What are the Program Type Uses & Definitions

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hello All!

I am interested to here how everyone else out there is using Marketo Programs (Engagement, Default, Email), what you define them as, and what you believe the best practices are.  The reason I am asking the community this is because it seems like there is no standard and people use them in all different ways.

Questions:

1. What are the definitions of each one of these program types?

2. What are each one of these programs meant for and what is there use?

3. What are the definitions differences of an Email Blast, Drip Campaign, and Nurture Campaign and what corresponding Marketo program types do you use for each one of these. 

4. Marketo talks about a Drip Nurture Campaign/Program.  Am I going crazy or does this not make sense because aren't Drip Campaigns different than Nurture Campaigns or are they saying you have both Drip Campaigns and Nurture Campaigns working together in one program, an Engagement Program?  I did my research and find that everyone defines Drips and Nurtures differently. 

Thank you in advance!

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hey Nate! Joe Reitz​ covered some of this in one of his recent Marketo-fu episodes, but maybe Joe can identify which one it was?

But here's a quick overview:

1/2/3. Program types, definitions & uses:

Email: This program will just send out an email. Kinda like a hand-holding exercise in my opinion. You have options for A/B tests and some slightly better dashboard reporting, but some of us who have been Marketo users for a long time are not as keen on these newer email send programs.

Event: These denote an event. You can easily add these to your calendar, as well as use the GoToWebinar (and other) connectors for webinars so that you have bidirectional syncs between these other systems.

Engagement: These are nurture programs. The emails go out on a specific cast schedule which can be somewhat limiting, but there are advantages to EPs such as different streams and exclusivity between streams in a single program, and the fact that an EP will never send the same piece of content to a person more than once. You need a smart campaign to direct someone into an EP.

Default: This is all other programs. They can contain assets, smart campaigns, reports, etc.

There's a lot more to be said about each of these, but a really important thing to highlight is the ability to use different channels and tags within these. Channels will allow you to have different program statuses, which will improve your reporting, as well as give you a quick overview of how many people are in your program and where they are within that program.

Drip nurture vs Engagement program. Engagement program is basically like drip nurture on steroids. It requires far less setup as you don't need multiple smart campaigns to control streams, shifts amongst streams, and sends. The main limitation is send cadence, but you can get around that using a smart campaign to pause/unpause people if you want a non-standard cadence.

One final thing I want to mention (although there are tons of other things you could say about EPs), is that you can either use a single email, or a program within an engagement program. Basically, if you have a single email that's just a single send that occurs at the time of the cast. If you are using a program within an EP, then you can have a smart campaign running side-by-side with the cast of the EP.

There are tons of resources on all of this in the community, depending on what you want to dive into. Let me know if you'd like me to expand further on any of what I wrote above!

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Dory,

Thank you for your response!  I am looking for a little more information about the difference between and Email Blast, Drip Campaigns, and Nurture Campaigns, what there definitions are, and which program types to use in different scenarios.   Through research there seems to be no clear definitions between a drip campaign and nurture campaign and which programs to use inside of Marketo.

For Example:

Monthly Newsletter for Customers:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me it is a drip)?
• What program type to use?

Monthly Newsletter to certain Leads:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me it is a drip)?
• What program type to use?

A series of emails (ex: 4 emails) that go out to someone when they are recycled by sales:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me this is a nurture)?
• What program type to use?

A series of follow up emails to a lead who fills out a web form:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me this is a nurture)?
• What program type to use?

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hey Nate, you're right... There's not necessarily a set reason to use one type of thing or another. Most of the reason for selecting one type over another would be functionality. So, an engagement program has all of the logic to send something out with a certain cadence to all members and easily add/remove content (even expire after a certain date in the future), when you'd have to manually set all of that up with a default program -- although you could build basically the exact same thing in a default program. It's just much more work.

To answer your specific questions:

Monthly Newsletter for Customers:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me it is a drip)? -- Neither. This would be a single send.
• What program type to use? Could be done as an email program (blast), or default program

Monthly Newsletter to certain Leads:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me it is a drip)? -- Neither. This would also be a single send.
• What program type to use? Same as above, either email blast or default program.

A series of emails (ex: 4 emails) that go out to someone when they are recycled by sales:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me this is a nurture)?  -- This is nurture.
• What program type to use?  Could be an Engagement program or default program set up as a drip nurture.

A series of follow up emails to a lead who fills out a web form:

• Is this a nurture or drip campaign (to me this is a nurture)? -- This is also nurture.
• What program type to use? Could be an Engagement program or drip nurture (default program set up to "drip" emails out)

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Could you point out what you see as the differences between the different types of email marketing and provide examples? 

Drip

Nurture

Drip-Nurture

Email Blast

Etc.

[Dory_Viscoglio · Accepted solution]

To some degree, this is just semantics...

Nurture - Educating your buyer or customer. Moving them along their buying or customer journey.

Drip - gradual nurturing cycle. This is generally a program that is built out to send an email, wait a specified amount of time, send another email, wait, and so on.

Drip-nurture - Educating via a gradual send cycle.

Email blast - single send

[Devraj_Grewal]

Nate,

Product Docs is a great resource for these types of questions. Here is an overview of everything you need to know about Marketo Programs:

Programs - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hi Devraj,

Thanks.  I have looked at the Product Docs and didn't receive a good explanation from them regarding this.

[Joe_Reitz]

I did indeed! It's in the cleverly named "Program Types & Purposes" episode

Link here: Marketo Fu - Episode 2: Program Types & Purposes - YouTube

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Haha, doh! I definitely could have found that...   Good naming conventions!