Engagement program - questions and in need for tips

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone 🙂

We've begun to look at the engagement program but have some questions and would also like to have some tips about what would be a "best" way to work with it. We are going to work with early, middle and late stage nurturing.

Some questions:
1. In the program I can drag and drop emails from other programs. If someone in nurturing gets the email originating from another program - what will happen? Will they be members of that other program as well and go through all the flows and steps in that?

2. When creating new content specific to the engagement program - what's a good way to do it? To make nested programs for each email/form/lp-combo or just create separate folders per "campaign type" and store all relevant content in there?

3. When using nested programs, how does mkto know what email to send first (assuming there are more than one in the program)? Or have I gotten it wrong - you don't drag and drop the whole program but only the first email to be sent?

4. How are you using the engagement program? Noticed any pros or cons that would be good to know?

Looking forward to your answers!

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi Erica,

1. Yes, they will become members of the other program and go through whatever steps you also defined in that Program. The Program's emails and flows run independently of the Engagement, meaning the lead will get the next Engagement Cast as well as any Program emails.

2. You can do either depending on your needs.

3. See #1

4. Testing isn't so great because you can't run it on a compressed time schedule without changing the cadences. Think about Engagement vs. Drip
http://www.slideshare.net/jdavidhill/marketo-engagements-and-drip-nurturing-boston-user-group-dec-10-2013

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hi Erica,

As far as your first question, it depends if you just use the email from another program, or if you're dropping the campaign into the stream. If it's just the email, then that's all they'll receive. If it's the campaign, then as long as they meet the smart list criteria, the whole campaign will occur.

For content, I would do a little bit of both things that you've described... One of the great things about engagement programs is that they're smart enough to not send the same exact email to a person more than once. But if you clone an email into multiple programs (even if you don't make any changes to the email, it's now a separate email), then there's the chance that they could receive an email that looks the same as another that they've previously received. For this reason, I like to keep any nurture emails as global assets in the Design Studio, so that we always reference the correct email. If you want to track the forms/landing pages for performance and then follow up for filling out the form, this would be where I'd have separate programs (most likely built outside of the engagement stream, but could depend on your setup).

When using nested programs, you're essentially saying that two things could run concurrently... An example of this might be a webinar campaign within an engagement stream. So if you have a program with an email in 2 weeks that someone has qualified for within your stream, as well as weekly emails, they could receive both emails. You can adjust communication limits in your admin section and also within each smart campaign -- although be careful with something like a webinar, you wouldn't want someone who had registered for a webinar to miss a follow up email because you limited communications.

We're using them for nurture right now, on a pretty basic level. Mostly to re-engage, and accelerate people through and into our sales cycle. Just this week I tried to set up an onboarding campaign, but found that we had too much crazy logic going on, so I eventually went back to standard programs and smart campaigns. I see value in both types of programs.... but for standard nurturing, engagement programs are great!

Hope this helps, let me know if you have additional questions!

[Anonymous]

Thank you both for your answers! Seems like I have managed to miss all the basics regarding the necessity for nested programs during my research...

@Dory - Just to double check: If I have a program that is set to ignore the communication limit (why is that set as default btw?!), that would still be the case when it is in the engagement program where the comm limit is always active? The nested program settings would override the settings of the engagement program?
I assume Operational emails will still be sent no matter what?

In regards to the comment about tracking LP performance:
If I were to create an engagement program with emails and LPs and filled out form-triggers just as if it were a regular program - that would not work? The engagement program does not recognize the existense of any content and smart campaigns that are not placed inside a stream? (even though it is actually created in the engagement program)

[Dory_Viscoglio]

If the program is set to ignore the communication limit, then I'm almost certain that will override the enagagement communication limit. Operational emails will never count towards the limit.

When you drag a program into a stream, you are prompted to choose which smart campaign you're selecting -- the LPs don't actually fall into the stream... So you could have a campaign within the stream to listen for the form to be filled out on a specific page, but the page would reside outside of the stream.

[Anonymous]

Hi yall, In a similar boat here. Dory - how do you know which smart campaign to choose when you drop a program into an engagement stream?

Also, if the engagement program is my main method for sending the content, what would I choose for schedule in the smart campaign?

Presently all of my programs live outside of the engagement programs. Not sure if that matters. It feels like a best practice to me since 1 program might apply to 2 engagement programs.  (Ex my engagements are defined in part by job function but some whitepapers are relevant to a few different job functions.)

[Anonymous]

Have done a little testing today and thought of another question:

It is possible to change streams by using the transition rules in each stream, but also by flow step in a smart campaign. So lets say I have set upp all the transition rules leading leads from stream 1 to 2 to 3. I then add a smart campaign triggerd by the same action as the transition rule moving leads from stream 1 to stream 2. But in this smart campaign the "change engagement program stream" flow step leads them to stream 3 instead.
What would happen? Would the leads be moved to stream 2 or 3?

[Anonymous]

Cheryl,
I actually found out the answer to your question. You can oly add batched campaigns, so it works exactly like any other program (at least we always build them with only one batched and then any number of triggered needed). I think that would mean that when cadance hits it's the same as if you schedueled the campaign to "run now". Not sure cause I havn't tested yet, but it should work like that.