Three ways to build a Marketo nurture program

Nurtures are a great way to engage leads with consistent touchpoints that address objections and keep your brand top-of-mind throughout their journey.

Fundamentally, a nurture is a sequence of emails sent on a predetermined schedule based on a lead’s activity. Drip nurtures familiarize high funnel lead with your brand and mission, while activity nurtures take cues from their engagement (e.g. a click on a certain product) to deliver more targeted information and lead them towards a conversion.

Either way, a nurture campaign’s complexity depends on your business goals, and may include custom personalization, irregular cadences, branching logic, and more.

Marketo’s Engagement program type is purpose-built for nurturing leads, and incredibly flexible in how it can be used to create automated sequences that engage prospects as they flow through your lead funnel.

Here are three different ways you can structure your nurture campaign:

1. Email assets in an Engagement Stream

Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple. If your vision for the nurture is a basic series of emails to be sent at a consistent cadence (e.g. once per week), then Marketo’s native Engagement Streams fit the bill.

With minimal time and effort, you can set up a basic nurture campaign and start sending it to your leads.

Pros:

• Easy to understand with few potential points of failure
• Simple and straightforward to build and edit
• Engagement data feeds neatly into a useful dashboard

Cons:

• Limited to one cadence per stream
• Cannot apply custom filters or skip logic within an email cast
• Email assets need to be updated directly (instead of being replaced by a separate asset)
• Can become disorganized as the number of assets grows

To use Email assets in a Marketo Engagement Stream:

1. Create a new Engagement Program in the Marketing Activities section, and create the Email assets you will be using in your campaign.
2. From the main program, navigate to the Streams tab and create one or more streams for each series of emails (e.g. a general lead nurture might have a stream for high funnel prospects and another for low funnel ones).
3. Create transition rules if appropriate (e.g. a lead in the high funnel stream might transition to the low funnel stream once they reach a certain behaviour score).
4. Add each of the Email assets created in Step 2 into the appropriate stream, in descending order, then activate them.
5. Set a cadence for each stream. Note that all members of the stream will receive a cast on the First Cast date before entering the regular schedule, so select one as appropriate.
6. Add members into your stream through a Add to Engagement Program flow step or Person Action.

2. Default programs in stream

Default programs are Marketo’s most flexible type, especially when they’re used within in Engagement Stream.

Similar to using basic email assets, Default programs can be added to an Engagement Stream in descending order. Instead of sending an email directly, however, a Smart Campaign is called when the program is cast, which can contain logic to branch or filter recipients, delay sends, etc.

Pros:

• Fairly simple to understand, with only a limited number of points of potential failure
• Allows for additional logic to be built in, and thus more flexibility
• Can replace email assets, since the Smart Campaign can be reconfigured without affecting leads in the stream

Cons:

• Failures may not be immediately apparent
• Will become disorganized as more assets are added to an Engagement Stream
• Not compatible with built-in Engagement dashboard

To use Default programs in a Marketo Engagement Stream:

1. Create a new Engagement Program in the Marketing Activities section.
2. Create a Default program for every email in the nurture, and build each corresponding Email asset.
3. In each Default program, create a Smart Campaign that includes a Member of Engagement Program filter for your nurture and Engagement Stream, as well as a Send Email flow step calling your Email asset.
   • Any additional logic to be run at cast can also be included, alongside daisy chaining several Smart Campaigns together using Request or Execute Campaign flow steps.
4. From the main program, navigate to the Streams tab and create one or more streams for each series of emails (e.g. a general lead nurture might have a stream for high funnel prospects and another for low funnel ones).
5. Create transition rules if appropriate (e.g. a lead in the high funnel stream might transition to the low funnel stream once they reach a certain behaviour score).
6. Add each of the Default programs created in Step 2 into the appropriate stream in descending order, selecting the Smart Campaign created in Step 3 to be called, then activate them.
7. Set a cadence for each stream. Note that all members of the stream will receive a cast on the First Cast date before entering the regular schedule, so select it as appropriate.
8. Add members into your stream through a Add to Engagement Program flow step or Person Action.

3. Custom routing

While Marketo’s Engagement Streams are easy to use and manage, there are certain limitations that may not be compatible with your vision for the nurture.

For example, you may want to send emails in a different order and/or at a custom cadence (i.e. wait one day before sending the first email, three days before the second, etc.) for a specific segment.

By using Smart Campaigns to move leads through your nurture, you can build in complex logic using the many flow steps available. However, the complexity of building, managing, and updating such a program should be a significant consideration.

Pros:

• Allows for much more flexibility and the implementation of wholly complex logic
• Can update and replace emails and Smart Campaigns in a cast directly
• Assets can be placed in folders for organization

Cons:

• Much more complex to set up
• Does not utilize native nurture features such as Cadence, Exhaustion, etc.
• Many potential points of failure, many of which may not be immediately apparent
• Likely to include a significant number of daisy chained Smart Campaigns, resulting in a larger, more unstable program
• Custom reporting must be utilized to measure performance

Best practices for custom routed Nurture campaigns:

A custom routed Nurture campaign can be built in many different ways depending on what features are needed, but most will contain the following necessary components:

• A Smart Campaign to process and distribute new leads
  • You can add leads into an Engagement Stream to use the Cadence value (Normal/Paused) in your Smart List filters, instead of a custom lead field
• Smart Campaigns to send each email
  • You can also include extra filters and/or wait steps as necessary, and/or daisy chain additional Smart Campaigns for branching logic
  • Should contain a Request or Execute Campaign flow step to call the Smart Campaign responsible for sending the next email
• The email assets to be sent
• Smart Campaigns to manage Nurture exits (e.g. success and unsubscribes)

Smart Campaigns within custom routed programs will often call/be called through Request Campaign or Execute Campaign flow steps.

Planning is key

It is not a simple task to convert from one approach to another, so ensure that you understand the long term goals for the nurture and limitations of each approach.

While it may be tempting to go with basic Email assets to get it off the ground quickly, it is considerably more inflexible than the other two options which may restrict future development.

Likewise, a fully custom build is likely more scalable for an organization with an evolving approach to different segments. However, if reasonable governance is not exercised, things can quickly turn into an overwhelming spider web of logic that is prone to unnoticed errors.

Like many things in Marketing Operations, each approach for structuring your next Marketo nurture program has its tradeoffs. Planning, and setting the right expectations accordingly, is key to success.