Email Program Best Practices and Send Limits

[Grazitti988]

Hi Team,

I have a client who is using Email Programs to send all emails in their instance (Invites, Reminders, Follow-ups) to leverage the Recipient Time Zone functionality. I had a few quick questions:

1. Is it considered best practice to send all emails through an Email Program? What are the benefit or drawbacks of following this practice.

2. Can we override the Email Program send limit?

3. If we set a Smart Campaign limit in the Admin section, will it also impact Email Program send limits?

Could someone please clarify.

Thanks in advance!

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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1. Is it considered best practice to send all emails through an Email Program.

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Not at all!

If I run across an instance that only uses Email Programs — never using the Send Email flow step, let alone Engagement Programs — I assume they don’t actually know what Marketo can do. They’re unlikely to be doing “marketing automation” in a meaningful way, since they cannot be triggering emails nor doing planned nurtures.

But the reasons are too numerous to go over here. Have you read the documentation for the other ways to send using Marketo?

[uditmathur · Accepted solution]

Hi @Grazitti988 ,

I think using only Email program shouldn't make any difference for the instance but as Sanford mentioned this definitely implies your client is only using Marketo as an Email automation tool rather than a Marketing Automation tool.

                          

Can you elaborate what you mean by send limit. As in email program people qualifying for the program depends on the smart list criteria & so you can control whom you want to send the email to.

                     

This applies only to smart campaigns & not to email program send.

[uditmathur · Accepted solution]

Hi @Grazitti988 ,

I think using only Email program shouldn't make any difference for the instance but as Sanford mentioned this definitely implies your client is only using Marketo as an Email automation tool rather than a Marketing Automation tool.

                          

Can you elaborate what you mean by send limit. As in email program people qualifying for the program depends on the smart list criteria & so you can control whom you want to send the email to.

                     

This applies only to smart campaigns & not to email program send.

[Michael_Florin · Accepted solution]

Just to add to @uditmathur's response:

Smart Campaigns have two limits: Communication limit and a "processing limit". The communication limit (x email in x days to one person allowed) are the same for Smart Campaigns and Email Programs. But Email Programs don't have a processing limit. 

And to the question regarding best practices: I don't think there's anything wrong about using Email Programs for your batch sends. If you like the User's Time Zone setting or the Email Program's dashboard, use it. I've seen companies liking these features and I've seen companies liking the options a Smart Campaign send gives you (Flow Step Choices e.g.) much more.

But the main reason to use an Email Program - at least in my opinion - are the A/B testing features. If you don't A/B test, I'd rather not use an Email Program. Not because of cluttering the instance, but because the setup takes a little longer, and - if you nest your Email Program into a Default Program - you get a very long email name, which doesn't look great on reports.

And eventually Sanford is right: Marketing Automation really shines in non-batch-send scenarios.

[Grazitti988]

Thank you @Michael_Florin and @uditmathur for the insights. I really appreciate your help with this.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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1. Is it considered best practice to send all emails through an Email Program.

---

Not at all!

If I run across an instance that only uses Email Programs — never using the Send Email flow step, let alone Engagement Programs — I assume they don’t actually know what Marketo can do. They’re unlikely to be doing “marketing automation” in a meaningful way, since they cannot be triggering emails nor doing planned nurtures.

But the reasons are too numerous to go over here. Have you read the documentation for the other ways to send using Marketo?

[Grazitti988]

Thank you for your reply @SanfordWhiteman.

Just to clarify, they are making use of streams for nurture emails and also sending real-time operational emails (like confirmations) through trigger smart campaigns. For other sends such as invites, reminders, and follow-ups, they’ve been using Email Programs as child programs under event programs and all other programs, mainly to leverage the recipient time zone functionality.

That makes sense, but I feel relying too heavily on Email Programs can clutter the instance and may not align with best practices. Could you share more of your thoughts on the trade-offs here and what you would consider a balanced approach?

Also, if you happen to have insights on the remaining questions, that would be very helpful.