Creating a SIMPLE Drip Campaign in Marketo

[Greg_Jackman]

We're looking to create just a simple, basic drip/nurture campaign in Marketo without any special customization. This is the first one we've done. Can anyone tell me of their experience? Right now, our drip campaign consists of 5 emails. 1st email includes 3 links: 1 goes to a landing page/form. The other 2 are for 2 pieces of downloadable content. If they click on either piece of content, they're sent a 2nd email with 2 more pieces of content. If they click through one of those pieces, we then consider that lead a hot lead and send to our Rep to call. Anyone ever do anything similar to that? Can anyone think of a way to make it simpler? We want to avoid making it complicated to set up in Marketo, especially since it's our first one.

[Josh_Hill13]

Honestly, you've already made it too complicated!

Please see Marketo Engagements and Drip Nurturing - Boston User Group Dec 10 2013

for some help.

• Thoughts
  • one call to action for each email.
  • one send for first email
  • second campaign is setup to say "if Clicked Link in Email 1, then send Email 2."
  • third campaign is trigger for if Clicks Link in Email 2, then send to Rep (exclude the unsub link)

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Greg,

It is not that complicated to set up.

• You will have to have a 1st Smart campaign that sends the first email. This will be a batch of trigger campaign depending on how you want the leads to enter it.
• Then, you will have a second smart campaign, which will be a triggered campaign, with a "clicks link in email" trigger to detect the click on the 2 downloadable . This smart campaign will send the second email.
• Finally, you will need a third smart campaign, triggered, with a "clicks link in email" trigger, that monitors the clicks on the links to the second set of content and assigns the lead to the sales rep.

Now, from your writing, I do not understand where are the 5 emails

-Greg

[Colin_Mann]

The replies from Josh Hill and Grégoire Michel are from super qualified people so I am just adding an opinion as a mere mortal but we have used a couple of techniques.

We’ve used an engagement program but kept them really simple and used them to schedule emails (email 1, 2, 3 etc.) driving people to landing pages with a free or gated download.

Within these we’ve used smart campaigns to change the status once an email is sent, opened, clicked, unsubscribes, and to track downloads and clicks. These are trigger based actions. With downloads and clicks we use the smart campaigns to add add them to the SFDC campaign or to add valuable information such as Person Notes in SFDC.

I agree with using a single call to action (other than adding a contact link or social links too - even a contact link isn't always necessary depending on the landing page).

Engagement programs are more powerful than this so it’s like using a Ferarri for a drive to the shops to buy bread but it’s simple and it works. I also like the good visibility and control they offer over aspects such as scheduling.

The other approach we have used is to use smart campaigns to trigger activities in the same way that Grégoire Michel describes.

Whatever you do you will need some smart campaigns as triggers in my experience.

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi Colin, thanks for the mention.

Engagements are useful if you have lots of content or plan to add content or change it in the future AND you want a regular cadence.

Irregular cadences are best left to the old drip+wait step campaigns. Not that you can't move leads between Streams with different cadences, but that the cadence has to be Once or twice a week, not Send in 1 hour, then 2 days, then 5 days.

[Colin_Mann]

Agreed - we use triggered campaigns and wait steps for activities such as when we upload content syndication leads and just want one email to be issued immediately and then engagement for campaigns with regular, scheduled emails 1-3 weeks apart (for example).