Send monthly email to part of a large smart list

[LCENTENO]

Greetings, 

We pulled a smart list of 20,000 members. Of those 20,000 members we only want to send a monthly email to 1,200 of them so our customer service teams are not overwhelmed. So, for example:

Of the 20,000 members in the smart list pull:
Month 1: Send to 1,200 Members
Month 2: Send to 1,000 Members
Month 3: Send to 1,100 Members
etc.

What would be the proper smart list / flow setup to automate this process? Any help is appreciated. Thanks all.

Lucas

[Darshil_Shah1]

You can use random sample for this! First add all the people to a static list and use random sample to add  1200 folks out of the total people to a static list (you'd have to set apt % in the random sample choice step, so it pulls ~1200 members out of the total people), and reference the static list membership to send email and remove these people from your master static list too. For each iteration, you'd want to adjust the random sample percentage so that out of the remaining people, Marketo pulls ~1200 people each time. Of course, alternatively, you can create 16 cohorts of total people manually, load them into static lists, and build month-wise campaigns to reference each static list and run each campaign every month. 

[LCENTENO]

Hi Darshil,

So, this is going to be ongoing since we have members that qualify all the time. So let me know if I am on the right track.

1) I setup the smart list criteria.
2) Once the number of recipients is generated. I pull those members and upload it as a static list.

3) In the flow, I set the random sample choice in the send email flow to an approximate percentage so as to match the total number of monthly recipients.
4) I set up the recurrence to monthly.

In doing this, would I have to recreate the campaign with a new smart list pull to generate a new static list for the next round of sends?

[Darshil_Shah1]

You’d need to increase the % in the random sample choice step before each run to ensure you roughly pull 1200 people from your master static list. Also, make sure to remove people from the master static list too as without that, there’s a possibility of random sample picking up people multiple times. Alternatively, you can also create 16 cohorts of people using random sample first, add each cohort of people to an individual static list, and then reference each static list in each of the respective 16 month wise campaigns, or have a single campaign, and before running the campaign each month, make sure you update the static list the campaign’s smart list. Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have questions. 🙂

[LCENTENO]

Hi @Darshil_Shah1 and @Corey_Bethel thank you both for your insight. The processes you both provided were extremely helpful. So, ultimately, there is no way to fully automate this campaign (i.e. set it and forget it).  Ultimately there is some legwork that needs to be done because of the segments of people in the large smart list pull, correct? Thanks in advance.

Best,

Lucas

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

I think so yes, as there isn't a way to update campaign SL via API in the first place. If at all you want to automate this, you'd need some custom development, e.g., build a process that loads 1200 people who weren't sent the email before into a list every month and use that list's membership criteria in the campaign's SL to send out emails every month, but you could just do manual process to manage this internally in Marketo instead as well.

[Corey_Bethel]

@LCENTENO , both of the solutions @Darshil_Shah1 provided are great! I personally like to set these types of campaigns up with separate statics lists/smart campaigns. My typical setup would look like this:

1. Create the separate static lists for each cohort (17 in your case)
2. Create the 17 separate smart campaigns to send the emails.
3. Run a smart campaign referencing your smart list with the 20,000 total people, and then run an Add to List flow step with 16 choices, the default choice will add the the remaining 800 people to the 17th list.
   1. Flow would be: 
      Add to List
      
      Choice 1:
      If Random Sample is 6
      List Name: List 1
      
      Choice 2:
      If Random Sample is 6
      List Name: List 2
      
      Etc. Etc.
4. Now you'll have sixteen 1,200 people static lists and one 800 person static list that you can reference in your Smart Campaigns for each email send.

It's a bit of manual setup in the beginning, but this setup will enable you to schedule the monthly sends out all at once, however, if the original list were larger, I may choose a different setup to avoid having to create a ton of static lists and smart campaigns.

Corey Bethel
Campaign Operations Consultant | Etumos