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

[Karyn_Hill]

Hi Ronn Burner​! How is this going for you? Have you gotten a solution?

[Ronn_Burner]

Hi Karyn! Thank you for following up. I meant to let you know I haven't forgotten about this and I promise to respond with my progress and a solution. I have some custom CRM issues to work out first which is really the bane of my existence. Once I'm able to get the data and fields pushed to Marketo to use the custom objects with all possible attributions as constraints I'll have more flexible logic to use in the dynamic segmentation and/or snippets.

I think simplifying the logic and utilizing snippets as you suggested is very likely. I also think it may just make more sense to welcome all new subscriptions with the product confirmation email they just subscribed to and driving them to a "Learn More" landing page with the product specific instructions and videos - with cross-promotion access from there. Then re-batch and put all clients in Upsell 3-email program series 60 days after most recent subscription (remember the first 30 days are a free trial - so 30 days after that).

[Karyn_Hill]

The way we've forced our current CRM (MSD) to bend to the weird way we do business has caused many headaches for us wherever it has to integrate with anything else. We're just about to move from MSD to Fonteva (Salesforce with a skin) and, to a greater degree than we have before, are de-customizing our way of doing things to better match the way it natively handles things. Not everything, but hopefully enough that we'll have far fewer headaches.

Now if I can just convince people to segment people in a more useful way, we'll be doing a lot better!

Good luck with untangling the mess you've been handed. I've seen a little more of what you're going through and I don't envy you the headaches you're working through!

[Gunjan_Batra1]

First of all you need a list of priority for these products. In case someone is interested in all 4 products, in what sequence should they receive these email.

Use engagement programs for these products. Create operational campaigns to pause and unpause people based of the priority of product. These can run everyday. (Sequence will be super imp)

Operational email can sit outside nurture since you want everyone to receive it.

[Ronn_Burner]

Thanks for responding Gunjan! Conceptually I understand this. Just trying to work it out in my head regarding the number of operational smart campaigns and filter logic. Would you make a Smart Campaign per product such as this to determine priority?

[Jay_Jiang]

Reading your requirements, the problem you're facing is queuing, with logic, the next comm or set of comms. It _probably_ could be done in Marketo, but the downside would be too many smart campaigns and too many choices in smart campaigns. I've previously set up a nurture where I've outsourced the logic to a php webhook that calculates the next comm and what date the comm should be sent (simplified explanation here). You could apply that idea to what you're trying to do here.

If you want to use webhooks, you'll need access to a server and someone who can code the logic OR if you have a salesforce dev, they may be able to set it up with some apex coding.

[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.

[Ronn_Burner]

This may work but I'm not sure how to go about it. We're essentially like DirecTV in that a customer can just go online and pick their channels ala carte and then receive a monthly bill. So Email #2 and #3 would need to contain content about any remaining channels they did not or have not yet sign-up for. I wouldn't even know how to go about that because with even only 5 channels (products) there are 31 possible combination.

[Karyn_Hill]

Yes, that would certainly get complicated quickly. You'd need to have a snippet for each option, and then in the email, specify to pull products the person is subscribed to in one section, and then products they're not subscribed to in another. It can be done but it would take time and careful planning. I don't know that it will be a better option than what you're working on there. But it would be a way to handle it all in one email, rather than sending them multiples and needing to suspend them.

[Ronn_Burner]

Agreed. Thank you! I didn't realize I was this stupid. One problem I'm having is I'm not 100% sure of A. What the Dynamic Segmentation(s) should be and how many different ones I'll need. B. the Number of Programs needed (In my mind one Nurture program per Product) and C. How each content block get populated with the appropriate snippet.

Correct me if I'm wrong - and I probably am - but in order to pull this off I would need to create Dynamic Segmentations for 1. Product Subscription: YES and 2. Product Subscription: NO for all Products. Then use the snippets to populate each email appropriately - but how exactly? Do I need to do these snippets via Velocity (Email Script) tokens - if not, how is it determined per email?

Forgive me. All my previous lives were much simpler: Segmentations based on Verticals that never crossed and Programs based on Products. Done. Clean and easy.

[Karyn_Hill]

You're definitely not stupid! Marketo, like any other non-custom program, is created to be used by the widest number of people. Some of us need to do non-standard things with it, though, so things get sticky.

We have councils and have a custom field on contact records that is populated with a guid that identifies which council they're on. I believe you already have custom fields that let you know which things people are subscribed to. In our emails, we have a sidebar that will pull the corresponding snippet(s) into it. Each snippet has particular information specific to that council. I don't know anything about Velocity script or how one would use it for this situation. I manually create any snippets needed, which thankfully don't change often.

The snippets are assigned to the segments in the Segmentation area inside the snippet editor.

These are the segmentations in the Database section of Marketo.

I'm sure there are people who could help you create the same for your particular situation, which has a much higher number of combinations than mine does, since our people are limited to at most three choices. But this is the set-up, and it does require custom fields on people's records, with values that differentiate them from each other for the segmentation. We'll be changing our membership model considerably by the end of the year so I might end up having the same situation you do, but not sure yet. That decision is well above my pay grade!

I'll gladly try to answer any questions you have, I just might not know enough to answer them correctly. If I don't, I'll let you know. I don't want to give you bad information.

[Ronn_Burner]

Hi Karyn Hill‌! I'm back to this after building all kinds of other worlds out for Canceled Clients and Upsell's. Still struggling to solve the New Clients (subscribers) issue. I've condensed and revised this a bit. I was reluctant to open a new Topic (at this time anyway) since it's specific to this conversation essentially. I think your snippets method might be exactly what I need to do. Maybe not, but I'd like to thoroughly understand it to at least rule it out so I know.

Here is what I'm being told from above that I need to solve for.

Think of our product model as DirecTV. A customer can go online and select (subscribe) to any channel or combination of channels they choose. - So I have 10 ala carte products and a new subscriber signs up to any 1 single product or any number combination up to all 10 products. I only want ONE email to be sent per new subscriber regardless of how many products they subscribed to at one time. Then I will send a 2nd email later. Is it possible - and practical - to acknowledge each product they subscribed to uniquely with a text block and/or image for each AND a different text block promoting the products they did not subscribe to? And if not, what is the best way to handle this type of situation?

I can't figure this out.

So many questions: 1. Segmentation logic 2. Snippets, dynamic emails or unique streams or programs 3. Engagement or Default Programs 4. How to ensure ONLY 1 email regardless of new subscriptions deploys 5. Smart campaign total and goal.

Any thoughts and or advice on how to handle this initial entry via new subscribers would be a life saver. Thank you!