Email Subscription Frequency - How To?

[Anonymous]

I'd like to amp up my subscription center to allow for leads to choose their email frequency. Has anyone else done this? If so, how?

We have about 9 different Nurture Campaigns running right now that have a cadence of every 2 weeks. How would the frequency preference apply to this? i.e. how would I add into the Send campaigns to only send with the frequency desired?

Thanks everyone!

[Ravi_Ansal2]

Hi Sarah Mayer​,

We do have the email communication limit where you can specify daily and weekly limits for your leads.

And if you want to customize it then there are some work-around.

You have to create a smart campaign that will add the lead to a list if a email or two is sent to him.

Then exclude that list from other campaigns and all you have to do is to run another smart campaign to clean that list on daily or weekly bases.

Let me know if it works or if any other help is required.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ravi,

I feel like that would apply to every lead. I only want it to apply to those leads who choose Monthly or Bi Weekly.

[Chris_Willis1 · Accepted solution]

You can certainly create distinct engagement program streams with the different email cadences, and then create a trigger in your Subscription Center program to move a lead from one cadence to the other based on their subscription preferences.

For example:  if data value changed for Subscription Frequency and new value = "Weekly" then

Change engagement program stream where lead is member of engagement program to the stream where casts are sent weekly,

... and then repeat for each different type of cadence. 

[Anonymous]

Simple and to the point. I am going to try it, thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi Chris!

I am working on building out the subscription center, but I've hit a snag. I have 5 different engagement programs running. In my Smart Campaign, I've selected the Smart List to include Data Value Changes (based on my subscription field) but in the Flow step, I know I need to change the Stream, however I need to specify what program and stream.

For example, I needed to be able to say "If member of engagement program 1, change stream to Monthly", however that's not an option under the Change Engagement Stream flow:

How do you suggest I handle this?

[Chris_Willis1]

I'm assuming that you have this Smart Campaign as a child of your Engagement programs (this would make the most sense). 

The way that I've handled it is to use the Data Value Changes as the trigger in my Smart Campaign and then use "Member of Engagement Program" as a filter in the Smart List.  In that way, you can check for membership in the program and the stream they live in.  If you check in the Smart List, then within the flow you have no need for this condition (the downside is that you'll need to have multiple Smart Campaigns set up for your different cadence streams).  I hope this helps.

[Guy_Goldstein6]

Hi Sarah,

What a great question!

This is certainly a challenge that we've run into in every single engagement we've worked on, and it's really good to hear you thinking about your engagement from the customer perspective (if there is a right answer, that's totally it!).

There are a number of options to manage this depending on the interaction between your programs and the way they relate to one another. If the programs are all parallel, the "easy" answer is that in any one engagement program, a lead can only be a part of a single stream and so by managing the transitions between streams you can ensure that each individual is only a part of a single stream at any given time.

More often than not though, these processes combine both parallel and sequential processes and require multiple engagement programs, where an individual lead can (and must) be a member of multiple engagement programs. To approach this, the methodology we use incorporates a nurturing "engine" an overarching set of fields and campaigns which inform the entire system of the lead's relationship to nurturing and it's current nurturing needs. The individual tracks/engagement programs then need to have mechanisms in place so that, based on this information, they become aware of when a need qualifies for that particular stream, and when a lead no longer qualifies (in order to pause the cadence).

It's rather a complex solution to rather a complex problem, but it provides you with the ability to manage the customer journey to a degree that none of the "default" tools can provide. Part of the complexity is that if you build this right, it becomes rather easy to manage, but building it right can be a pain in the @#$!

Hope this helps

-Guy

[Phillip_Wild]

Another possible solution here would be to have each engagement cast a program instead of simply an email asset. So that means that each time the program looks to run, it could have smart list criteria of "email frequency is x", and then it would only send to the relevant leads.

So your first program could use "Email frequency is all" while the second could use "email frequency is weekly", the third could use "email frequency is weekly or bi-weekly", and the fourth "email frequency is weekly." You get the idea.

In this scenario, those leads who are anything other than "weekly" would skip particular pieces of content. If you'd like them to receive it, but simply at a later date, then I'd definitely use Chris Willis​'s approach.

I hope this helps! Like with anything Marketo, there are multiple ways to achieve the goal.

[Anonymous]

Hi Phillip,

Right now my engagement programs consist of Email Programs, not Email Assets. However, from what you're saying it sounds like I'd have to clone each email program for each frequency?