With the advent of Marketo’s Engagement Program, much of what has been said before about lead nurturing in Marketo is out of date.
Or is it?
On December 10, I had the pleasure of presenting a short talk to the Boston Marketo User Group entitled, “Engagements vs. Drip Nurturing: Is Drip Really Dead?” I created this after working with a client who wanted to translate a drip program into an Engagement. As I walked through Engagements with them, it became clear their goals and intended cadences were not quite suited for Engagements. To complicate things, we were using Spark, giving us only one stream to work with.
I came up with a few different workarounds for her, which I outline in the slides below. First, I recommend understanding what you are doing with that nurturing program. Is an Engagement always the best choice?
- What are your goals?
- What is the purpose of this program?
- Are you sure that cadence needs to change?
Why Might an Engagement Not Be a Good Choice?
- One time drip flow – if this is a throwaway, don’t bother building an Engagement.
- Welcome Program – this is the use case I mentioned. It seems that getting someone to engage with your product may not always work well with Engagements.
- You only have 4 Active Engagements with 1 Stream each.
- You don’t care about the Engagement Score.
- You don’t care about content swapping and data.
Yes, Drip Nurturing is Still Allowed
In the situation with my client, I ultimately recommended a Drip Program nested inside an Engagement. They wanted to continually add content afterwards. With a one stream limit, this seemed to be the easiest way to accomplish her goal. Other options include:
- Drip Nurture triggered by sign up, then Request Campaign or Engagement.
- Drip Nurture separate from Engagement, so Engagement is triggered by another action.
- Nest Drips inside Engagement.
My point here is that Engagements allow you to do more creative work with existing and new drip nurture Programs. And that Engagements may not always solve nurturing for you. It just depends on your goals.
One caveat before you go back to work: nesting Programs means the Program runs independently of the Stream’s Cadence, so you may want to temporarily adjust the cadence using the Program’s flow actions.
Engagements vs. Drip Nurturing:
How to Do Lead Nurturing in Marketo (March 2013)
*This is a bonus chapter from the Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketo. This chapter’s now free because Engagements made some of this obsolete, yet interesting anyway.
Remember, Friday is the absolutely last and final day to buy the Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketo. After this, it’s going away forever. (I’ve also lowered the price!).
[…] This stage is where most firms get stuck. They may sort of have a basic lead lifecycle, but it’s about routing, not conversation rates (Stage 4). They start to build a few drip campaigns, but nothing that matches “lead nurturing.” Some firms will try to move into Stage 4 and may or may not have success there, but eventually they all have to go back to Stage 3. A few times I’ve seen firms reach Stage 4 or even into Stage 5, but demand generation never did much in Stage 3, so there is a giant gap in program capability. Avoid this pit and think hard about nurturing. Marketing should build the capability to automate the company’s story. Your team has solid automation skills, now build out drips. I’ve written about how to build nurturing here and here. […]