Skipping a cast in the new engagement programs

[Anonymous]

I have an engagement program where I am using programs with child campaigns in them to run a/b email testing, and exclude leads who have already downloaded the same  content from other campaigns.  My question is if I have a 2 week cadence and a cast is scheduled and the lead has been excluded since they already downloaded, will they automatically go to the next piece or will they have to wait 2 weeks when the next cast is set to go?
Does this make sense?

Thanks
Jason

[Anonymous]

Hi Jason,
It depends on how they are excluded. If the lead is a member of the Program that is being referenced from the cast, then that Program will be skipped and the next Program in your list will be called immediately.

If your send campaign in the Program is exluding the lead and the lead is not a member of the Program, then the cast will call the send campaign for the lead trying to send the email and have it become a member of the Program. And, in two weeks, it will again try to send the email in the first Program since it is still not a member. So it will get stuck in this infinite loop of always trying the Program and not succeeding.

I've gotten around this by adding a new status to the Program called "Previously Consumed". Before the cast runs, I have a smart campaign that runs and adds all of the leads that qualify into the Program with the "Previously Consumed" Status. This makes them members of the Program and the Program will then be skipped on the next cast.

Hope this makes sense.
Sheila

[Anonymous]

I think I am still a bit confused. Should I be adding the status to the program that contains the send campaign ie the email blast channel?  I am also not sure where i would place the campaign or how to trigger it.
Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Jason

[Anonymous]

Sorry if I wasn't clear! You are correct as to it being the send program...

1) Add the new status of "Previously Consumed" to the Channel associated with the send program, which in your case is "Email Blast" channel.
2) Add a smart (batch) campaign to the program with the send email. Set the smart list filters to check for if the content was already consumed (whatever filters you already have for that) and  Member of Program is false for the send program. Then use the flow step Change Program Status to "Previously Consumed" for the send program. Schedule the batch campaign to run an hour before your cast is scheduled to go out.

Sheila

[Anonymous]

Hi Sheila, thank you for your help and patience, I think I have it set up properly now, but I have two more questions. 

Now that the lead is a member of the program do I need to need to still filter on the smart list for the send (ie member of program is false, or will the system automatically do that? 

When the cast is sent and it has determined that the lead is a member of the current program, will it automatically go to the next program or will it wait two weeks (the cadence) and then go to the next available program?

What I want to happen here i that if on the day of the cast a lead has already consumed that content peice, they will be sent the next avilable one that they have not already consumed.  I think the answer is yes but I am not sure, what I dont want is a lead to wait months for the next touchpoint.

Thanks again for all of your help.

Jason

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Jason,
Exactly what you want to happen will happen. Here's why:

When the cast runs, it determines whether a lead is qualified to receive a piece of content based on whether the content is an email or a program. If it is an email, it uses whether it had previously sent that specific email. If it is a program, if the lead is a already a member of the program then it is not qualified. If it is not qualified to receive that piece of content, it immediately continues to the next piece, and then the next piece, until it finds one that it qualifies for or it exhausts the list.

Because the cast automatically looks whether the lead is a member of the program as it's qualification, there is no need for you to have the same filter in the campaign.
Sheila

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all of your help Sheila!!