Change Channel of Program with Existing Members

[Brittany_Irwin2]

I set up a program to track leads coming in as a result of a partner promoting our company.  The partner is directing leads to a dedicated Marketo landing page that is only being used by said partner.  I initially set up the program using the web form channel, but have since added "digital referral" as a new channel to our instance.  I would like to change the web form program to a digital referral program, but because the existing web form program already has members I am unable to change the channel of the program.

1. I plan to clone the web form program and change the channel to digital referral on the new program.  Do I need to keep the web form program (the landing page and thank you page currently live in the web form program) in addition to the digital referral program or can I just move the local assets (landing page and thank you page) to the new digital referral program and turn off the campaigns in the web form program?  I was planning on getting turning off and archiving the web form program, but would love another opinion on this.
2. I would like the leads that have come in through the existing web form program to have their acquisition program changed to the new digital referral program.  I was planning on accomplishing this by pulling a list of people with the web form acquisition program and run flow step to change their data value acquisition program to the new digital referral program as well as change their program status to "not in program" for the web form program.  I was planning on changing the acquisition program and changing program status on the list itself by selecting all contacts and utilizing the person actions drop down at the top of the list.  Is this the best way to go about doing this?
3. When updating the acquisition program to the digital referral program, do I need to also change the program status to filled out form?  Or does this happen automatically when the acquisition program is updated?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated   Thanks in advance!

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Brittany,

1. Yep, I would basically do this - I'd clone the assets rather than move them, then turn off the campaigns, archive. This will let you keep all the reporting for the program.
2. I've never attempted this personally, but I don't think this is possible/necessarily a good idea. If you remove them from the original one you will lose reporting data. Check whether you can actually overwrite the acquisition program field (this should have been blocked to updates to ensure it is only written to for the first program). You'd also need to ensure the acquisition date isn't changed as this would make it look like a massive influx this month and skew reporting. Personally, I'd say you're better off leaving them in your existing program.
3. If this is the first program status, then adding them to the program should automatically put them at this status.

Hope that helps!

[Brittany_Irwin2]

Hi Grace,

Thanks for the feedback.  You suggested cloning the assets rather than moving them to keep the reporting for the program; if I were to move the assets, what reporting would I lose?

You also mentioned removing existing members from the original program would result in a loss of reporting data.  Our acquisition program field is NOT blocked from updates from "flow change data value", so I would be able to run a campaign with a flow step to change the acquisition program.  Assuming I am able to figure out how to ensure the acquisition date is not updated when the acquisition program is updated, do you happen to know what other reporting data would be lost? 

Thanks!

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Brittany,

I don't know whether you will lose reporting by moving the assets rather than cloning them - you may, you may not. I more meant that I generally like to archive programs whole so that I can look back and see how it originally existed. I would test this, though, before committing to moving/not moving.

Re: removing people, because this is done by updating the person's program status to not member of program, you'll no longer be able to see any reporting about the success of that program. (see: Remove a Member from an Engagement Program - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation).

Most will strongly recommend having fields like acquisition program blocked to updates after first being filled (there's a few discussions on this, see Marketo Behavior When Changing an Acquisition Program & Blocking field Updates - Deep Dive​). You may wish to consider putting this in place to ensure your acquisition fields remain accurate long term.

Hope that helps clarify.