again in the smart lists, as soon as I re-applied the A/B test, the email became invalid.  Since I didn't realize this until now (after the program had already executed earlier today), none of my smart campaigns triggered properly.  Looking back at the available options in the "email" drop-down, the only entry that appeared to be an asset in this program was called "Subject Line Test".

[Anonymous]

I experienced this exact same issue recently after launching an email program and none of the smart campaigns updated people to the appropriate statuses we defined in the various flow steps. Marketo Support said it's because you must select the [Program Name].Subject Line Test email when setting up the smart campaign. 

That's well and good, except it was a NIGHTMARE to actually do. The "subject line test" email option wouldn't show up in my smart list dropdown unless the program had been approved (which seemed a little odd to me). But then, when I finally was able to select that email name, it wouldn't let me activate the smart campaigns! I kept getting an error that I could not activate a campaign with errors in the smart list.

In order to get the smart campaigns to work as intended and still do the A/B test, I ultimately had to do the following (in this order):
1. Set up and activate my smart campaigns to update program statuses, etc., selecting the ORIGINAL email name in my smart lists
2. Set up, schedule and approve my A/B test
3. Go back to each smart campaign - LEAVING THEM ACTIVATED - and change the email selection to [Program Name].Subject Line Test

The whole process seemed very backwards to me since I essentially had to approve an incomplete program to even have the ability to select the email name that will actually move people through my smart campaigns. It did work, however, and everyone in the program moved through the smart campaign flow steps appropriately. It's hard to believe that's Marketo's "intended behavior" though...