Do new leads get added to engagement program once it has started?

[Anonymous]

Hi

We started an engagement program 2 weeks ago and it has send the first 2 emails.

After the first email was sent, we had a bit of an issue with templates and I had to re-do the emails with a new template (I de-activated email, removed email from stream, unapproved email, re-created email, re-approved,re-added to stream,re-reactivated). What ended up happening, because I did all of this, when the second email was meant to be sent, the first email was sent againn to same people. Last week to make sure only the second email went, I de-activated the first email (was a bit paranoid it would go out) which worked. I have now re-activated the first email and want to make sure of 2 things:

1) New leads will enter the engagement program and receive the first email. I run a batch campaign every Tuesday morning to pull leads into the program.

2) Leads already in engagement program will receive 3rd email and not the second email again.

Any tips/help?

Thanks

[Nicholas_Manojl]

Group 1 leads will also receive Email 1.

Send date - Monday 1st

Email 1: deactivated

Email 2: Activated

Email 3: Activated

New leads into the program will receive email 2. Let's call these people Group 1.

Send date - Monday 8th

Email 1: Activated

Email 2: Activated

Email 3: Activated

New leads into the program will receive email 1 (we'll call these Group 2).

However, Marketo thinks you have re-prioritised your content and will send Group 1 leads Email 1.

Send date - Monday 15th

Email 1: Activated

Email 2: Activated

Email 3: Activated

Group 1 leads will receive email 3. They've already received email 1. Group 2 leads will receive email 2.

You might prefer to set up linear series of campaigns so you can control the order in which they are sent and save your engagement programs for non-time dependent work:

[Anonymous]

Thanks, that helps!

So, to make sure my 'Group 1 Leads' (those who have received Emails 1 and 2) don't get a repeat of email 1 now that's activated, should I simply move 'Email 1' to 'Email 8' for example and my 'email 2' effectively becomes 'email 1'?

[Nicholas_Manojl]

To be honest, that bit confused me. As you described it in your original post, I would have thought they wouldn't receive the same email again, nor would they be at risk of receiving the same email again. The way you described it sounded like you just edited a draft of an existing email and added new content, not that you created a brand new email and added new content.

[Anonymous]

That is the way I should have done it but because I needed a new template, I actually archived the old emails and re-created each email with the new template (exact same content) then approved them and placed them back in the stream and re-activated.

So what happened was, when I went to send the second email 2 weeks ago, the leads received email 1 again. So last week when I was sending email 2, to make sure it was email 2 being sent, I de-activated email 1.

However now that I want new leads to enter the stream, I need to have an 'email 1'. So my thoughts are I just make 'email 2', my new 'email 1' (the content does not have to be received in a specific order) and either delete my original email 1 and create a new email for later on so I still have 10 emails or I put it as email 10 so by the time people get it, it's been 2 and a half months since they would have received it.

Does that make sense?

[Nicholas_Manojl]

Potentially you might want to clone your engagement campaign, and remove the email that you don't want to send. Then you could add people to that engagement campaign (and remove them from your existing campaign), using a smartlist which specifies "Was sent email ...."

Basically you'll be creating a special program just for those people.

[Anonymous]

Seems a bit complicated for me as I am only just starting to use Marketo.

Simple solution - could I just deactivate email 1 again so new leads would start from email 2?

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hey Daniel, it might help to know exactly how the engagement programs function, and then you can relate them to your specific instance. (I'm pretty sure I understand what you did and what you're looking to do, but hopefully this will help.)

At every cast of an EP, the program will look from the top down, and assess for each record, what is the next email to be sent. So, if someone entered 4 weeks ago and has already received emails 1, 2 and 3, then they will receive email 4. If someone entered 2 weeks ago and has already received email 1, then they will receive email 2. Here's where it gets fun: if someone entered 4 weeks ago and has received emails 1, 2 and 3, and you add a new email in slot #1 (regardless of whether you add or replace another email), then at the next cast they will receive your new email 1, not email 4.

EPs are designed to only send the exact same email (identified by a unique ID) to a person one time. So, if the same email resides in 5 different EPs, then a person will only receive it in the first program where they are eligible to receive the email. If you clone the email, or create a new email (even with the exact same content), Marketo can only see that the email with a new ID hasn't been sent to someone yet, so they will send that email when someone is eligible to receive it.

It sounds like what happened in your instance is that you sent email 1, replaced email 1 with a new email 1, and because of the two concepts above, in week 2 everyone was sent the new email 1 again. The good news is that this won't happen again as long as you don't make a similar update. You could deactivate email 1 so that new leads start from email 2, but if everyone you're concerned about has already received email 1 (the exact same email), then regardless of where it is in your stream, it won't be resent.

Hope this helps!