Need help with flow for email campaign

[Danielle_Solomo]

I have an email campaign that goes out on Thursday. I want the three subsequent touches to go out one week after that, also on Thursday. Currently, it seems that the way my flow is set up, they go out Friday. What should the wait step be so that it goes out on the following Thursday? Should it be wait one week, must end on Thursday? Please let me know!

[Tracey_Bartz1]

I think the reason your subsequent touches are going out on Friday is because you've added the "wait must end on" logic and you are forgetting to account for processing time and/or time of entry.

Do you have this setup as a batch campaign or a trigger campaign? 

Let's assume that this is a batch campaign.

If you schedule the campaign to run Thursday's at 10:00 am that means people are going to enter your flow for the first time on Thursday at 10:00 am and then the first flow step would process (I'm assuming this is send email 1). That flow step may not finish processing everyone at 10:00 am exactly. It might take a couple minutes to actually send out the emails. (You can check the time stamps on the results tab of your smart campaign to confirm.) Let's assume that the email actually sends to a person at 10:01. Then your wait starts for that person. Under your current setup the one week wait is going to end for that person at 10:01 am the following Thursday. That means it has already missed 10:00 am so the wait continues until the following day at 10:00 am. Now if you were to remove the "wait until" requirement and just wait 1 week that means each person would move to flow step 3 (send email 2) at 10:01 am on Thursday. 

The scenario would change a bit if this is a trigger campaign because you will have people entering at different points in time.

With a trigger, you have two potential setups:

Option 1: You want the person to receive their first email Thursday at 10:00 am and then all emails after that Thursday at 10:00 am. You would use the same setup as the batch campaign above but would add a wait as the first flow step and make it very short (1 minute) and wait must end Thursday at 10:00 am.

Option 2: You want the person to receive their first email immediately and then all emails after that Thursday at 10:00 am. Here, send email would be the first flow step followed by a short wait (say 24 hours) and wait must end Thursday at 10:00 am. After the second send email you would use wait step of 1 week.

In this setup, let's assume Person A enters the flow on Tuesday at 9:00 am. They would receive email 1 at approx. 9:00 Tuesday, then email 2 Thursday at approx. 10:00 am and then all subsequent emails on Thursdays. 

If Person B enters the flow on Thursday at 9:00 am they would get email Thursday at 9:00 am and then wait until the following Thursday at 10:00 am to get email 2. 

[Danielle_Solomo]

Tracey Bartz, thank you so much for your quick reply! This is a batch campaign. I understand what you're saying on why people are carrying over into Friday, but can you please clarify what I should make the wait step?

Here is an example of when I would want the campaigns to go out: 2/6, 2/13, 2/20, 2/27

[Oz_Platero]

Hello Danielle Solomon‌,

I think you will find this article written by Sandy helpful to help do math in flow steps a bit more precise. 

https://nation.marketo.com/community/product_and_support/blog/2019/07/02/simulating-wait-step-choice... 

Given your setup is a batch you will only need to modify this slightly.

To answer your question with regard to why it goes out 8 days later.

• First wait step ends 11am Feb 6th. 
• The next wait step ends + 7 days at 10am. 
• Therefore Feb 6 11am + 7 days = Feb 13th 11am, since this is after 10am specified in step 5 it must wait until the next 10am.
• You could simply change step #1 to be some time before step 5. 
• How much time?  Depends on volume in smart campaign, depends on other campaigns in your Marketo, depends on activity on the POD your Marketo is in.

[Oz_Platero]

If you are open to trying other Marketo options you may want to explore the benefits of an engagement program to help you with the Cadence aspect and the ability to use Pause or set back to Normal based on other activities.

[Danielle_Solomo]

Hi Oz, thank you for sharing that link! I think the easiest way to ensure my campaigns go out on the correct date would be to use the wait and select the exact date. I was trying to avoid this so I wouldn't have to update every time I deploy this batch campaign. 

[Tracey_Bartz1]

If you are trying to deploy the campaign multiple times (like if you have it scheduled on recurrence) I would remove the date from the first flow step and instead use a day of the week and then remove the wait must end from the subsequent flow steps.