Adam's Global Engagement programs

[Anonymous]

Now that I'm planning the global roll out of Engagement programs, I thought I'd share with you what I've constructed for my team.  (Note, we purchased the Engagement add-on to have access to multiple streams)



There are 8 of these to start, one per language/business unit. Programs switch on October 1. 



First you need a way for your leads to flow into your engagement program. I have a master gatekeeper deciding which engagement program to add people to.



I give them 1 week in the system before being added, just in case their country was missing initially, hopefully in 1 week someone's added the correct country reassigning them to the proper business unit. Then I have 3 deactivate batch programs which I will run when we go-live to assign people to the proper streams. 



To double check the logic, when someone moves from stream to stream there's an alert which goes to the MD. There's also an alert checking for someone being added to this engagement program who is already a member of another one. We don't want them receiving two streams of information.




I try and give as much info as possible in alerts, so users don't have to go do further research. 



Most of the alerts are sent by the transition rules themselves as a confirmation of that process. 



I think the Engagement programs are awesome, but they have one major design flaw, and that's that they're built on the premise of repetitive email deployments on specific time/date. Here is my system to deal with this idea.

First, anytime someone receives an email they are then paused for a subsequent number of days. The colder you are, the faster you're returned to cadence, normal. The warmer you are, the longer we'll allow you to rest between touches. Of course if you like emails Tuesday at 10am, you can skip down to reporting.



Each stream's cadence then provides atleast 3 days that emails can be deployed on. I wanted this variation & unexpectedness. In small part to ensure better deliverability by not hitting any single customer's spam trap all at once. But more so that you aren't always recieving an email on tuesday at 10am. 





There can be "bunching" moments, where a MD really wants everyone to get the same email on the same day. Which would eliminate the natural flow of this cadence. There are 4 campaigns which reinsert the randomness. 



There's a report which shows the stats of the emails sent out by this engagement program. Along with a few smart lists if anyone needs to do any data hygiene. There's also a catchup smart list, Not in Engagement Program, which checks the leads of that business unit against the leads in the program. 



The last, and certainly most precise, aspect of my engagement program is the smart campaigns which move people from one program status to the other. Based off of program membership + email trigger. It can be fired based on emails being sent from other programs than this one, as long as people are members of both. 

I've seen a couple of people asking "How do you do it".. So here's the DNA of my engagement programs. The emails themselves are the logical next discussion, but they relate directly to my business and not to yours. So I leave you at this.

Enjoy your nurturing!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Adam for sharing this. It is really helpful. We are building a nurture and have a use case where we can get some help from you. We have 5 different emails in a stream and are using segments to personalize based on job function.

We are trying to build something like this:

Week 1: Everyone gets Email AIs it possible that only all CEOs get Email C

Week 2: Everyone gets Email BIs it possible that only all CEOs get Email C

Week 3: All CEOs get Email C, while rest of the people get Email D

Week 4: CEOs get Email D and rest of the people get Email E

Any work around this?    

[Justin_Norris1]

Hi Rachit, I may not fully understand your use case but I think you want a separate stream for CEOs.

The personalization would work if you want to make certain sections of the email dynamic based on a job function segmentation.

However, it sounds like you want CEOs to get a fundamentally different nurture stream. In that case why not use a separate stream and pull leads into it when their title/function is detected to be "CEO"?

[Anonymous]

Hey I was wondering if someone could take a look at the "paused" cadence for the campaign? Am I going in the right direction: Engagement strea cadence for day 1, day 5, day 10, etc? TIA!

[Dan_Stevens_]

Michal, I was thinking the same thing. Can someone comment on what happens when a lead is paused and then un-paused before the next cast is sent out?

[Anonymous]

Sorry for being dense but I don't understand how your irregular cadence program works. The program is still set for emailsto be sent on Tuesday at 9am (for example) - so if you pause or take the user out and then put the user back...won't it just wait until the next Tuesday at 9am? 

[Anonymous]

Hi Adam - you're a whiz with a great mind for getting the end result you desire, no matter how many steps it takes in a work-around. I appreciate you pointing my idea to this thread, and will have to find some quiet time to read through and comprehend it all!!

But this just further proves what a shame it is that Marketo doesn't have one "tiny" feature to address the needs of my nurture campaigns in the context of engagement programs: http://community.marketo.com/MarketoIdeaDetail?id=08750000000JVupAAG. Instead, it takes a lengthy work around like what you've proposed...

[Anonymous]

Hi Adam,

Thank you for posting both the mechanics and the thought behind your Engagement Programs. This is incredibly helpful.

I can't see screenshots for the first posting in this thread - I'd love to see the way you structured your program. Can you repost or send them to me?

[Anonymous]

No problem Justin. Be happy to share some more screenshots.

So first off you see that I've chosen one of the three cadence trigger campaigns. In this case, my middle track of one particular engagement program. So I start off with the basic trigger, Email is Delivered (ANY), so it doens't matter what email it is, whether it is from an engagement program or not, once it gets delivered an email AND the lead is specifically from this program, this stream....  

Then pause them for the length of time specified. Once that time has ended, change them back.



I don't think it's bad as is, but I have a feeling it can be better with request campaigns, etc. But that's too much work for 10 engagement programs, so I'll leave it with this. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi Adam (or anyone else who can offer insight), 

First, Adam, thanks so much for this behind the scenes peak at what you've built. It's really helpful. 

I am trying to wrap my head around the "Spread the Cadences" campaigns and how they work. I understand the princple of randomly pausing people for a set number of days before allowing them to be cast to again on the next available day, but the mechanics of the campaigns is a bit puzzling to me. 

From looking at your screenshots, I assume there is a trigger (not shown) when an email is delivered that causes the campaign to fire. 

What I am trying to understand is whether all leads go through all four of your spread campaigns and how these work. I.e., let's say someone got picked up in all four -- are the wait periods designed to be cumulative? If not how do you determine who gets picked up by each?

Appreciate any further insight you can provide! Thanks again.

Justin 

[Anonymous]

Hey Elliot - We weren't doing complex nurturing at my current company. I've known about the Engagement program features for a while and had held off on creating complex situations that I was the only one who understood. 

But if I were in your shoes, what I would do is create your programs, use the same emails which live in other programs, for which you've already sent people emails. As long as you've sent THOSE specific emails (don't clone!) they won't receive them a second time. When you're ready to launch your program, just go through and turn off the smart campaigns for the old engagement system, if you need to, use "remove from flow", but otherwise it should be fairly easy to transition. 

[Anonymous]

Adam - so those 3 smart campaigns are currently not activated (i.e. deactivated), but will be to add leads to the appropriate streams. One of my questions about transitioning from our currently nurture programs to one based on the engagement program, is how do you ensure a clean transition where leads are sent the next appropriate email at the appropriate time and the old program's smart campaigns no longer send emails?  How are you doing this?

[Anonymous]

@Elliot - The campaigns are not to deactivate people, but are deactive, or non-run, campaigns which will be run later to add people into the proper streams.

@Erik - My first reaction is if you want CEO emails on the 1st week, CFO emails on the 2nd week, and HR emails the 3rd week, no emails the 4th week. Then you should use the normal cadence, and set it to monthly deployments. Use three engagement programs, each on monthly. Then activate them one week apart. So start the CEO one on Monday of the 1st week, and have the cadence set to send on Tuesdays, or what not. Then start the CFO program on the 2nd Monday, etc. They will naturally repeat after 1 month ensuring the proper cadence for your system.

[Anonymous]

HI Adam, Very Impressive. Thank you for sharing. We are new to Marketo and are just setting up a Nuture campaign targeted to 3 different groups where the content varies slightly by target group (i.e. CEO, CFO and HR).  Is it possible to configure one nuture program targeting each of the 3 groups with variable content (i.e. CEO gets content A, CFO gets content B and HR gets content C).  As far as the the content goes, perhaps only piece is dynamic based on the role and the rest of the content is the same for all three groups.  From a timing perspective, we are trying to spread the distribution of the content over a period of 3 weeks (i.e. CEO get content A on first week of the month, CFO gets content B on the second week of the month, HR gets content C on the 3rd week of the month.  So far, the only way I can figure out how to achieve this is with 3 different nurture programs: one for CEO, CFO and HR because of the variable content and timing.  Each program would have a similar progression from one stream to the next based on scoring of activity.  Any thoughts on wrapping this into one nurture program? Thank you for your posts and contributions to the community. I have found them most helpful.  -Erik

[Anonymous]

Thanks for this insight Adam!  Please explain your "3 deactivate batch programs" that you'll run when you go live - what do they deactivate?  Have you figured out how to implement a Fibonaci cadence yet ;0)