Would you create a different email program for each target group when sending the same email but to different targets?

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hello Everyone!

I would love your input.

Question:

Would you create a different email program (or default program) for each target group (each stage/lead status) when sending the same email to different target groups or would you create one program that sends the email to all of the targets?  The question came up when thinking what would be best for reporting and analytics.

Just trying to gauge how everyone is doing this as I have seen all sorts of ways people are doing it.

Thanks ahead of time!

[Emmanuelle_Biss]

Hi Nate,

In our case, we only create different email programs if we send emails with different messages to our target groups. Otherwise, if the message is the same, we only create one email program with a smart list that contains all our targeted leads.

Later, if you really want to analyze how each stage reacted to your email, you can simply create a program in Lead database with the leads that received that email, opened it, clicked on it, etc.

Emma

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hi Emma,

Thank you for your input!  The end goal is what you expressed: being able to analyze how each stage reacted to your email at a later date.  We have been doing it the same way as yourself. 

My only concern with the way we have been doing it is being able to later analyze how each stage reacted to the email and comparing/analyzing the performance of different emails sent to that stage over time to see which emails are performing better than others.

Basically I was trying to weigh the benefits of having separate programs for each stage (audience), tagging that program with the stage the email was sent to, and being able to use more in depth reporting if that makes sense.

It is more work obviously to create separate programs for each stage an email is sent out to but I though maybe it would be beneficial for more in depth reporting.  Then you could use reports/analyzers to analyze and compare on the program level and email level rather than the just the email level.

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Does anyone have any further thoughts on this?

[Devraj_Grewal]

If the message is the same, we just send it all within one email program. Even if the message is slightly different based on dynamic content, we still consider that email one marketing initiative and create one email program. In terms of reporting, we use the email performance report and in the setup we group the leads by those segmentations to decide which segmentation responded the best.

Make a note that you should export or save these results. Months down the line, the leads may change segmentation and the report will show their activity under the new segmentation and not the one they were a member of at the time of the email send.

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Thanks for the reply Devraj.  So if you do not want to worry about exporting anything there would be two solutions?

Example: You have a marketing campaign that is going out to Early Stage, Mid Stage, and Late Stage targets and all will receive the same email content.  Later down the road, if you want to view how well the email performed with each stage (early, mid, and late) and not worry about exporting any data you would have to:

Option 1: Create 3 programs (each program would be the same except for the target lists):

• 1 program for early stage targets
• 1 program for mid stage targets
• 1 program for late stage targets

OR

Option 2: Create 1 program with 3 separate emails (each email will be the same but each target stage will receive their own email):

• 1 email for early stage targets
• 1 email for mid stage targets
• 1 email for late stage targets

[Jessica_Kao3]

Use one program and send it out from one campaign and use email performance report and smart list columns to separate out the data from early, mid, and late stage.  Easy peasy.