Programs within Engagement Programs

The child Program runs indepdendent of the Engagement cadence. Thus when the Cast triggers the Program, the Program starts to run according to whatever wait steps.

Then the Engagement will go on to the next Cast.

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

Thanks Josh. Just to clarify - when the cast triggers the program, it will start that program's flow and run it for however many weeks the program ones (in my example above, 4 weeks), then it will run the next cast? 

Also, if I want the engagement program to start people through the flow everyday (for example if I set it to go on Tuesday and someone qualifies to be added on Wednesday, I don't want them to wait a whole week to start), but I still wanted two weeks between each email once the person starts. Could I just make sure to add a wait step after the last email in the program, so once the next cast is triggered, it has been two weeks since they last got an email from the program?


For example: 

Program 1: Send Email  ---> Wait 2 weeks ---> Send email  ---> wait 13 days 
----- The next cast gets triggered on day 14
Program 2: Send Email, etc. 

I think you might have misunderstood Joshs comment.

The engagement program doesn't care if your content is an email or program - it handles every content the same and sends it out according to the cadance. Which means that the programs will be run parallell to the engagement program.

To make it send out all emails in one program and then go on to the next you will have to plan carefully. For example make all programs last 6 weeks (with a send out every second week) and then have the cadance hit every eight week. Then a member of the engagement program would get an email every second week.

I don't think it's possible to make the program run on an individual level since there is no option for this in the cadance, so this might be something for mkto to develop for a future update :)

Hi Erica - sorry to keep banging on about this, but I am still confused about what in parallel means in this case. 

I now understand that the engagement program will run according to it's cadence, no matter what I have set in any nested programs. If I have a nested program with multiple emails within it as part of a stream, do I need to add wait steps? For example, if I have 3 emails within the nested program, do I need to add wait steps in between or will it send according to my cadence (let's say every 2 weeks)?

Or, if I have multiple emails within the nest programs will it send those out AND also send out the next cast to them, meaning that they will recieve multiple emails? 

Thanks!

No problem, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out this program myself :)

In the engagement program wait steps can only be added between the streams. If you want a "wait step" inside the stream you'll have to create a program that includes nothing but wait, so when the cadence hits nothing will be sent out.
Wait steps inside nested programs will not affect the engagement program at all, only the nested program itself.

Think of it as if the nested program is not a part of the engagement program at all, the engagement program is just being nice and launching it for you (to its own members).

Lets say you have a stream with cadence set to every monday. In the stream you have a program with 10 emails that is going to be sent out every day.

week 1
monday: cadence sends content (it's actually activating the batched campaign that is set to send out the first email in the nested program)
tuesday - sunday: program sends email 2-7

week 2
monday: cadence sends next content AND program sends email 8
tuesday: program sends email 9
wednesday: program sends email 10.

If the content sent out in week 2 were also a program with multiple daily emails they would receive 2 emails on monday-wednesday. But here's where the communicatin limit comes in so they might not be getting multiple emails at all but instead not receive all of them (and no, emails that are skipped due to comm limit is not being automatically sent out again).

Hoped this helped to make things clearer!

Very helpful thanks!