Programs vs Smart Campaigns - are there any functionality benefits to Programs?

[Anonymous]

Are there any functionality differences between Smart Campaigns and Programs that would cause me to want to create a program over a smart campaign.  From what I've read:

1.  Programs are designed for reporting within Marketo.  However, if we're not using Marketo to measure lead movement, then I don't see value in using a program over a smart campaign.  If anything, there's a few more set up steps in creating a Program than a Smart Campaign.  We do all of our reporting and analysis out of SFDC.

2. One clear benefit of a Program over a Smart Campaign is that it lets you clone all the assets associated within a program.  So you could do one clone action to clone multiple items instead of separate clone steps for separate items.  However, if you're cloning fairly simple Smart Campaigns and Assets, then there isn't a significant benefit to a one step cloning process.

Given that we're not using MKTO for reporting, are there any other functionality reasons why one would use a Program over a Smart Campaign?

Thanks in advance for any advice.
- Dani

[Kenny_Elkington · Accepted solution]

Hey Dani,

The two biggest advantages to program use other than analytics are SFDC Campaign sync which will map Marketo Program Statuses and Membership to SFDC Campaign Statuses.  You also get the advantage of automatic Event Partner Registration for webinars, and webinar tokens.  This means that setting a lead's satus to registered will push registration data for that lead up to your webinar provider.  The Tradeshow program channel also allows for use of the ipad checkin app.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the insights.  We definitely use Programs for webinar registration integrated with Go-to-Webinar.  We don't use MKTO Program Statuses for anything related to SFDC Campaign Member statuses.  We've found that MKTO forces its Program Status values onto our SFDC Campaign Member Status values and those MKTO Program Status values don't match the standards that we established for SFDC Campaign Member Statuses.  So we just use Add to SFDC Campaign as a flow step and use tokens to pass the Campaign ID and Member Status values from the MKTO form and associated Lead record.

In general, it sounds like I'm not missing out on much by using Smart Campaigns instead of Programs.