strange problem with engagement program

[mainata]

Hello everyone,

I have a fairly simple engagement program, but it still doesn't work as expected.

There are three streams. An email is sent in the first stream. There are two topics with CTAs in the email. If you click the CTA for topic 1, you will be taken to stream 2 and should receive an email about topic one. If you click the CTA for topic two in the first email, you will be taken to stream three and should receive the email for topic two. If you click on both CTAs you should receive both emails on both topics.

Apparently everything works except for one “small thing”. So the first email arrives and when I click on the CTAs, I am pushed accordingly to stream 2 or stream 3. The problem is that the emails are not being sent. As far as I know, if you are pushed in a stream, the email is sent automatically without having to define any extra triggers for it. I've tried various tests, but I can't find the cause. Am I missing something or is the whole thing not as simple as I imagined?

Any help is welcome!

Thank you in advance for your support!

Best regards
mainata

[Vinay_Kumar]

I concur with Darshil. If you aim to send emails triggered by CTA clicks, it's advisable to choose the default program and devise a smart campaign to accomplish your goal. 

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

Hello! Well, that isn’t a problem/bug- that is how Marketo’s Engagement Program work. The trigger based stream transition rules only pull people into the respective stream. Once added, the person won’t be sent an email until the next cast (as configured for the respective stream). The people added to the stream 2/3 in your case would receive the content during the next cadence. If you want to send an auto-responder kind of email where in people are sent email as soon as they do something, you can setup a trigger smart campaign for it. Do you have more content that you’d be adding to streams? Looking at what you currently have and your requirements regarding sending email as soon as someone clicks the CTA doesn’t appear to be a good use case for an engagement program— you can use the Default program for this. Also, this has been discussed earlier on the Marketing Nation, but sending emails based on a click activity that could likely be from a bot/email scanner isn’t recommended at all! You should send emails based on form fills instead.

[mainata]

Hi @Darshil_Shah1,

thank you very much for your time and your help! I can appreciate that!

I still have to ask a question because I can't quite understand it yet.

I created another test yesterday.

Mailing 1 went out yesterday. I got it and clicked the two CTAs. I have scheduled stream 2 and stream 3 for today. Unfortunately I didn't receive either Mailng 2 or Mailing 3 today. They should go out at 8:30 and 8:35.

That would be the next Cadens right?

I don't know this Marketo logic from any other Tool. Can you please just briefly list the steps for me so that I can understand it better, e.g.

= Tue 6:20 PM - Mailing 1 will be sent
= CTAs in Mailng 1 are clicked
= Mailing 2 should arrive???

Because my understanding is that if you are pushed into stream 2 and you are on Wed. 08:30 AM still in stream 2, then you should also receive mailing 2.

I can't explain why mailings 2 and 3 don't arrive. Will they not arrive until Wednesday next week?

Thank you again for your support and patience!

with kind regards
mainata

[Darshil_Shah1]

Well, when streams 2 and 3 were cast, was your test record in either of them (you should check the person's activity log to find the Engagement Program Stream Changed activity in it)? Even if a person is in the stream, if they're not marketable or have reached their communication limits (set in Admin > Communication Limits), then they'd not be sent emails from the engagement program; you should check the person's activity log to validate this. Additionally, I hope you know that you'd strictly need to have non-operational (i.e., marketing) emails in the engagement program streams, as it cannot process or send emails marked as operational. It'd be great if you could also add a snapshot of the activity log of your test record so we can verify whether the person was transitioned to stream 2 and wasn't blocked when the cadence was run.

[mainata]

Hi @Darshil_Shah1 ,

thank you very much for your help!

In the end it was actually the weekly communication limit. While testing on Monday and Tuesday, I kept looking at the activity log, but there was no indication that the weekly or daily limits have been reached. Only now did I see that the notice was there on Wednesday and Thursday. I increased the limit, then changed the time and I got the follow-up email. 🙂

At the end, on Tuesday, I tested all three streams using the stream test function and apparently these 3 emails were within the limit of 5 mailings per week. These are actually purely tests and not normal sends. That's why I didn't know that they counted, and it is strange that the three even got through because the daily limit is 2 emails. Well, apparently there were a lot of little things that played a part in the game and resulted in no mailings going out.
Now I know much better how to test engagement programs.

Thank you again for your patience and support!

You are my hero of the week 🙂

kind regards
mainata

[Darshil_Shah1]

Awesome- I knew it had to be either one of the items I listed or a rare bug in the system! I am glad that you were able to figure this out As a best practice, you can always consider using a new person record for testing such flows where you might hit the email communication limits due to past sends, or at least be conscious of the same if you're using an existing test record. I'm so happy that you got to the solution with this and figured it out.

[mainata]

Hi @Darshil_Shah1,

Sorry to bother you, but one of our customers is having this issue with the Engagement Program. They planned to increase their use of engagement programs and this would be their first engagement program. They are of course very disappointed that marketo cannot cope with such easy logic and the bad thing from a UX perspective is that there is neither correct and clear documentation nor any videos. Of course, it's hard for me to defend Marketo to customers in this case if I can't make a reasonable statement as to why it doesn't work that way. According to the simple description provided by Marketo, if a person is pulled into a stream, they should receive the email on the set date and time, but that doesn't happen.

That's why I'll be very happy if you or anyone who knows can explain to me why it doesn't work like that and what should I say to our customers.

I also realize that this scenario with 2-3 mailings is not optimal for an engagement program, but that is another topic that I will discuss with our customers. Personally, I thought it was that way at the beginning, but my goal now is to sort out the problem with the email delivery. Because if such simple basic things are not clarified, then it is difficult to build on them 😉

Thank you for your understanding and help

with kind regards
mainata

[Darshil_Shah1]

---

According to the simple description provided by Marketo, if a person is pulled into a stream, they should receive the email on the set date and time, but that doesn't happen.

---

Yes, that's still the case, but given that the person is still emailable, and by emailable, I mean:

1. Unsubscribed = False
2. Marketing Suspended = False
3. Email Invalid = False
4. Block Listed = False
5. Email Address = non-empty valid email
6. Haven't reached the set daily/weekly communication limits set in the Admin > Communication Limits

Are you able to verify all of the above and the email being non-operational (i.e., Operational Flag in the Email Settings not marked) and that the person was in stream 2 when the cadence was run?

[mainata]

Hello @Darshil_Shah1,

many thanks for your response!

Yes, I'm testing with my email address and I'm already getting the first email with the two topics, so 1 to 5 are all checked. The set daily/weekly communication limits are 2 per day and 5 per week, so I should have received the FolloUp emails yesterday, or at least one of them since I was on Stream 3 at the time.
Are there other possibilities why the emails are not arriving?

I tested the whole thing once in our customer's environment and then again in our environment. I have the same failure in both accounts.

Every clue counts. Thank you!

Best regards
mainata

[mainata]

@Darshil_Shah1, by the way, I don't want the follow-up emails to go right away with a click. I only had the timing like that for the test. The follow-up emails should usually go out a few days later. That's why I was surprised that nothing arrived. Now I'll test it with one day delay. Let's see if it works properly

[Darshil_Shah1]

Thank you for the details, @mainata! You can probably use a wait step or stamp the date on the field when the email needs to go out, and then use it to send emails using a batch campaign instead of using engagement program for this.

[mainata]

Hi @Darshil_Shah1,

thanks for your answer! This helps me and I understand where the problem is.

I have a quick question about what I also find problematic in my scenario. The wish is that if you click on both topics in the first mailing, you will also receive both follow-up emails from stream 2 and 3. But that probably wouldn't be possible because you're either in stream 2 or in stream 3. You can't be in both at the same time, and you can never receive both follow-up mailings, but only one. Maybe you could control this with extra smart campaigns, but basically it's not a good use case for an engagement program, is it?

Thank you very much for your help!

Best regards
mainata

[Darshil_Shah1]

Well, the person would end up being in the stream for which they qualified at the last (due to the latter activity)! People would be sent the email if they're in the stream during its cadence (of course, they need to be marketable and shouldn't have reached their daily or weekly communication limits, if set). The email won't be sent immediately; it'll be sent only during the respective stream's cast. I would still re-iterate that it may not be a good idea to send emails based on just CTA clicks due to the possibility of false positives (even with the bot filtering turned on).