Overarching Program for Multi-Channel Marketing Promotions?

[nhabischWings]

Hello all!
Looking to see how others handle this concept. We're working on setting up more tracking to coordinate between multiple channels of marketing. 

My initial idea was to set a Channel up with program statuses like:

- Added to Program - 10

- Sent Email - 20

- Sent Direct Mailer - 20

- Added to Digital Ad Audience - 20

And so forth, basically encompassing our different strategies within one program. Where it gets tough is that in theory, we're going to use the program members to display ads within our online portal.
So, there's possibility someone could both receive an email and see a digital ad. Obviously with program statuses this creates as issue as a Lead can only inhibit one status at a time. Also, attribution gets a bit wonky.

Is there any way to create like a overarching program (say Auto Loan Campaign), load in all target Leads and then use sub-programs to break it out by specific channel? I'm assuming not 🙂

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

IMHO, the Status values you've mentioned sound like you could (and maybe should, if not already) use a separate Channel for each to further track how members progress through them, e.g., you can have different Channels and Status values within each like:

1. Sent Email Channel could have statuses like Sent Email, Visited Web Page, Filled out Form via the email CTA, etc.
2. Direct Mailer Channel could have statuses like Requested, Delivered, Redeemed, etc.
3. Digital Ad Audience Channel could have statuses like Influenced, Viewed Page, Downloaded Content/Filled Out Form, etc.

This way, you can not only track people being members of more than one marketing initiative but also track their progress through each as well. You can create an overarching program with your parent marketing initiative and create sub-programs within it (given that these sub-programs can be nested per the Marketo's program nesting rules) to track members further down the road, i.e., was sent an email, engaged with your digital ad, etc.

[nhabischWings]

Got it - that's what I figured. The only wrinkle is that our plan was to take the Progam ID for the overarching marketing Leads and use that to designate ad audience. So we'd have Program 123 that has 5,000 Leads and use that ID to display ads to those Leads.

Assuming we'd need to modify and use a Smart List to set overall audience, divide that among various channel programs and grab the Program IDs for all programs? 

Or would you suggest using the same list parameters for each channel program so each one has the same set of Leads and then filtering down within that based on who qualifies for emails, direct mail, etc?

So like:
- Email Program - 1,000 Leads
- Direct Mail Program - 1,000 Leads
- Digital Ad Program - 1,000 Leads
Team grabs three Program IDs

Probably the safest route?

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

If you just need an ID of the asset using which you can refer to all people part of this whole overarching marketing initiative, then you can just create a static list that has people who're targeted for this program and show them the ads. Static lists like programs need external intervention to add people to them, unlike a smart list that is dynamic in nature and is auto-refreshed every time it's loaded/referenced.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Feels like you're leaving a major part unexplained: why, exactly, do you need a single numeric ID? How, exactly, are you exporting this audience outside of Marketo?

[nhabischWings]

Basically in another platform we're going to have a "Program ID" field that pulls in the members of the Marketo program and uses those Lead IDs to either show or hide identified Leads from marketing ads.

We don't technically NEED a single ID as we'd be able to pull in multiple - it was more that for convienence of the other Marketing folks, easier if there's a single ID.

Decided to go the route of multple programs for more accurate tracking. Also necessary as someone could theoretically be part of the Email program AND also get plopped into a Digital Ad program or such.

[Darshil_Shah1]

Thanks for the details, @nhabischWings!

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Decided to go the route of multple programs for more accurate tracking. Also necessary as someone could theoretically be part of the Email program AND also get plopped into a Digital Ad program or such.

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Yeah- good decision! IMO going with separate programs makes sense here. 🙂