How do I handle flow of leads that enter multiple programs?

[Ronn_Burner]

What is the best way to set up a Smart Campaign in this scenario?

Each PRODUCT is its own individual Engagement Program. I’m showing four programs (A, B, C, D) here but this will become 10-15 individual programs.

If a customer subscribes to ONE product today – they will enter the program for that PRODUCT X and receive a product specific email for three consecutive days beginning the following day: Day 1 (Email #1), Day 2 (Email #2) and Day 3 (Email #3). Each PRODUCT has its own identical program.

Here’s where it gets messy: A customer can subscribe to multiple PRODUCTS simultaneously thus entering them into multiple programs. Email #1 is Operational and serves as a confirmation upon a Subscription per product so I’m fine with them receiving multiple emails on the same day confirming their subscription per product.

However, I do not want them to receive multiple Email’s #2 and #3 on the same day.

Also, at any point a customer can subscribe to a new product so it is possible that they can subscribe to a new product every day for 10 days entering them into 10 of these programs. If they exit PRODUCT A (receive all 3 emails) THEN subscribe to PRODUCT B then it is appropriate for them to then go through that Program receiving that product specific 3 email series.

Basically, the goal is for each Customer to only go through a SINGLE program to ensure they are not hit with multiple emails per day.

What’s the best way to do this? Are there hierarchy rules/logic to determine which 3 email series (program) they should receive if they sign up to multiple subscriptions?

Please and Thank you!

Customer signs up for these 4 products simultaneously:

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3

Ind. Programs Email #1 (Sign-Up) Email #2 Email #3

Product A Send

Product B Send (Receive Email #2 & #3 from only 1 Program)

Product C Send

Product D Send

[Floyd_Alvares2]

Hi Ronn,

A very rough idea.

You could use a mixture of Subscriptions (Interest from the customer to hear about specific products) AND "Product Scoring" to measure which product has the highest behavioral activity. You may not be able to compare field within a smart campaign, but you could leverage "Marketo Products and Solutions » Marketo LaunchPoint® " or "FlowBoot - FlowBoost - Etumos " to run some calculations.

Hope this helps

Thanks

Floyd

[Ronn_Burner]

These programs are currently running so as of right now every new subscriber is, in fact, entering all the programs for the products they have subscribed to and therefore receiving the product specific 3 email series. So if they subscribe to 5 products today - which they can do themselves online as well as with Sales Reps on the phone - they will receive the 3-email series for each product (5 emails per day for 3 days = 15 emails in 3 days). Of course I do have global communication limits set at 2 per day that will prevent this from happening but still the idea is to move them through with some logic using a Smart Campaign(s) to scan and direct traffic. And I don't know how I should do that?

[Veronica_Holme4]

Hi Ronn

This is not going to an easy fix, because Marketo doesn't do "priority" well, but the best way I've found to do this is to have a controlling program that acts like an old fashioned "traffic cop" to push people in and out of nurtures. The trick though is you need to understand your rules. Is it the most recent product they've signed for that you want them to receive nurture emails for? Is it the one they're most interested in? (Then you have to go down the product scoring route Floyd mentioned above") Does Sales overrule Marketing? Whatever the rule is, only you can decide it.

Then you set up a centralised default program sitting above your nurtures that controls the flow in and out (and by out you know I mean pause).

So, smart campaigns that check whether somebody is already a member of one of the other 5 nurtures, if so, pause them in that nurture and put them in this one.

If you don't want to go down that road and all you're worried about is people getting nurture emails on the same day, set your cadence for difference days for your nurture. Or use communication limits to handle the volume.

[Ronn_Burner]

Thank you. This is along the lines of what I was thinking but I was hoping there was some clever and simpler Smart Campaign logic I didn't know about that may do the trick. The Rules are easy - we market to current clients only but we do have a custom CRM which creates functionality issues. But the Rules are easy as there is a Product hierarchy (I guess I'll build as such: 1 through 10 with low number taking priority) so upon a new SUBSCRIPTION the highest score value would be applied and they can enter and remain in that program and be paused in the others. We have zero scoring in place now so I can use Person, Behavior or Demographic Score to determine the path - I guess I'll just use Person Score. These seems problematic unless I can force a static score. Hmm. Would it be better to simply keep them in the program for the most recent product they subscribed to?

If you were doing this all from scratch would you approach it differently? Thanks so much!

I also just realized that when I use 'Member of Smart List' filter the "Lifecycle Status" field is not available via the dropdown even though it is a field. Why is that? My head hurts.

[Denise_Greenb12]

Hi Ronn - I wouldn't use an existing scoring field for this. You may want to use them for what they're designed for later. Create a new fields for Product Scoring - e.g.: Product A Score, Product B Score, and so on.

Also - when you say the person "subscribes" - are they literally overtly requesting regular emails about the products? I'd say you should give them what they asked for - but control the frequency with setting up the casts for different days and communication limits. And maybe don't send the emails daily.

Another thought is to analyze how many people subscribe to multiple products - and which ones? Is this an edge case you're controlling for or lots of people. If it's lots of people commonly signing up for information about the same sets of products than perhaps one engagement program per product isn't the best way to go.

Best,

Denise

[Ronn_Burner]

Good catch regarding creating custom scoring fields. I should of thought of that immediately but overlooked it as I was in the weeds turning my brain to mush. Good catch. Thanks!

"Subscribes" literally means a lead signs-up for and purchases a product which is online access to services and software's that would carry a monthly bill. Hence, a subscriber to a service. Our entire database is current clients (Auto Dealerships) we inherit from a larger sister company that acquires them. We then have many products that we try to get them to "add-on" to make their Dealership better and state of the art. Essentially we provide them access to a very sophisticated web based platform where they have the ability to "subscribe" to Apps and other Auto Industry software's.

These are Trigger Campaigns so a lead enters upon signing up for a service (product). We also offer Free trials for each of these so that too would trigger them to enter the nurture. At this point they are treated the same until I get a handle on my plan.

The challenge is there are 50+ products that can be purchased ala carte. I'm simply trying to refine that to the 10-15 larger and higher priority products for these programs that I will prioritize but the truth is it's arbitrary. It's like Nestle trying to prioritze M&M's, Snickers, Almond Joy, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and a Milky Way.

I'm challenged because I typically have dealt with multiple verticals and would build dynamic segmentation engagement programs per product - which was easy and made perfect sense as the verticals are buckets that would never cross such as A. Home B. Auto C. Healthcare... then create the dynamic emails per Vertical and Product A, B, C, D and the leads move through the programs series (something like Welcome / Segmentation / Canceled / Upsell) to ensure 100% of the database is actively in a bucket within the customer journey.

Currently I have a single Vertical (Dealerships) with ala carte products. I have a lot of experience but this is a different set of circumstances I haven't dealt with previously so I'm really trying to figure out how to create and build an entire customer journey that is best suitable for this world. I KNOW!

It is the norm that a new customer would get the new free trial/subscription for 5 products at once. And we typically get about 100 or so people per day.

So I am all ears for any and all ideas! Please and thank you!

[Denise_Greenb12]

If it's the norm that a customer would get the free trial/subscription for 5 products at once, have you considered creating Engagement streams for people with multiple products instead of one track per product?

[Ronn_Burner]

I have but that seemed troublesome as well considering I would need a stream and content for all possible combinations I think. It is ala carte so people can subscribe to any or all products. The combinations of Product 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on are exponential. I just meant that typically a Lead would, in fact, free trial/subscribe to multiple products at once.

[Karyn_Hill]

Perhaps your best bet would be to use snippets? That way you could have one engagement program (or maybe the four groups you already have) and they get one email per day, with the snippets providing the product-specific information as many times in the email as they have categories for. We're currently using this strategy for on-boarding emails for our 22 councils, where we sometimes have people on two or even three councils. There's different information for each council.