A client recently asked me to setup an entry smart campaign for an Engagement Program. It sounded simple enough, until she explained how time-sensitive she needed this lead flow to be.
Here’s how she wanted it to work:
Step 1) A new record is created in Marketo, which triggers the entry smart campaign.
Step 2) The Welcome email (Email #1) is delivered immediately after the record is created.
Step 3) The record is then added to the first stream of the engagement program to receive the first email cast (Email #2) the next day, and only the next day.
And that’s where the challenge came from.
When I began to draft the flow for the smart campaign, I realized there was a problem with the wait step duration. After sending Email #1 in the flow, we would need to use a wait step with a duration of up to 1 day in order to prevent the record from receiving Email #2 on the same day of creation. However, using the “Wait duration of 1 day” wait step could cause the record to miss the next day’s engagement program cast, which was what we were trying to avoid.
Here’s how I set it up:
I decided to try using a Date Token wait step type instead of a Duration wait step type. The wait step would end on the {{system.date}} (whatever the current day is) plus 1 day at 1:00 AM. The only problem? Marketo’s Product Docs do not include any mention of using the {{system.date}} token in a wait step, so I needed to test my theory.
I set up the smart campaign logic:
Then, I created advanced wait step properties that included the {{system.date}}:
The result? Success! Here’s what the activity log looked like after I tested the flow:
Now, we were able to launch on time with a new a trick up our sleeves.
I also discovered another new trick along the way. It turns out that the Date Token wait step is not limited just to system tokens. It can also be used with lead, company, and program level tokens as well:
In the end, my client was happy, and I was happy to pass this solution on to our team of superheroes so that they could all take advantage of it, too. Now, I hope that my story can be utilized as a solution in your own Marketo instance!
