Engagement Program Content and Skipping Programs

[Rachel_Noble]

I'm setting up a new engagement program with child programs instead of emails as the base. One of the sub-programs contains an email about Product A. I want to exclude anyone who has purchased Product A within the past 7 days (we have a date field Last Product A Purchase Date). I'm familiar with the way engagement programs handle filters in smart campaigns and we have a system for permanent exclusion rules from specific programs. However in this particular case, I'd like two things to happen for any leads who don't qualify for the Product A when they initially reach that point in the stream:

1. Lead moves on to the next program in the stream so they don't go a week without receiving anything

2. Lead continues down the engagement stream until he/she has gone more than 7 days without purchasing Product A, at which time the next cast of the program would send them through the Product A content program

So if I add the "Last Product A Purchase Date is not in the past 7 days" filter to the smart campaign I drag into my stream, it seems that #1 above will not work, but if I make the leads members of my Product A program ahead of time to exclude them, they won't qualify later for #2 above.

The only solution I've come up with so far is to add the leads to the program when they purchase Product A but then remove them 7 days later after a wait step. I don't really like this idea as it's possible leads will purchase Product A multiple times in the 7 day period and I don't want to mess with that. Do you guys have any better ideas? Thanks!

[Edward_Unthank_ · Accepted solution]

Hey Rachel!

As you know, Exclusions are the way to deal with the skip/don't skip. I haven't personally tried removing persons from the program to see if that would un-skip them, but I think intuitively that would provide the desired effect—at least if you're moving them from "Exclusion" to "Not in Program." This would be harder to achieve if you're trying to move them from "Sent/Delivered/Success" statuses to "Not in Program" because of the added complications of the email cast previously being successful.

If you have a reliable stream cadence (e.g., fires at 8am Monday morning), you could have a scheduled batch campaign in the email cast program which says: "If member of program is this one and status is "Exclusion" AND "not purchased in the last 7 days," then change program status to "Not a Member" for this program. That'd at least address the lead possibly being in a wait step and purchasing a few times between.

Probably what I'd do is make this a sub-segment of the overall Exclusion program by adding to a static list with the reason, so you can have multiple reasons for someone being Exclusion and still run these smart campaigns:

Exclusion (Purchased w/i 7 days): [Triggered]

Smart list: [Whatever your smart list trigger is]

Flow: Change program status to "Exclusion" and add to static list "Exclusion Timeout: Purchased Recently"

Exclusion Removal (Purchased w/i 7 days): [Scheduled weekly a few hours before the email cast]

Smart list: Member of static list "Exclusion Timeout: Purchased Recently" AND "Not purchased within the last 7 days"

Flow: Change program status to "Not a member" and remove from static list "Exclusion TImeout: Purchased Recently."

I think that could be a solution to your problem. I wouldn't do it with a large amount of email casts because it's pretty complicated and can easily be overlooked in the case of a cadence change, but it would work in this situation.

Cheers,

Edward Unthank | Founder, Etumos

[Rachel_Noble]

Thanks Edward!

I went with a similar approach to your suggestion and it helped streamline the process. It's a bit clunky still but I'm a huge believer in documentation and I think we're about to turn the whole thing live on Monday. Thanks for your help!

Rachel