Increase drip email efficiency

[Steve_Maslowsky]

Many of the firms we sell to have strict settings in place to block mass emails, so to improve our likelihood of reaching the inbox, we'd like to drip our marketing emails to groups of 10-15 recipients. 

My full list is around 2500 prospects, so this strategy will require approximately 200-250 email sends. 

My current proposed approach is to create a smart campaign that will use the random sample feature to trigger leads to be added from a list to an engagement program stream, where they'll receive the drip email. I'd set that smart campaign to recur daily. 

Does anyone have experience with something similar, and have any recommendations for how to more efficiently accomplish something like this? Is there a way to set up an email to drip out to a random sampling several times per day? 

My current proposal will either take months to send a single email, or require me to have numerous engagement programs operating simultaneously. 

[Josh_Pickles]

Hi Steve,

Interesting problem.

To the best of my knowledge, Marketo doesn't have a throttling function so we have to work out how to mimic this through the use of Smart Campaigns within Marketo.

I can't think of an easy way to manage this other than a tidy version of what you've already proposed with Smart Campaigns. You could quite likely get away with batch sending emails every 15-30 minutes if you were using random sample - while entirely possible, it's not likely you'll end up with 10-15 email addresses of the same domain triggering within the same batch. This will at least shorten your deployment time down to a day or two.

I'd suggest reaching out to Marketo - you're likely not the only customer they've had where this is a requirement and they may have a more appropriate solution that doesn't rely on stupidly long Smart Campaigns with multiple wait and remove from flow stages.

[Tracey_Bartz1]

Using a smart campaign to add to an engagement program is probably not going to give you what you want. A stream in an engagement program can be scheduled to cast an email at most once a day. So even if you add people in small batches to the stream say every hour, everyone waits in the stream until cast time to receive the email. Plus using an engagement program to send just one email is not what those programs are built for. 

You're probably better off looking at a default program to do this. You could have multiple smart campaigns set to send at different times with random sample filter. Still will be tedious to build given how small of samples you'll looking at but better than engagement programs. 

[Steve_Maslowsky]

Thank you both for this feedback. I spoke to my Marketo rep and received similar feedback. 

Will look into a default program instead of engagement. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

The idea that waiting 30m makes a diff is a bit of a fallacy.  Any responsible mail admin thinks in terms of email limits per day, not just per minute.

You also haven't told us, as far as I can see, about the cardinality (= unique domains) in this set. This obvs. is critical to determining the max number of sends necessary.

You can use a webhook-compatible service to meter sends per domain per day. You repeatedly call the same batch and have it call the webhook to give the OK to up to N sends per domain.

[Richard_Spurr]

Hi

Here is a way I split a occasional "whole database" mailings.  In this example, to send out slowly over a whole working week.

I split the audience randomly into five daily "D" lists and then 16 "S" batches, this gives me (5 x 16) 80 equal sized batches, using smart campaign 1.

I also split each of the 80 batches in two, to produce 160 batches. With 80 smaller "guaranteed delivery cast first" and 80 larger "remainder cast last" batches.

I use the "D" lists to feed a smart campaign that requests to send out one of the "S" lists every 900 seconds., using smart campaign 2.

But the final trick is I split each "S" batch into two - cast first and cast last.

First sending to only the people that are actively engaging first (opened or clicked an email in the past few months) and then four hours later sending to the remainder, smart campaign 3.

That way I am an certain all my "morning" emails will reach inboxes, even if some of the "afternoon" emails flow info spam or clutter or bounce.

Then if I need to deliver different emails to audiences I then use smart campaign 4.

I built this as a templatized program for easy reuse 

1 Split list 5 x 16 ways

Step 1 - Add to List	Choice 1: If 'Random Sample' is '20' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.D5'
	Choice 2: If 'Random Sample' is '20' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.D4'
	Choice 3: If 'Random Sample' is '20' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.D3'
	Choice 4: If 'Random Sample' is '20' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.D2'
	Default Choice:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.D1'
Step 2 - Add to List	Choice 1: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S16'
	Choice 2: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S15'
	Choice 3: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S14'
	Choice 4: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S13'
	Choice 5: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S12'
	Choice 6: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S11'
	Choice 7: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S10'
	Choice 8: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S09'
	Choice 9: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S08'
	Choice 10: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S07'
	Choice 11: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S06'
	Choice 12: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S05'
	Choice 13: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S04'
	Choice 14: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S03'
	Choice 15: If 'Random Sample' is '6.25' then:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S02'
	Default Choice:
	List Name:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S01'

2 Batch send to just one "D" list per weekday

Step 2 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S01' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 3 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 4 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S02' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 5 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 6 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S03' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 7 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 8 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S04' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 9 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 10 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S05' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 11 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 12 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S06' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 13 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 14 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S07' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 15 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 16 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S08' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 17 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 18 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S09' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 19 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 20 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S10' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 21 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 22 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S11' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 23 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 24 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S12' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 25 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 26 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S13' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 27 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 28 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S14' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 29 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 30 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S15' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 31 - Wait	Duration: '900 seconds'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 32 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.S16' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.03 Prioritise Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --

3 Send to "engaged" people in the morning and the rest in the afternoon

Step 1 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of List' is 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.Cast First' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.04 Deliver Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 2 - Wait	Duration: '4 hours'
	Must End On Day: 'Any Day'
Step 3 - Request Campaign	Choice 1: If 'Member of Smart List' is not 'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.Cast First' then:
	Requested Campaign:  'Weekly Crawl Cast Template.04 Deliver Emails'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --

4 Potential send different emails based on segment/persona/journey etc

Step 2 - Send Email	Choice 1: _____
	(Incomplete choices are ignored)
	Choice 2: _____
	(Incomplete choices are ignored)
	Choice 3: _____
	(Incomplete choices are ignored)
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --