When to use smart campaign vs engagement program?

[Anonymous]

We are just getting set up on Marketo and are unclear on smart campaigns vs engagement programs, how the two are different, and what you would use each for.  

For example, we set up a Lead Nurturing smart campaign, but I was thinking it might be better as an Engagement Program. Any help on this would be appreciated.

[Anonymous]

The engagement program offers a lot of flexibility over a nurture program based solely on smart campaigns.  You don't have to create a lot of the supporting smart campaigns such as the traffic cop, wait, master campaign, you can easily reorder the sequence in which the emails will be sent and you get engagement metrics that are not available in a standard smart campaign.

[Anonymous]

Lead nurturing is used to mean many things, some that fit the engagement program and some that don't.

Drip nurturing of content: this is the best use of the Engagement Program, and the simplicity in Marketo alone may justify shifting other content production strategies to this style.  Basically you should focus on producing emails that will remain useful for quite some time, such as a whitepaper offer to leads showing specific activities.

If your "lead nurturing" is simply sending a newsletter every few weeks, I'm not sure the engagement program will help very much.

[Anonymous]

There are benefits to adding/referencing short-lived programs/emails that effectively nurture leads (e.g. webinar) in the Engagement program.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your help.