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Liz_Davalos
Liz_Davalos
Level 4
March 26, 2018
New

Nest emails under smart campaigns

  • March 26, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 6663 views

I have emails specific to smart campaigns, but I can't nest them under SCs because for some reason Marketo won't let me... I really dislike how unorganized this makes things. Anyone else?

5 replies

Dan_Stevens_
Dan_Stevens_
Level 10
March 27, 2018

I take it these are stand-alone smart campaigns and not part of a program?  Simple solution, if so: create a program and you can include as many smart campaigns and emails as you want.

    Liz_Davalos
    Liz_DavalosAuthor
    Level 4
    March 27, 2018

    Thank you, I'm aware of that. But that still doesn't allow me to nest emails under SCs (you can put emails in with SCs, but not under SCs) and having a program that does nothing except sit there so I can place SCs and emails under it is annoying. Also I would like to be able to have SCs without having to place them under a program. Some of my SCs feed multiple nurture programs so it makes no sense (to me at least) to place them under one.

    David_Gallaghe2
    David_Gallaghe2
    Level 4
    March 29, 2018

    Smart Campaigns: Think of campaigns as things that can manipulate data. They are simply Workflows.

    Emails: Emails on the other hand are always involved with people & Communication. They work best when tied to a program that can maintain status, success criteria, and other CRM benefits.

    With that said... always tuck your smart campaigns & related emails inside a program.

    Personally, I do that with campaign only programs like -- lead scoring, lead journey /rcm transitions, engagement nurture traffic-cops etc. This may seem counter-intuitive to some BUT the kicker here is cloning and TOKENS .

    Say you make 3 emails and a single smart campaign to take care of the sends... now you get a request: "hey, that email drip was awesome, can you do that for our new partner?..." --> Now you need 5 minutes to clone the program set up any adapations and you are now ready to drop in content. By cloning the program, you will also clone all the extra goodies and failsafes you may have added in the interim.

    Set up an operational or "you name it" default channel. Drop your assets in there along with your flow/smart campaign and boom you can clone and go. The other advantage of using a default program is that you can nest Email or Event Programs inside . Then you can use tokens and all sorts of tricks to keep things easy for your other Marketo users.

    Side note: if you know you will get a request like that again, clone that program. remove any identifying info, and label it as a template... now you will have something you know works that you can clone again and again.

    Grégoire_Miche2
    Grégoire_Miche2
    Level 10
    March 28, 2018

    Hi Liz,

    Honestly, I am not sure I like this one. By Design, Marketo separates clearly the various components (emails, forms, LPs, workflows, ...) of a marketing "scenario" (a.k.a program) and makes each of them a reusable component.

    I prefer to organize the instance with the following rules:

    • No asset but forms in the design studio. All assets have to be in programs
    • No smart campaign outside of programs
    • always the same folder structure in programs
      • 01-Assets
        • 01-Emails
        • 02-LP
        • 03-Forms (if any, although shared forms from the design studio are preferable)
        • 04-Social
      • 02-Workflows (a.k.a smart campaigns)
      • 03-Lists/Smart Lists
      • 04-Reports

    -Greg

      David_Gallaghe2
      David_Gallaghe2
      Level 4
      March 29, 2018

      One challenge for you @Grégoire Michel: Sales alerts.

      • I find those are pretty handy to have in the design studio...
      • standard response,
      • a few tokens to make it program specific
      • now requested updates can be made in one place rather than every alert.

      Here's a con for you @David Gallagher​.

      Put that in an operational alert program... separated from your other programs that you call as needed. Then if you need to make variations you can.

      Your point is well made. Now I am debating myself... ok its late in the day -- time to bounce

      Dan_Stevens_
      Dan_Stevens_
      Level 10
      March 30, 2018

      We do the same thing - keep many of our general operational and alert emails stored centrally in DS:

      And then these can be used across programs: lead lifecycle, all of our 'website content' programs (where we send both a tokenized confirmation email with a direct link to download the file, and a tokenized campaign response email alert to the campaign/country marketing manager).  If we had these locally in the programs in MA, we wouldn't be able to use a single email for this.  Even program tokens work with these as long as the smart campaign that's referencing them is local to the program.

      Liz_Davalos
      Liz_DavalosAuthor
      Level 4
      March 29, 2018

      The problem is that I have smart campaigns that are feeding different nurture programs. It doesn't make sense (to me anyway) to place them under a nurture program when they are feeding several depending on different criteria. There are also overarching ones controlling things like black lists, managing unsubscribes from marketing vs. newsletter vs. operational (thanks GDPR). I get there may be a method to the madness, but I'm not seeing it...

      Dan_Stevens_
      Dan_Stevens_
      Level 10
      March 30, 2018

      But those should all be centralized/global programs that react to the specific/local activity where the emails physically reside, no?  We have a slew of global programs/smart campaigns that are built for this - this is just a small subset here:

      Liz_Davalos
      Liz_DavalosAuthor
      Level 4
      March 30, 2018

      I'm curious about your smart campaigns for UTM parameters. What are they doing, if you don't mind my asking? I inherited much of the setup in our instance of Marketo so is there an easy way to move emails from Marketing Activities to DS?

      K
      kh-lschutte
      February 4, 2020
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