Personalizing Marketo batch campaign email delivery times using Seventh Sense

Seventh Sense uses Static Lists within Marketo to personalize the send times for an email delivery. This document shows how to build a send time optimized batch campaign in Marketo and schedule that campaign using Seventh Sense.

Batch campaigns are a little more complex to configure than trigger campaigns but have the benefit that they are not limited by the performance of the Marketo trigger queue, which can only process a few thousand actions per hour.

In Marketo

Create a new Program

Please note, this is a critical step in building your campaign as Marketo can have performance limitations when you have a more complex folder structure.  You can still nest this program underneath folders, but your campaign assets should live within the Program.  When your Smart Campaign is in a Program, Seventh Sense will only search within the Program for your Source and Delivery list making them much faster to load and find.  When you follow the below steps, your program structure will look similar to the below once everything is set up.

Create or choose Source List

Source lists must be Static Lists inside Marketo for Seventh Sense to "see" them. If necessary, you can build a static list from an existing smart list or set of smart list criteria. Please refer to Building Static Lists in Marketo for more details.

For newsletters, blog posts or mailings that are regular to a specified list, a daily update of the list is recommended which provides for similar capabilities as a smart list.

We recommend naming the list based on the campaign name, something like "<My Campaign> - Source List" and putting it in the Program you created above.

Create a new (empty) Delivery List

In order to schedule batch campaign using Seventh Sense, the system needs an empty "Delivery List". We recommend naming the list based on the campaign name, something like "<My Campaign> - Delivery List".

Follow the instructions for Building Static Lists in Marketo to create a new empty list and put it in the same Program with the Source list you created above. Seventh Sense will upload the members of the Source List to this list as their top delivery time rolls around, and then schedule a batch mailing on the campaign, so we must include this list as a filter in the smart campaign.

Create a new Smart Campaign in your Program

 

Define the "Smart List" for the campaign:

Add a "Member of List" Filter to the campaign. For the "List", select the (empty) delivery list you just created.

Select the email you would like to send, then define the "Flow" for your Campaign. In this case, we want a single step of "Send Email."

Instructions on creating emails in Marketo can be found here.

On the schedule tab, ensure that the campaign is configured not to allow duplicates.

In Seventh Sense

Open the Seventh Sense Application and click the "Marketing" drop-down, select "Lists" from the menu.

 

In the “Lists” screen find (“Filter”) the list(s) which you’d like to personalize delivery to. If the list was recently created, you may need to click "Refresh Lists" under "Actions" in order to bring the list names up-to-date. You should see both your new "Delivery List" and your "Source List" now. Make sure to select the "Source" list and click on the “Personalize" link.

Fill out the personalize delivery screen:

1. Start Delivery – This is the start date / time that the window of delivery should take place
2. End Delivery – This is the end date / time that the window of delivery should take place
3. Batch Campaign – This is the smart campaign that was defined above
4. Use Delivery List - The checkbox on the right must be checked, and you must select the empty "delivery list" we created previously. 
5. Delivery Scheme - Allows randomization or split testing in addition to personalization.
6. Email Engagement Level - Allows suppression of customers with declining engagement trend.
7. Name - Set the name for your campaign.
8. Submit – Upon submitting, Seventh Sense will determine the most optimal time for each contact and schedule to add each contact to the workflow

p.s. If the campaign name and delivery list name are similar enough to the source list name, the dialog will guess them for you automatically. 

Seventh Sense will first ensure it has up-to-date contact information for the list, then determine the optimal delivery time for each recipient. Once this is complete, clicking the "Details" link next to the email under "Marketing" will present a list of all the scheduled deliveries and some statistics on the mailing.

The Seventh Sense system will monitor this list, uploading contacts to the delivery list you defined previously as each person's scheduled delivery time arrives. Once the upload completes, Seventh Sense will initiate a batch send on the campaign. Within a few minutes after a message is marked as "SENT" in Seventh Sense, it should be visible in the Marketo campaign, along with any captured engagement information.

You will also be able to see the delivery history under the "status" tab of the smart campaign in the "Last Run" section.