Simplifying an engagement program and the reporting for the various streams?

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for help in setting up an engagement program. We're new users, and the site tutorials are a difficult to understand for someone who hasn't done a complex program like this before:

For example, Prospect receives E-mail A. E-mail A has 3 links to downloadable papers. Because they clicked on Link 1 in E-mail A, they then go into a stream to receive E-mails B, C and D. If they click on Link 2, they get E-mails E, F and G. If they click on Link 3, they get E-mails H, I and J. Similar idea to when you go onto Amazon and, after looking at a page, the site recommends "Other Items You May Like." I want to send content-specific e-mails based on the link they clicked. There would also be Salesforce hooks to indicate which e-mail they received and which links they clicked.

Any best practices or trial and error methods you've found?

[Anonymous]

Hey Bridget >

Have you considered actually starting simple? As a new user who hasn't done complex things yet, why not start off simple & build up? 

We have our Engagement Programs by Product & then Streams by Stage in the Buying cycle. 

I have found that people make things unnecessarily complex because they can. 🙂

[Anonymous]

We're not even sure where to start with this...

[Kim_Allen]

I agree with Adam. We have different nurture programs by persona and the streams in those are by stage. We are starting to add some product nurtures too.

I'd def start simpler. And remember you can start setting up the structure and even activating some streams without having all the content etc in place and add as you go.

[Helen_Abramova1]

I believe a good solution might be just adding special flow steps/ smart campaigns. If a lead clicks link in email A, send email B.

If you prefer to do that within Enagagement Program, you might need too many streams. Again, if there are more emails to send out in each stream, it might be reasonable. If that is just 1 follow up email - I don't think so.

[Josh_Hill13 · Accepted solution]

Bridget,

See some of my work on this:
http://www.marketingrockstarguides.com/how-to-use-marketo-engagement-programs-850/

Also, think of those content threads as Streams:

Stream 1 - Email A
Stream 2: bcd
Stream 3, efg
Stream 4, HIJ

So each time they click on that link, the next Stream is listening for that and PULLS that lead into its Stream. So Stream 2, listens for Link 1, Stream 3, listens for Link 2, etc...

If you want SFDC to tag the email delivered, be sure to set this in Admin>SFDC>Activities to Sync. That's the easiest way to do this.

[Michelle_Tizian]

I absolutely agree with Adam, keep it simple.  I went that route and also set it up by product and by the buying stage.  It took me a while to launch our first engagement program because I over thought how I should set it up. I also did a flowchart just so I had a better understanding of how the leads will be pulled into the streams.  

[Anonymous]

It seems that you may be considering this approach because you don't have enough data to know which product to offer the lead. If this is the case, I'm guessing this isn't an isolated incident. There are a couple simple things you could do quickly, without a long lead scoring conversation, to start keeping track of that.

With each initial email containing multiple offers, you could add campaigns with "clicks link in email" triggered smart list and an "add to list" flow step, and have lists for interest in product a, b, c, etc. Multiple programs or campaigns could add people to these lists, as well as triggered campaigns separate from emails (ie visited certain web page 2 times).

Alternatively you could do essentially the same thing by creating a "Product Interest" custom field and use a "change data value" flow to populate the field with product/brand abbreviations when a user takes certain actions. A little more complex, but maybe more scalable, approach would be to work with your IT team to set up a piece of code to update this that you can append to email links to avoid setting up additional campaigns. Ie: productalink.com?email={{lead.Email Address}}&ProductInterest(or another field name)=BrandAbbrA

Either way, you could then create an engagement program for a single product, and use this information as part of your smart campaign.