Does Stream 1 of an engagement program need transition rules if I want to send it to members of a smart list?

[megweber221]

Does Stream 1 of an engagement program need transition rules if I want to send it to members of a smart list?

From my research, I think the answer is no, but posing the question here just in case. From what I have read and seen on Marketo, transition rules in a stream of an engagement program need a "trigger", and "Member of Smart List" is not a trigger. So, I set up a SEPARATE smart campaign with these rules:

Smart List: Member of Smart List = Name of Smart List

Flow: Add to Engagement Program; Stream: Stream 1

I want members to move to Stream 2 if they click a certain link in the email in Stream 1, so I added the trigger "Clicked Link in Email" and flow step "Change Engagement Program Stream to Stream 2" to the transition rules for Stream 2. 

Please let me know if all of this is correct. Thank you!

[Darshil_Shah1]

@megweber221, you'd still need a campaign/transition rule to add people to the Engagement program, right? You'd need a batch campaign since you're referencing non-trigger-based criteria to add people to the EP. Marketo, by default, adds people to stream 1 of the EP if no stream is mentioned outright—e.g., if you add a person who's not in an Engagement program as its member using a Change Program Status flow step—then Marketo would add the person to the stream 1 (since the "Change Program Status" flow step doesn't specify the stream to which the person needs to be added). 

However, the "Add to Engagement Program" flow step requires you to mention the stream, so you'd need to select the correct stream (stream 1 in the 1st campaign's case) to add people who're member of your nurture smart list to the Engagement program. To improve efficiency, you can also directly add the filters used in your nurture smart list in the campaign's SL instead of nesting SL.

Also, just FYI clicks are not the most reliable engagement activity, as they could be generated by bots—especially if your instance does not have the bot filtering feature enabled.