Engagement Nurture program vs. Default Email program

I love engagement programs. Read more about them and really consider using them. There is a ton of information out there now, but here is what I love:

• Automagically skips emails that a user has already received.
• You can add programs to the stream.
• Enagagment scores and a simple dashboard are helpful to share and discuss with managers.
• Schedule availability and expire content in the stream.

One caveat is that you do not have as much control over message timing. You have to send at the same time for each cast (send in most cases) where as with the standard program, you can have wait steps of varying lengths (1 week, then 2 weeks, then 2 days).

Joe is right that Engagements are great, but sometimes not so. I have slides on how the differences work, especially in regard to managing timings.

You can use existing Drips inside an Engagement, just be aware that the Program will run INDEPENDENTLY of the Engagement Cast, so a lead could get overlapping emails.

http://www.slideshare.net/jdavidhill/marketo-engagements-and-drip-nurturing-boston-user-group-dec-10-2013

There is a great tutorial on Engagements in the Community. I also wrote a tutorial
http://www.marketingrockstarguides.com/how-to-use-marketo-engagement-programs-850/

that I think is a bit simpler.

I really like utilizing segments and streams within engagement programs so that we're forcing mutual exclusivity for selected nurture campaigns that we're running. When you take the time to draw out a nurture program, and really understand what you're trying to build, they can be very powerful. Gliffy helped us to visualize what we were building, where we wanted to see specific steps and alerts, and where we could make our gatekeepers and programs more secure.

One downside to them is the limited cadence, although there is a workaround with this if you pause and unpause people using a gatekeeper. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the engagement score, but you obviously don't need to use this. If you utilize programs within your EPs, then the only way you're going to get a score is if there are successes.