Engagement Program Sending Same Content Out Twice

[Mikes_Jones]

So I'm kind of stumped right now.

We just had an email from an Engagement Program go out. However, instead of moving onto the next email in the stream, it jumped back to the beginning and sent the first email out again.

I thought Engagement Programs prevented content from being sent out twice? Also, why would the stream jump from the next email back to the top?

The emails are nested under a program, with a smart campaign called "add to engagement" which has a flow to send out the particular email. Is it possible that the smart campaign over-rode the engagement program? Even so, the smart campaign flow is set so each lead can only run through it once.

Just trying to get some help here - super confused and a little worried too, as the first email is an "introductory" email and now it seems like 7,000 plus leads just got sent the intro email again after already being 8 emails deep into our nurture campaign.

[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?

[Mikes_Jones]

Thanks Dan Stevens​ - what do you have in your Smart List?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Just the "member of EP" filter:

[Mikes_Jones]

Dan Stevens​ Thanks.

So in the Flow, the Member Status being changed is for the individual Program and not the Engagement Program, correct?

[Dan_Stevens_]

that's correct - and important to call out.  In fact, we don't even change program status at the EP level since that would be double counting when we run our reports in RCE ("program membership analysis" is our primary report).

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi again Dan,

Instead of waiting 1 day to test the "was delivered", why don't you use a separate trigger campaign with an "email is delivered" trigger (and a member of smart campaign filter if necessary) ?

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

For program simplicity.  We have 1,600+ programs in our instance, so the simpler we can make our program templates, the better.

[Mikes_Jones]

Thanks, still not sure why the email was sent out twice though. I thought engagement programs were built in a way so that the same email can't be sent to a lead more than once.

Additionally, I don't understand why some leads moved from email 8 to 9, while some leads went from email 8 to 1.