Emails vs. programs in Engagement Programs

There are many reasons to use a program instead of a straight email in engagement:

1) If you use RCA and you want to track measure the results of the individual emails in RCE beyond just email metrics
2) To run parallel flows, such as a Webinar
3) To control whether or not someone has received content, for example, if they download a whitepaper from your resource center and you want to ensure they don't get it as part of an email send.  If they are already a member of the program and you try to run them through it again,  the stream will not.

Hope this helps.

"3) To control whether or not someone has received content, for example, if they download a whitepaper from your resource center and you want to ensure they don't get it as part of an email send.  If they are already a member of the program and you try to run them through it again,  the stream will not."

That's what I thought, but honestly I don't know what to do exactly here. How should the Smart Campaign look that I have to add to my stream? Adding a batch campaign of the type "Send Email" seems pointless to me, as the Engagment program sends through the cadence that I set.

Thanks Cheryl,

I think I've finally understood.

Let me sum this up: The program's Smart Campaign I add to my Engagement program looks like this:

Smart List: Member of Engagement Program
Flow: Send Email
Schedule: n/a

In Flow I might now add conditions, right?

Well, I guess now I have it all together. Let's start the engine. :-)

Hi Michael,

To "Control" whether or not someone receives a piece of content when using smart campaigns and the Engagement Engine, Edward Unthank has doen a great job of explaining it here: http://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000PjghAAC
 

What you are in essence doing it making people a part of that program. What the Engagement Engine does when looking at what to send next it asks itself whether or not a person is a part of that program and if they are then they will skip to the next content.

The other reason you may use campaigns as opposed to emails is because yes you are right in that you can add additional flows. E.g. You can do scoring or wait steps or add to lists.

Best,

I am newer to Marketo and still learning.  I am trying to set up an engagement campaign with different nurture stages.  I did my first test just setting up emails in my stream and doing an A/B test, but I only used the email program for the test.  Should I be using the email program within the nurture campaign for other uses?  to better track metrics?  I am confused re: email program vs. engagement program.

Any input would be very helpful,
Kay

The email program cannot be used inside the engagement program.  So for your nurturing, you should use engagment.  The email program is intended for a singel email send or AB test.  If you want to do testing inside the engagement program, you will use the Champion/Challenger test type.

Cheryl, can email programs be used within each Marketo program that makes up a nurture stream?  For example, let's say we have five program within a stream.  Each program is used to track landing page visits, form completions, and content engagement (downloading of content).  These programs are also used for any inbound activity (search, social, etc.) that may be used to promote this content.  Email will also be required to promote the content of each program for each cast of the engagement program.  Can an Email program be placed within each of these Marketo programs?  Otherwise, how would we be able to properly measure program success if the program uses just an email channel (and not a general "web content" channel - which has different progression steps/statuses than an email channel).

You cannot put an email program inside an engagement program.  You would use the "default" program type.  If you are interestedin in testing, you would use the Champion/Challenger method in engagement.