What is the difference between Programs and Smart Campaigns?

[Anonymous]

Programs and Smart Campaigns seem to have the same functionality to me. I'm not sure how they are different?

I have set up a 6 part email drip campaign using 6 different smart campaigns. Since setting this up, I have read that Programs are the preferred way of deploying drip campaigns. Can someone explain to me what the different is, as well as the advantages to deploying drip campaigns through Programs versus Smart Campaigns?

[Anonymous]

For drip campaigns, you should consider using the Engagement Program.  Here is a link to get you started
http://community.marketo.com/Marketodeepdive?id=kA5500000008QlPCAU

[Anonymous]

Cheryl, the Engagement Program doesn't really make sense for our business model. We are an education company, we publish education resources for grades kindergarten to college, and in all subjects. Because a Grade 4 science teacher won't be interested in any of our English or Social Science products, all of the marketing communications we send out are highly segmented. We collect large volumes of data on our customers so that we send them information that is exactly relevant to the subject and grade that they have signed up for. 

I may be mistaken because the Engagment Engine is a new feature of Marketo, but I don't think that is functions in a way that would allow us to segment in this way? Please correct me if I'm wrong, I would love to be able to utilize this feature if it is able to meet our needs. 

Another important point to mention is that we are using the Spark version of the Marketo software. Any suggestions you can give us to improve the way we formulate drip campaigns would be very appreciated!

[Anonymous]

With the Sparq edition I think you are limited to 4 Engagement Programs so not sure how that would work with your current segmentation. To me it sounds like the value would come if you could do an Engagement Program for each grade level and then run content based on segmentation by subject area, this could happen if you had access to a larger number of Engagement Programs. If the drip program is going out to all segments then it would make sense to do it as an Engagement Program.

We have run drip programs in the past (pre-engagement engine) and are just in the process of buidling out some Engagement Programs, it's far more powerful than building out individual smart campaigns for each step of the drip campaign.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Julia to your original question: the programs are best thought of as a container to enable fast cloning and better reporting.  They combine the smart campaigns you're using with the relevant assets, so for example you can create part 1 of the program for Grade 1, then clone it to create part 1 for Grade 2.  

Programs can feel like too much effort, but they can help long term with reporting, as you can measure the success of each program and see which emails (via their program) perform the best.

Engagement programs are a step up, in that they simplify the smart campaign itself and add some more reporting capabilities around content engagement metrics.