Quickly test Marketo nurture stream

[tarumatu]

My campaign involves a landing page with a form which 5 choices in a survey. Each choice will trigger a welcome email and a series of 3 emails specific to that choice, the 3 emails to be sent weekly regardless of their engagement so no transition rules needed. I know Marketo has its own stream test but this doesnt send me email series so i can see it works in sequence. I want to be able to run a test where my survey submission triggers the welcome email (which i have tested and works) but also triggers the 3 emails. I want to be able to do a test where the emails are sent to me in sequence within seconds or minutes of each other, is this possible as i couldnt find anything online as guidance?

[michellechopin]

Hi @tarumatu!

Because Marketo doesn't have a testing scenario built in that allows you to test non-nurture emails the way you would a nurture stream, I have two suggestions for you:

1. Still set this up as an engagement program - you can use a single stream per choice (no need to worry about transition rules if the streams are all unique/people won't move between them) and use the form fill (with choices) as your entry campaign*
2. Use the actual campaign to do your testing and speed up or remove the wait times you have so that you get them all in a short period of time (remember to turn everything back to the weekly cadence when you're ready to go live!)

*This assumes that a person can only make one choice in your form/survey responses because a lead can only be in one stream at a time. If you allow people to multi-select, then option two will probably be better for you (and you can do it for each set of emails).

Hope that helps!

Michelle 😀 

[tarumatu]

Hello Michelle, thanks for your reply. A few questions:

I have a choice of adding my 3 emails in 1 stream or in 3 streams, if they are in 1 stream and my cadence is weekly will it send out each email every week or send all at the same time in 1 week? In the second option to have 3 streams, if i set the cadence to weekly in the first stream do i need to set the cadence for the other 2 streams? If there are no transition rules, how will Marketo know to move from stream 1 to stream 2?

In the nurture program, i had 5 nurture programs, 1 for each survey choice. For each nurture I set the first smart campaign as form-fill as well as naming 1 of 5 choices, and in flow set engagement program to stream 1. But this hasnt worked when i tested the form with a live form-fill. 

Can you explain in more detail how to use the actual campaign to do my testing? I dont understand the steps needed to do so. 

[tarumatu]

I also cant seem to bridge the gap between the welcome email and the engagement programs. I created a program for the landing page, form and created a smart campaign with filled out form steps which includes welcome email. My program will send the welcome email each time i test it but it never sends the first email in the sequence, even though the separate engagement program confirms the landing page survey choice and the sequence of emails in the stream. Why is the first email in the stream not being sent?  

[michellechopin]

Hi @tarumatu,

I've broken down your questions/comments into three points so I can answer better, and ask clarifying questions to better direct you:

1. If using a single Engagement Program with five streams (one for each of your topics), you would include the three emails per topic in each stream. With a weekly cadence, emails will go one at a time at the time/day you choose ( they will not all deploy at once/in the same week) and the leads in the program will receive emails once and in the order you lay them out in the stream. I put together a quick test program in my instance so you can see the setup:
   

   I wouldn't advise having one engagement program per topic and then an email per stream (3 streams) - it's too many steps/complex for what this effort seems to need.

2. Whether you're doing 5 nurture programs with 1 stream each or 1 nurture program with 5 streams (the latter seems easier to manage in my opinion), you sound like you have the right steps in your entry smart campaign to pull leads into your program i.e. Filled out form = survey form AND Topic Choice. A couple of troubleshooting questions:
   • Is your Engagement Program turned on? You can see this by either looking for the green circle on the name of the engagement program:
     

     Or checking the Setup tab in your Engagement Program - Program Status must be On for everything to work:

     
   • Have you activated the content in the stream(s)? In order for content to deploy, it needs to be activated - see my example screenshot below with activated vs non-activated content (you can do one at a time on the email in the stream or all via the cogwheel at the top of the stream):
     
   • Are you using the form fill as the trigger for both the Welcome Email program and the Engagement Program? If so, it is likely causing a race condition which can prevent either campaign from firing properly or at all.
3. I misunderstood your first message thinking that you were deciding on sending emails via an Engagement Program vs an Email Program overall. I now see that your Welcome Email is going out through a separate program to the topic-related emails - with that in mind (and to answer your follow up message):
   • Consider adding your welcome message as the first email in each stream (so there would be 4 emails per stream) - this would flow everything in order and use the single entry campaign in your Engagement Program as the trigger to get things started (and you can use the nurture program testing function). This is easiest!
   • If you prefer to keep your welcome email as a separate program, I would recommend "calling" the Engagement Program from the Welcome Email flow steps and setting up your entry campaign in the nurture to wait for that call - it would look like this:
     • Change your Engagement Program Entry campaign to NOT use the form fill as a trigger but to wait for another campaign to request it (the flow step would be where you identify which engagement program and stream, and any other criteria, you need to apply here):
       
     • Add a "Request Campaign" flow step to the Welcome Email program under the Flow (note: you will not be able to select/add the campaign in the nurture program until it's activated):
       
   • It sounds like the engagement program portion of your overall campaign isn't triggering so be sure to check the above troubleshooting items before trying this flow again - as mentioned above, adding the welcome email into the streams for each topic is going to be easiest as you can just run the test feature for each stream as needed.

I realize that's a lot of information so don't hesitate to ask further questions if you need. Once you've decided which route to take, it will make it easier to help you set up the finer details - if you're comfortable sharing screenshots of your setup, then I can help you better (and feel free to send those in a private message if you don't want to share company/instance information publicly/on the community). 

Michelle 😊

[tarumatu]

Hello Michelle, youve provided some great feedback! I managed to figure out the problem based on your comment on Marketo identifying 2 programs "filled in form" smart campaigns, where it wouldnt know which to choose or choose both. In the main program which has the landing page, form, thank you email etc i decided to deactivate the smart campaign which had the flowstep to send a welcome email. I added these flowsteps into the nurture campaigns, so that instead of a welcome email it would activate each stream based on the survey choice. And it worked!  

But the other survey choice programs with streams didnt work, and i dont know if this is due to us repeating form-fill activities to test email nurtures to make sure the whole process works. Sometimes our email addresses dont get added to the nurture, is this to do with overuse of our email profiles? On each program i use the testing stream function, and it sends an email. So this means the nurture works, but our overuse of our email profile is the problem?

I also like your idea of having 6 streams in 1 program, i can see how i couldve created the whole campaign, from landing page to streams within 1 program, it would certainly save time. I think the hardest part is making sure all of the smart campaign logics are correct. 

[tarumatu]

I also just noticed when i use Test Stream feature, that of the 3 emails in each stream when i test email 2 is sent twice, and i cant figure out why. I definitely didnt click button more than once for each cast, and this morning i noticed email was sent twice again to another test email address. I tried again on a different email again, and i got email 1 twice, no email 2, and then email 3. When you are testing the cast, you dont get a choice of which email so when you click on Run cast you assume it will send you the sequence you've set up, but it doesnt. Why is this?

Also, when i analyse which test email addresses triggered the stream, in the activity logs they all have the same problem where its doesnt send them an email unless i use the Test cast function.  

Whereas my test was successful, why is this?

[tarumatu]

This is the only nurture which worked. You can see the smart campaign and smart list and filters. They are the same on all the other nurtures, but on the other 5 nurtures nothing is sent.

Now i decided to re-submit a form for the only choice which worked this morning, with an unused and new email address, this time i incur the same problem where it is stuck too. 

There is no wait steps, so the stream should start asap, just like it did this morning.

[michellechopin]

Hey @tarumatu,

Catching up on your messages, I wanted to address each one at a time:

• That's great that the change to using a single program to manage the welcome email and the related follow-up emails is working out 😀
  • For the repeated survey choices, check the Smart Campaign Settings (under the Schedule tab) to make sure that (at least for testing purposes) each person can run through the flow every time (vs one time or once every set period of time) - I'm honestly not sure whether that would impact nurture stream testing but it's always good to check just in case!
  • Another thing to check is your communication limits as those could be preventing your emails from reaching their final destination - you can always adjust these for the purpose of testing and then turn them back again when you're ready to go live with your program.
  • However, if the stream testing is working and the emails are sending out for the test but you're not getting them, I wonder if the emails are just taking time to come through (I get that on occasion with single test emails where I wait for ages for a test email, send another, and then two come through); if they're never coming through, but you can confirm that they were sent to the test email address, then you might want to check internally to make sure that there are no IT processes preventing emails coming through (and that the Marketo IPs are all allow listed within your organization - see Step 2 in Configure Protocols for Marketo Engage)
• For emails sending twice - this is stumping me the most so I'm just exploring troubleshooting options vs giving a solution (perhaps someone else in the Community will see this and have some insight 🤞):
  • I was going to suggest to check the streams and emails contained within them to make sure none are repeated, but your screenshot for your last message looks like things are set up as intended/they should be.
  • Are there any smart campaigns being used to trigger emails that could be sending out email 1 twice? This suggestion doesn't explain email 2 not being received unless you're hitting the communication limits (but the receipt of email 3 suggests that communications limits aren't being hit)
  • I'm not sure I understand your last point where you're analyzing the test email addresses to trigger the stream - when using the Test Engagement Stream function, you add an email address from the drop down and choose the Stream they should enter for testing (see Step 4 in Test an Engagement Stream for a screenshot). Or are you saying that the only time your test emails are getting emails is when you test the stream vs pushing them through the campaign as a regular lead would go through?
  • Also, with your screenshots, I don't see where an email is going out twice (or was this not an example of that scenario?)
• Emails/program getting stuck:
  • Can you share the details about your smart lists for the campaigns to pull people into the nurture? 
  • It looks like people are being successfully added to the stream and, to your note, they should receive the emails on the time frame - did you activate your engagement program? See my previous note/screenshot for what that looks like and how to turn it on (if it's off)
  • Check the smart campaign settings here too - check that people can go through it more than once (you will only want to use this setting for testing purposes - we don't want people entering a nurture campaign repeatedly)

I hope that some of those questions help with troubleshooting - definitely start with the settings (program and instance) that could stop emails going through.

Keep me posted!

Michelle 😊