SOLVED
Hi Community,
We are launching a big marketing initiative in two days (yes two days!) and I have been testing using embedded smart campaigns in an Engagement program like crazy.
A few questions have arisen:
- With emails embedded in the Engagement program, is it possible to disable communication limits? For example, with a smart campaign I can uncheck “Block non-operational emails”. Is this possible with an Engagement program? In testing I noticed that anyone who I had previously been sent an email and had reached our communication limits was skipped.
- Related to my question above, it appears that even a cast with a wait step campaign embedded will skip someone who’s exceeded their communication limits for the week. Is this accurate?
This would potentially be an issue because our goal is to try and send as close to equal a number of emails per Engagement stream as possible every 30 days and frequent skipping of a cast could hamper this.
- What is the best way to add more content to an Engagement program? For example, if we were to embed a campaign that includes a combination of wait steps and email sends, would it be best to add any new emails to the bottom of the smart campaign? Or would it be better to create a new smart campaign with fresh emails and wait steps in the default program and then embed that campaign in the Engagement program flow?
If we went the route of embedding a new smart campaign, what would be required to ensure that people will go through this new campaign after they’ve gone through the previous campaign? Would it be best to add a “Request campaign” flow step to the first campaign?
- Can you please confirm that if we embed an email directly in an Engagement program stream and then embed that same email in another stream that a person can only receive it once in the program? A key aspect of our marketing initiative is to have 6 email streams set up wherein a customer will receive 6 emails within each stream over 180 days and at some point can be added to another stream containing the same emails, but in a different arrangement.
It also appears that I can’t embed the same smart campaign twice in a flow as it results in the warning below:
- When embedding smart campaigns that include email sends and wait steps in an Engagement program stream, is it better to not set the Stream Cadence since the smart campaigns need to be run separately anyway? What about when embedding wait step campaigns mixed with embedded emails? In testing the latter after setting a stream cadence, I noticed that if someone hit their communication limits, the wait step cadence will be skipped in addition to any embedded email content.
- If we wanted to pause someone who’s in a smart campaign wherein the flow is a mix of wait steps and email sends and this campaign is embedded within an engagement program, how would this work? Even if we "paused" their engagement cadence, would they still continue to receive the next email in the flow? For example, we want to pause emails to someone who has recently made a purchase. Would simply pausing them in the Engagement stream keep them from getting the remaining emails, or would we have to remove them from the smart campaign flow?
Thank you for any help you can provide!
LK
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
@Guitarrista82 wrote:
Hi Community,
We are launching a big marketing initiative in two days (yes two days!) and I have been testing using embedded smart campaigns in an Engagement program like crazy.
A few questions have arisen:
- With emails embedded in the Engagement program, is it possible to disable communication limits? For example, with a smart campaign I can uncheck “Block non-operational emails”. Is this possible with an Engagement program? In testing I noticed that anyone who I had previously been sent an email and had reached our communication limits was skipped.
Well, Engagement programs are meant for sending marketing, i.e., non-operational emails, and they perform the Marketability and communication limit checks for all the members with the normal cadence before every time the cast is deployed irrespective of the content being added as Default nested programs or email assets. Even if you have the communication limits set to not block non-operational emails when the person reaches their communication limits at the smart campaign level that is used to send the nurture content via the nested default program, Marketo would still not send out the emails. With the Engagement program, if the person has reached their communication limits or isn't marketable, the person would not receive emails from it.
- Related to my question above, it appears that even a cast with a wait step campaign embedded will skip someone who’s exceeded their communication limits for the week. Is this accurate?
This would potentially be an issue because our goal is to try and send as close to equal a number of emails per Engagement stream as possible every 30 days and frequent skipping of a cast could hamper this.
I'd question the need for the Wait step in the send nurture email smart campaign within the nested default program you've used in the engagement program. When a person isn't eligible to be sent nurture email for reasons such as being non-marketable/communication limits reached, they'd not skip the respective content in the next case, Marketo would send them the first un-sent content in the next cast when they become eligible (i.e., marketable/upon communication limits reset). Also, to answer your question, yes, as mentioned above in Q1's response, if a person isn't marketable/has reached communication limits, they'd not be sent emails from the engagement program (they'd be skipped in the cast). EP checks this every time the content is being sent from it.
- What is the best way to add more content to an Engagement program? For example, if we were to embed a campaign that includes a combination of wait steps and email sends, would it be best to add any new emails to the bottom of the smart campaign? Or would it be better to create a new smart campaign with fresh emails and wait steps in the default program and then embed that campaign in the Engagement program flow?
If we went the route of embedding a new smart campaign, what would be required to ensure that people will go through this new campaign after they’ve gone through the previous campaign? Would it be best to add a “Request campaign” flow step to the first campaign?
Well, technically you could add content at any place in the stream. However, the higher-up you add content more likely that people in that engagement program stream during the cast would receive it. Marketo's EP checks for the first un-sent content to stream members at the time of cast. So if you add the new content piece at the top of the stream all the members in that stream would be sent that new piece of content (of course, given that they're marketable, their cadence is un-paused, and haven't reached their communication limits). Conversely, if you add content at the bottom of the stream, members would not be sent that content piece until they've been sent all the other content pieces above it. You don't need any Request Campaign flows to ensure the next in line content is being considered for send by the Enagegment program. EP has built in logic to send the content in the order they're added to the stream.
- Can you please confirm that if we embed an email directly in an Engagement program stream and then embed that same email in another stream that a person can only receive it once in the program? A key aspect of our marketing initiative is to have 6 email streams set up wherein a customer will receive 6 emails within each stream over 180 days and at some point can be added to another stream containing the same emails, but in a different arrangement.
It also appears that I can’t embed the same smart campaign twice in a flow as it results in the warning below:
Yes, even if you have the same content pieces (nested default program/email asset) added in multiple streams of the same engagement program, Marketo would only send it to a person 1x. With the email assets, Marketo would skip sending the content even if the person has been sent the same email previously (from any program/campaign flow). With the nested default program, Marketo would skip sending the content piece if the person is already a member of it (nested default program) or was sent content from it previously. You should check out this experience league product documentation. If you want to resend something, it’s safest to create a new program and smart campaign. Also, to avoid confusion, I'd rather use the engagement program stream and not the flow, as the latter is used in the smart campaign's context. Lastly, yes, you're not able to add the same content piece more than 1x in the single stream of an Engagement program.
- When embedding smart campaigns that include email sends and wait steps in an Engagement program stream, is it better to not set the Stream Cadence since the smart campaigns need to be run separately anyway? What about when embedding wait step campaigns mixed with embedded emails? In testing the latter after setting a stream cadence, I noticed that if someone hit their communication limits, the wait step cadence will be skipped in addition to any embedded email content.
You must set the cadence at the stream level for sending out the content from the engagement program irrespective of what type of content (email assets/nested default program) you're using in the stream. There's no need to schedule the batch campaigns if you are using them in the engagement stream because it will use stream cadence to run the batch campaign flow. There'd be small blue arrow pointing on the smart campaign that's been used in the engagement program for content send indicating that they'd be requested by EP at the time of send. Also, I stil have questions about the need of using wait steps in the send email campaigns within the nested default program. 🙂
- If we wanted to pause someone who’s in a smart campaign wherein the flow is a mix of wait steps and email sends and this campaign is embedded within an engagement program, how would this work? Even if we "paused" their engagement cadence, would they still continue to receive the next email in the flow? For example, we want to pause emails to someone who has recently made a purchase. Would simply pausing them in the Engagement stream keep them from getting the remaining emails, or would we have to remove them from the smart campaign flow?
Pausing people from the enagagement program would only stop them from being sent the content in the next case, any content that was sent in the previous cast, but is held off (due to wait step, etc.) would still go out IMO as the person has already been requested the send nurture campaign while their cadence was un-paused. Using wait steps in the send nurture email campaigns could be confusing (and could be a source of such errorenous sends). In this case, you'd want also want to remove people from the smart campaign's flow along with pausing their nurture cadences so as to ensure that they don't receive email from the camapign which has already been requested in the previous cast but the person is still in the wait step. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that when their cadence is updated back to the Normal state, they'll be sent the next content in the line as to Marketo' EP the previous send content campaign was already requested and sent even though techincally person wasn't sent that email as they were removed from the flow while in the wait step.
All the best with your launch! I hope you find the above insights useful. Let us know if you have any more quesitons. 🙂
@Guitarrista82 wrote:
Hi Community,
We are launching a big marketing initiative in two days (yes two days!) and I have been testing using embedded smart campaigns in an Engagement program like crazy.
A few questions have arisen:
- With emails embedded in the Engagement program, is it possible to disable communication limits? For example, with a smart campaign I can uncheck “Block non-operational emails”. Is this possible with an Engagement program? In testing I noticed that anyone who I had previously been sent an email and had reached our communication limits was skipped.
Well, Engagement programs are meant for sending marketing, i.e., non-operational emails, and they perform the Marketability and communication limit checks for all the members with the normal cadence before every time the cast is deployed irrespective of the content being added as Default nested programs or email assets. Even if you have the communication limits set to not block non-operational emails when the person reaches their communication limits at the smart campaign level that is used to send the nurture content via the nested default program, Marketo would still not send out the emails. With the Engagement program, if the person has reached their communication limits or isn't marketable, the person would not receive emails from it.
- Related to my question above, it appears that even a cast with a wait step campaign embedded will skip someone who’s exceeded their communication limits for the week. Is this accurate?
This would potentially be an issue because our goal is to try and send as close to equal a number of emails per Engagement stream as possible every 30 days and frequent skipping of a cast could hamper this.
I'd question the need for the Wait step in the send nurture email smart campaign within the nested default program you've used in the engagement program. When a person isn't eligible to be sent nurture email for reasons such as being non-marketable/communication limits reached, they'd not skip the respective content in the next case, Marketo would send them the first un-sent content in the next cast when they become eligible (i.e., marketable/upon communication limits reset). Also, to answer your question, yes, as mentioned above in Q1's response, if a person isn't marketable/has reached communication limits, they'd not be sent emails from the engagement program (they'd be skipped in the cast). EP checks this every time the content is being sent from it.
- What is the best way to add more content to an Engagement program? For example, if we were to embed a campaign that includes a combination of wait steps and email sends, would it be best to add any new emails to the bottom of the smart campaign? Or would it be better to create a new smart campaign with fresh emails and wait steps in the default program and then embed that campaign in the Engagement program flow?
If we went the route of embedding a new smart campaign, what would be required to ensure that people will go through this new campaign after they’ve gone through the previous campaign? Would it be best to add a “Request campaign” flow step to the first campaign?
Well, technically you could add content at any place in the stream. However, the higher-up you add content more likely that people in that engagement program stream during the cast would receive it. Marketo's EP checks for the first un-sent content to stream members at the time of cast. So if you add the new content piece at the top of the stream all the members in that stream would be sent that new piece of content (of course, given that they're marketable, their cadence is un-paused, and haven't reached their communication limits). Conversely, if you add content at the bottom of the stream, members would not be sent that content piece until they've been sent all the other content pieces above it. You don't need any Request Campaign flows to ensure the next in line content is being considered for send by the Enagegment program. EP has built in logic to send the content in the order they're added to the stream.
- Can you please confirm that if we embed an email directly in an Engagement program stream and then embed that same email in another stream that a person can only receive it once in the program? A key aspect of our marketing initiative is to have 6 email streams set up wherein a customer will receive 6 emails within each stream over 180 days and at some point can be added to another stream containing the same emails, but in a different arrangement.
It also appears that I can’t embed the same smart campaign twice in a flow as it results in the warning below:
Yes, even if you have the same content pieces (nested default program/email asset) added in multiple streams of the same engagement program, Marketo would only send it to a person 1x. With the email assets, Marketo would skip sending the content even if the person has been sent the same email previously (from any program/campaign flow). With the nested default program, Marketo would skip sending the content piece if the person is already a member of it (nested default program) or was sent content from it previously. You should check out this experience league product documentation. If you want to resend something, it’s safest to create a new program and smart campaign. Also, to avoid confusion, I'd rather use the engagement program stream and not the flow, as the latter is used in the smart campaign's context. Lastly, yes, you're not able to add the same content piece more than 1x in the single stream of an Engagement program.
- When embedding smart campaigns that include email sends and wait steps in an Engagement program stream, is it better to not set the Stream Cadence since the smart campaigns need to be run separately anyway? What about when embedding wait step campaigns mixed with embedded emails? In testing the latter after setting a stream cadence, I noticed that if someone hit their communication limits, the wait step cadence will be skipped in addition to any embedded email content.
You must set the cadence at the stream level for sending out the content from the engagement program irrespective of what type of content (email assets/nested default program) you're using in the stream. There's no need to schedule the batch campaigns if you are using them in the engagement stream because it will use stream cadence to run the batch campaign flow. There'd be small blue arrow pointing on the smart campaign that's been used in the engagement program for content send indicating that they'd be requested by EP at the time of send. Also, I stil have questions about the need of using wait steps in the send email campaigns within the nested default program. 🙂
- If we wanted to pause someone who’s in a smart campaign wherein the flow is a mix of wait steps and email sends and this campaign is embedded within an engagement program, how would this work? Even if we "paused" their engagement cadence, would they still continue to receive the next email in the flow? For example, we want to pause emails to someone who has recently made a purchase. Would simply pausing them in the Engagement stream keep them from getting the remaining emails, or would we have to remove them from the smart campaign flow?
Pausing people from the enagagement program would only stop them from being sent the content in the next case, any content that was sent in the previous cast, but is held off (due to wait step, etc.) would still go out IMO as the person has already been requested the send nurture campaign while their cadence was un-paused. Using wait steps in the send nurture email campaigns could be confusing (and could be a source of such errorenous sends). In this case, you'd want also want to remove people from the smart campaign's flow along with pausing their nurture cadences so as to ensure that they don't receive email from the camapign which has already been requested in the previous cast but the person is still in the wait step. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that when their cadence is updated back to the Normal state, they'll be sent the next content in the line as to Marketo' EP the previous send content campaign was already requested and sent even though techincally person wasn't sent that email as they were removed from the flow while in the wait step.
All the best with your launch! I hope you find the above insights useful. Let us know if you have any more quesitons. 🙂
Thank you so much Darshil! I haven't used EPs for a LONG time so this has been a learning experience for me.
While I definitely agree that using the EP's built-in stream cadence is the best way to go, the marketing team prefers to run more restrictive scheduling, i.e., send the email every 30 days, Mon-Fri AND wait must end at 9 am. This is where the EP's built-in cadence wouldn't work, hence why we're embedding the smart campaigns. But to confirm, do you recommend still setting the EP stream cadence, perhaps to daily, per your comment below?
You must set the cadence at the stream level for sending out the content from the engagement program irrespective of what type of content (email assets/nested default program) you're using in the stream.
And then, regarding your comment below, I did try setting just the stream cadence while using the embedded smart campaigns, and they did show the arrow as you indicated, but the emails were never cast. The smart campaigns were not created in the EP so perhaps that's why they didn't run?
To confirm, if I were to set the stream cadence to Daily and the time to run every day at 9 am, does this mean that this is when the smart campaign would be called and would fire off the flow steps in the campaign?
There's no need to schedule the batch campaigns if you are using them in the engagement stream because it will use stream cadence to run the batch campaign flow. There'd be small blue arrow pointing on the smart campaign that's been used in the engagement program for content send indicating that they'd be requested by EP at the time of send.
I will have more questions, but still working on those.
Thanks,
LK
Thank you for responding to my latest questions!
With regard to your suggestion below, what would this look like in terms of each EP stream? I'm concerned about adding an email directly in each stream because we will want to send them the same emails when they are moved to the next stream and the EP will not allow us to do that. So would we have to set up a smart campaign for each email that includes a flow step to change the EP cadence to paused? The only problem with this is how do we set the criteria in the smart campaign smart list to ensure the right people get each email as this same smart campaign would be added to each of the EP streams?
This is the configuration I'm thinking of (but for all streams):
Each program contains a smart campaign to send each of the 6 emails.
Here's an example of the Smart List for each campaign and the Flow:
Do you see any potential issues with this or would this work?
Will people who received the emails from each of these campaigns in EP Stream 1 be able to receive the same emails from the same campaigns in EP Stream 2?
Thank you again,
LK
Why don't you set the EP stream to run M-F 9 AM, and have a smart campaign that changes the engagement program cadence of people who received content from the EP to the Paused state, adds them to the wait step of 30 days that must end on M-F at a time little before 9 AM, and then changes the cadence back to the Normal state. I believe this should technically enable you to pull the ask of your strategy team.
And then, regarding your comment below, I did try setting just the stream cadence while using the embedded smart campaigns, and they did show the arrow as you indicated, but the emails were never cast. The smart campaigns were not created in the EP so perhaps that's why they didn't run?
I set up another EP test.
I have each email campaign in its own Default program. I embedded each program into two streams and set the stream cadences to run Mon-Fri starting at 2:20pm.
I set up a Wait Steps request campaign, as you recommended, and added the request campaign flow step to each email campaign.
This is how the email campaign appears with the request campaign flow step:
This is how the requested campaign flow appears:
I then added a test contact using the Test Stream option.
Here are the results of this test:
So it immediately sent the email, which is good and then used the Wait Steps request campaign to pause the test account. Then sent the CCL email at 2:20. However, I had set the Wait Steps campaign to pause again, wait 5 minutes and then set to normal:
Would the next step be that the stream cast will run again tomorrow and I will get the next email?
Thank you Darshil! That helps.
Another question...We are at launch point now so this is urgent.
To reiterate, the configuration of my new test is that I have 6 total smart campaigns embedded in a total of 6 EP streams. So each EP stream will contain a different combination of the 6 smart campaigns.
For testing purposes, I am setting the stream cadence to run daily at 5:05 am.
The smart list of each smart campaign will be set up to grab anyone who is in the engagement program (see screenshot below) using the filter Member of Engagement is True - Program is _TEST_Big 6_6.
It will then set the EP cadence to Normal, send an email, and Request a Campaign to pause the member until a certain time frame.
My question is, usually when you set criteria in a smart campaign, you want to make it very narrow. But in this case I want to use the smart campaign in multiple EP streams so I don't want to make it too narrow. Because I am not setting the campaign to run (i.e. scheduling each smart campaign) and instead am "calling" it through the EP stream cadence, should anyone who qualifies for the campaign only receive the email if they are in the specific EP stream cast? And anyone who is not in the cast to receive the email will be skipped?
Thank you,
LK
Hi Darshil!
Thanks so much for your help on everything. I now have yet another complication...
Thankfully, we haven't launched the marketing initiative yet, but are hoping to do so next week.
The complication that I've come across is in coordinating the scheduling times between the Wait Steps campaign and the Engagement Program stream cadence.
In my most recent test, I set the Wait Step to run after 1 day - Any Day - at 12pm MST:
However, I had run the first cast of the email in the EP to run at 4:45pm and set the stream cadence to run every day at 4:45pm.
So what happened is instead of running a day later at 4:45pm, of course, the cast was skipped and didn't run because it was waiting to reach the 4:45 pm time-frame PLUS waiting until 12pm the following day. So everyone remained PAUSED the following day and no one received the email.
A little after 7pm last night, I manually intervened and changed everyone's EP cadence to Normal, changed the EP stream casts to send the next email at 7:15pm, changed the Wait Steps campaign to "Unpause" everyone at 8:00pm and then changed the EP stream casts again to run at 8:15 pm the next day:
Now my concern is that when everyone gets the email tonight at 8:15pm, they'll go into the Wait Steps campaign, which will pause them for 1 day (technically until 8:15pm the next day) but because I added the "wait must end Any Day at 8:00 PM MST" it won't send tomorrow but will wait until the next day at 8:00pm. Does this make sense? So it turns into an unending loop of needing to adjust the EP stream cadences and the Wait Steps times to ensure everyone gets the emails the following day, or which ever day/time we need them to.
In our real-life use case, we actually want to send the next email in each EP cast every 30 days, Mon-Fri at 5pm. So, to avoid this unending loop mentioned above, would it make better sense to set the EP casts to run Mon-Fri at 5:00pm and set the Wait Steps campaign to run every 28 or 29 days (without adding any specific days/times) to Unpause everyone? This way there's no need to coordinate the times between the EP and the Wait Steps campaign?
Or is there another possible solution that would work?
Thank you,
LK
That is helpful, thank you Darshil.
What would you recommend I do in a situation where we want to send out an email on a daily basis? Would the Wait Step be set to pause someone for 22 or 23 hours and then keep the same send time in the Engagement Program as shown below?
Thank you,
LK
Hi @Darshil_Shah,
We launched the engagement program/smart campaign marketing intiative last week and it is going well. The only problem is that we set it up in such a way that when we added new people to the streams, they are going to hit the initial wait step all at the same time instead of in separate groups.
I now see that it wasn't a good idea to add that wait step in the beginning because the stream cadences are set to only run Mon-Fri, so if someone goes through the smart campaign on Saturday and Sunday they won't go into the Initial Wait Step (which pauses them for 29 days) until Monday at 12 pm.
I think I found a solution, which is to add everyone to a Holding Stream, set their cadence to Paused for 29 days and then add them to the other streams.
But I kind of want to delete that wait step in the streams...my only concern, though, is what would happen to everyone who is in that wait step? Would they go on to receive the email in the next cast after the 29 days? Or would they get the email immediately when Monday comes?
Thank you,
Laura
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