What is the best way to prevent a lead from receiving the same content twice?

[Anonymous]

Our engagement programs are based off assets. Most of our leads enter the engagement programs by reviewing one of our assets. Therefore, I want to ensure when they are receiving nurture emails from us, they are only receiving new and fresh content - not content they have already read. What is the best way to do this? I've created a smart list in the Send Campaign for our white paper asset (pictured below). What I'm hoping this gets across is, that if the lead has filled out a any form related to that particular asset, they will not receive the nurturing email related to the asset. Is this the right way to go about it? Thanks!

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hi Caitlin, one downside to what you've described is that a person whill be excluded from the whole engagement program if they've viewed a piece of the content that is contained within the program. This also limits you from reusing a form in a similar but different program. Overall, it seems like you're limiting yourself (and your assets) by setting things up this way.

Without knowing all of your assets and form setups, what I can say is that Edward Unthank did an awesome presentation on this at Summit earlier this year. He uses programs within his engagement programs, and he's created the concept of "exclusion" status in a program so that you could mark someone as excluded if they had already downloaded a piece of content. Once someone is a member of a program (any status, including excluded) then they won't receive the program during a cast.

While this would require you to do a little bit of reworking, I think that it would allow for much more growth in the future. You might find that your current setup will grow to be very cumbersome or unmanageable as time goes on.

Let me know if any of this needs any further explaining!

[Anonymous]

This was somewhat helpful. My question would be, and sorry to need this spelled out, what would I put for the smart list when I exlude someone? That is what I can't determine. I understand that the flow is Email>Excluded, but what prompts this? 

[Dory_Viscoglio · Accepted solution]

You could use something like "was sent email" if you have a thank you email when they download, or "filled out form on page", depending on how you have everything set up.

[Anonymous]

The engagement program has two "built in" features.  First of all, when using emails in engagement, if a lead is sent the email, they will not be sent it again (but don't clone it).  If you use programs, and the lead becomes a member of the program (with a status) and then the program is used in the engagement program, the lead will skip that content.

[Anonymous]

Just one more question, sorry for asking you to "spell this out" for me: When I add Excluded to the flow step, what else should I add to ensure they do not get the email? Where do I define what Excluded actually means? Thanks!

[Dory_Viscoglio]

No worries... Just make sure that you have created "Excluded" as a program status in the Admin >> Tags >> Channels section. Once you change someone's progam status to Excluded, then they are seen as a member of that program, and will not receive the flow or email contained within that program.

[Anonymous]

Cheryl, I just rewatched your old traffic cop conversion webinar (still great stuff) from last summer. You mentioned there was a year limitation to content skipping in that webinar. Is that still the case? Basically, if someone got the content over a year ago, can they get it again? My guess is that was a first release limitation but I haven't been able to find any documemention that the limitation has been removed. Thanks.

[Agatha_Brewer]

Has there been any updates to this since 2014? I'd like to exclude people from getting the same content piece in a nurture if they already downloaded it, but I want them to just skip that email and go to the next one. Thanks.

[SanfordWhiteman]

You should open a new thread instead of working on the 5-year-old one.