Send emails in batches?

[Anonymous]

Can you send emails in batches instead of all at once?

We have developed an online tool - we'd like to send an email out about the tool, but would like to stagger the email in batches so (in case of wild success) we don't overload the tool with too many visitors at the time same.

Does Marketo allow for this? If yes, how?

[Anonymous]

It does not allow you to batch the send. This is a requested feature though. You could do this using a random sample and excluding recepients. This way you could take a percentage of your total list and email them first. Then take another random sample excluding the first recipients. etc. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Jeff is right on it. Hopefully that functionality will become available soon.

In addition, you can send using segmentations, state, country, anything that will filter your data to the size you are looking for. Use those in combination with wait steps.

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff - Do you know if this feature is available now?

[Anonymous]

Jeff S - That's also a great idea, I will keep that in my arsenal. 

[Beth_Rotach]

How about now?

[Anonymous]

It is available, but done probably a differently way then you may think. I had to set this up because we host a conference and I needed registrants to sign up for breakout sessions, those registrants often call into our call center for help signing up, but we only have 2 people staffed to help out, so to minimize the number of people calling in for help all at once I needed to send my session registration email in batches. I decided to send 4 batches each that made up 25% of my program members. Below is how I accomplished this.

In your campaign under the "Flow" tab setup the flow as follows:

1. Send Email - "Add Choice" - Random Sample "is" 25(%). Email = XX

2. Remove from Flow - "Add choice" - Was Sent Email "is" XX. Campaign "is" XYZ (This is the campaign you are currently working in)

3. Wait "1 hour"

4. Send Email - "Add Choice" - Random Sample "is" 25(%). Email = XX

5.  Remove from Flow - "Add choice" - Was Sent Email "is" XX. Campaign "is" XYZ

6. Wait "1 hour"

7. Send Email - "Add Choice" - Random Sample "is" 25(%). Email = XX

8. Remove from Flow - "Add choice" - Was Sent Email "is" XX. Campaign "is" XYZ

9. Wait "1 hour"

10. Send Email "is" Email = XX (This last send should send to all in the list that are left. All others would have been removed from the flow in previous flow steps)

I hope this helps!

[Seth_Wood]

Hi Colby, I found your post very helpful! Your process works, but am just curious if that would send uneven batches? Say we had 10,000 contacts we wanted to send evenly in four batches, wouldn't it be more accurate to send in 25% for the first  batch, 50% for the second batch, 75% for the third and 100% for the last?

Otherwise, I'm wondering if it's just 25% every time, then it's 25% of the remaining 75% after the first batch, etc...

Either way, I'm glad I found your post and I was at a loss without it.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

I'm glad it was helpful Seth!
To your question about uneven batch sends. Within my program the send data appears to be even for the 4 batches sent. So, I would conclude that the 25% random sample is truly 25% of the total number of individuals in the list you are sending to, not 25% of the remaining individuals after each batch send.
Since the list you are sending to is defined in the "Smart List" tab it stays as your base. The "flow" steps you setup that remove the 25% you sent to previously only removes them from the flow and NOT the actual list. So when the flow is repeated a second time the system is essentially still looking at the base original list in its entirety and then taking the next 25% of the base list that have not yet received the email (because you excluded those that did).
Maybe a Marketo employee can verify this, but to my knowledge this is how it works.

[ttrinh]

Hi Seth,

I used colby's steps but was stuck on the smart list for this campaign.

Would you be able to assist with this?