Engagement Program Sending Same Content Out Twice

[Dan_Stevens_]

Malik Zafar​ - I think the guidance we're providing you requires some additional clarification.  While it's a good practice to follow what we've said here in terms of program status/membership (especially since the engagement score relies on this for accurate scoring), I did refer back to the EP launch presentation and think it's important to call out two very important points:

If you have an OUTSIDE program (not embedded within the EP) and you add it (specifically the email send campaign) to an engagement program, the following is true:

• Leads who are members of that program, will not run through it again
• If you are not a member of the program, but did receive the email that is sent in that program, the lead will get it again.  I think this is the situation you experienced.

If the program is INSIDE the EP, the following is true:

• If the lead has run through the program, they will not run through it again (even if they are not program members).  So while it's not required, you should still do it for engagement score purposes.

Hope this helps!

[Mikes_Jones]

Thanks for clarifying, and what you said about not being a member and receiving the email makes sense.

What confuses me, however, is that the next email to go out in the cadence was email 8, yet the engagement program instead went back to email 1 instead, which is puzzling. Email 1 is the first email in the cadence, but I was under the impression that leads would continue to receive emails in sequential order.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Did you add email #1 after the EP had already been activated?  This is expected behavior as Marketo will always send the first email in the list, regardless of where a lead might be in the overall stream so that you can add the most important content to the top.  This way, all leads will now receive this email as part of the next cast.

[Mikes_Jones]

Ahh, getting warmer.

So I think what happened is ... I had to mass-remove everyone from the engagement program because of a mixup with program status. I then re-added everyone to the engagement program but deactivated the first 6 programs since most of the leads had already gotten them, and instead had them start with email 7 (where they left off).

After they got email 7, I went back and reactivated the first 6 programs,  under the assumption that since the leads were technically "past" the first 6 programs, they'd continue onto email 8 and so on until they reached the bottom and "exhausted" the stream.

But it looks like instead Marketo resent them the first email because

a) the leads were not members of that program

b) possibly because they were removed and then re-added?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Emails will be sent only once if they are directly inserting them in the streams. Of you insert programs in the stream, this control is done based on program membership.

For the second point are you sure that no one has changed the content order ?

-Greg

[Mikes_Jones]

When you say Program Membership, are you talking about the leads that show up under "results" in the smart campaign (which is nested under a program).

None of the individual programs themselves have any "members" listed.

And yes, the order was not changed.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi again Malik,

No, I am talking about being a member of the PROGRAM, not a member of the smart campaign.

See Dan's screen shot above to see how to make this happens in the smart campaign that send the email.

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

It's also important to use program statuses properly in nested programs within and EP since the engagement score is derived completely differently from when individual emails are used in EPs.  Engagement score is measured simply by taking the number of program members who've achieved success in that program divided by the total number of members.  So if you don't define program membership properly upfront and let's say 3 of the leads reaches a "success" program status, the engagement score will always show 100% since those are the only members in your program. 

[Grégoire_Miche2]

HI Dan,

Fully agreed, but my point was that, if you use a "wait 1 day" in the same smart campaign, you may miss some delivered (although only a few, of course), while with a second, triggered, campaign in your nested program, you are sure that you would capture them, whatever the delay it takes to deliver.

-Greg

[Mikes_Jones]

@Grégoire Michel  would you create multiple trigger campaigns under each program to capture more than one program status?

For example, a smart campaign for:

- sent

- opened

etc