Is there anything wrong with having the requirement to become a member of a email program be that they were delivered the email instead of it just being sent?

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Question:

Is there anything wrong with having the requirement to become a member of a email program be that they were delivered the email instead of it just being sent?  After all they are truly a member after the email was delivered, correct?

Background:

Program Status Setup

*Example 1*

Delivered (Member)

Opened

Unsubscribed

Clicked Link (Influenced)

Filled Out Form (Influenced)

Example 2

Sent (Member)

Opened

Unsubscribed

Clicked Link (Influenced)

Filled Out Form (Influenced)

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Nate,

Yes this is correct.

Delivered -> member

Clicked -> success

Nevertheless, please be aware that if you sync the program with an SFDC campaign all members of the Marketo program will also become members of the SFDC campaign. And I have seen cases where users did not like to have so many members in SFDC and would have preferred to see only the successes.

-Greg

[Frank_Breen2]

Marketo best practice would say to do it like that. The setup would be like this:

So only people who had the email delivered would be given the new status compared to the standard of everyone who it was sent to.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

In addition to Frank's point, it is also a best practice to clearly exclude from the target smart lists all the previously unsubscribed, blakc listed and hard bounced. Very often, the discussion about the send vs delivered to become a member is linked to the fact that non-marketable leads are not excluded in the first place, thus creating large differences between the number of sends and the number of delivered.

So you clearly exclude non marketable leads from the target, you may keep all the sends as members and have 2 other steps:

- Delivered

- Bounced

And then use the appropriate smart campaigns to move the leads to these 2 statuses.

-Greg

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hi Greg,

We do not used Bounced as a status.  It that really critical to have?  After all if they bounced they are really not a member of the program right?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Nate,

I do not use bounced as a program member status either. I do not think it is critical, but this is a personal opinion as I really prefer that program statuses only reflect the process of the program itself. But I do use unsubscribe as a status generally, because I want to know overall and at a glance in program reporting  how many leads did unsubscribe because of the sollicitations in the program.

-Greg