"Request campaign" for common content follow up

[janerusnak]

Hi there, 

this is my first time reaching out to Marketo community. I'd like to get the second opinion on the way I intend to build out follow up process (email drip) to content download.

We rely heavily on content marketing and webinars and release a new gated content piece and a webinar each month. Content is always gated. Each content piece and webinar has 6-8 emails follow with relevant content leading to booking a demo. Usually, the last 3 emails in the follow-up stream are the same disregarding of the content that was downloaded or the webinar that was attended. Right now I'm using smart campaigns with multiple email sends to schedule these follow-ups but it takes a lot of time. So I'm intending to build a separate Email drip with the 3 emails that are the same for all of these programs and use "request campaign" smart list to pull people into this program. 

Does it make sense to others? I'm not using Nurture programs at all in this case. 

[Katja_Keesom · Accepted solution]

Hi Jane,

Your intended solution would indeed work. However, with 6-8 emails in follow up, I am generally not a great fan of running a drip nurture with multiple (longer) wait steps and email sends. The reason is the lack of visibility per lead on where they are in the process and managing any changes. You can see how many people are in a wait step in any given campaign of course, but not really in which wait step. If you want to change your smart campaign after it has been running for a while it becomes difficult to judge how you are impacting your leads. Also, when you decide to stop your smart campaign for any reason, all people already in the flow will finish it.

For those reasons I would consider using an Engagement program, but of course you may have very valid reasons for not doing so. With your proposed solution you would gain some control back over the flow, as you can easily sever the link between the two stages by removing the request campaign and stop people in their track should you need to.

[janerusnak]

Thank you Katja. I would prefer using an engagement program too for better visibility into lead performance at every step of the follow-up, but it seems too overwhelming building an engagement program with smart lists to control waiting periods bw email sends (cause it's not a weekly cadence)

[Katja_Keesom]

Did you notice you can select multiple days of the week within your weekly cadence?

[Michael_Florin]

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@janerusnak wrote:

... but it seems too overwhelming building an engagement program with smart lists to control waiting periods bw email sends (cause it's not a weekly cadence) ...

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Don't be intimidated by Engagement Programs. They are actually not difficult, and as quick to build as a nurture flow in one Smart Campaign. And take a look at this - https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Champion-Program-Blogs/Engagement-Program-Hacks-for-Variable-Cadence-a... - if you want to run a variable cadence. Very solid procedure.