How would I exclude members of a program from being added to all other programs in my instance?

[Tricia_McLella1]

Hello community!

I have a program with members I wish to not ever be added to any other program other than the one they are members of. How can I do this?

[Michael_Florin · Accepted solution]

There is no global or systematic way to achieve that. People can always become members of programs unless you explicitly prevent it from happening by an exclusion or status changing Smart Campaign.

For example: If a person submits a form that is on a landing page in a program, they will become member of that program. That is just intrinsic Marketo behavior. The only way to prevent that from happening would be a Smart Campaign that removes them from this program if they are a member of your one exclusion program.

I also don't see a workaround. Putting those program members on a list or turn a specific field value to TRUE to for them, would not systematically exclude them becoming a program member.

So probably the best way to approach this would be to ask: What do you want to achieve with this program exclusion? Why are they not allowed to enter any other program? Program Membership in and of itself doesn't do a lot.

[Tricia_McLella1]

Thank you Michael - I was afraid that would be the answer. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

Agreed with Michael. We need to step back and hear the detailed business requirements that led you down this path. It’s extraordinarily uncommon that you’d want people to only be in one Program, ever.

[Tricia_McLella1]

Hi Sanford,

Thank you for your reply.  I've been racking my brain to come up with a solution and anything that *may* work would be very manual and since we have internal and external users, any approach would be difficult to execute - such as placing a condition in every single smart campaign to exclude members of one specific program (and I am not sure that would even work, much less be almost impossible to manage.)

Thanks again!