Engagement Program Cadence - making it relative to when someone is added to an engagement program.

[jessicataggart]

I have an engagement program, which has two streams. In one stream i want to send people an email every 3 months, and in another i want to send people an email every 6 months, however i want people to enter each stream monthly and then the wait time is respective to them receiving the first email. Looking at the program cadence it looks like what I set for one i set for all, so it i set the cadence to 6 months, people will only receive the first email every 6 months, based on a specific date, rather than them being added. Is there a way to achieve what i want without having to build smart campaigns with pauses for every email? I'd prefer that each email is sent at a specific date every month, with the first instance going out monthly, and then the next ones to either be 3 months or 6 months from that first email, but the wait time/pause time is tripping me up.

[uditmathur]

Hi @jessicataggart ,

Engagement programs are designed specifically for lead nurturing & emails in the stream are sent on the designated cadence set irrespective of when the lead is added to the stream.

Taking example of your use case with stream cadence set for every 3 months say 1st mail goes on 6th May & the second goes on 6th three months after.

Now, all leads added to the stream before 6th may will receive 1st email in the stream. Now the set of leads added in this stream in month of June, July & august before 6th day, they will receive the 1st mail in the stream only on the next cast i.e. 6th day of August (may + 3 months) & the leads already in the stream (before 6th may) will receive 2nd email in the stream. 

Hope this Helps 😊

[jessicataggart]

Yes we are using this engagement program for lead nurturing based on form fills from our website, and depending on which information they provide they are then split into two categories based on how closely they fit our criteria. @uditmathur Based on your response i take it the only way to implement what i want within the engagement program is to build smart campaigns to change the cadence to paused for 6 months after someone is sent an email but set the overall cadence to monthly. Is that correct?

[uditmathur]

Hi @jessicataggart ,

If I have understood your requirement correctly, what I mean to say is create 2 stream - 3month stream & 6month stream.

Cadence for 3month stream - 6th day every 3 months. 1st cast to be on 6th May, so 2nd cast will be on 6th August( 3 months after 1st cast) & 3rd cast on 6th November & so on ..
Cadence for 6month stream - 7th day every 6 months. 1st cast to be on 7th May.

Consider e.g. 3month stream - stream has 3 emails (all active).

10 leads are added on 5th May, as the next cast after the leads have been added is on 6th may these 10 leads will receive email 1 on 6th May.
Now another 10 leads are added in June (as you mentioned leads will be added every month), another 10 in July & another 3 in august (before 6th) . So now total lead in 3month stream is 33.

2nd Cast is on 6th August, so on 2nd cast 10 leads added in may will receive email 2, while 23 leads added in (June, July, august) will receive email 1.

So any all leads in the stream will automatically be sent mails every 3 months after they receive 1st email.

Same will be the case with 6month stream as well.

Hope this helps 😊

[jessicataggart]

Hi @uditmathur, yes i already have them set up as two different streams in the engagement program, but what i am after is if 10 people enter my 3 month stream and are sent the first email in July, they would then receive the next email in October, but what i want is for the people that enter the stream between July and August, that the first email then be sent in August and then the next email to be sent in November. So there is a 3 month cadence between emails, but it is relative to that first email being sent. Is the only way to set it up to have a smart campaign to pause them after each email is sent and set the cadence to be monthly in the engagement program?

[Darshil_Shah1]

@jessicataggart, you have 2 options here:

1. Build nurture using Marketo Engagement program and have a campaign that Paused people to acheive the variable cadence scenario -- you can't have variable (or relative-ish) cadence in a stream based on the entry date.
2. Build custom nurture using Default program and apt wait step between sends (e.g., 3/6 months, etc.)

Pls let us know if you have questions. Happy to elaborate on either/both of the above options if needed. 🙂

[uditmathur]

Hi @jessicataggart ,

Seems you are trying to achieve variable cadence in the stream.

You can read through this article to have a brief on achieving your use case.

Let me know if this works as required.