Understanding the Nuances of Wait Steps in Marketo
Marketo's wait steps are powerful means for orchestrating your campaigns’ flow steps, allowing you to precisely time flow steps. However, navigating the nuances of wait steps requires a careful approach to ensure your campaigns run smoothly and effectively.
When a person enters a wait step in Marketo, Marketo records not only the duration of the wait but also the subsequent flow step number. This means that even if you decide to swap out the flow step following the wait step, Marketo will still direct the person to the originally designated step based on its stored step number. This mechanism ensures continuity in the flow, regardless of any changes made after the wait step.
However, this doesn't mean you can freely add or remove flow steps without consequences. Removing flow steps in a sequence with wait steps can lead to unexpected behavior. People may skip over subsequent steps as they come out of it (rare, but have seen this happening in a production instance!)
Consider this scenario: you have a drip campaign set up with multiple send email steps spaced with wait steps to space out email sends. While this approach may seem logical initially, it poses risks when it comes to managing and updating your campaign. Modifying the flow could result in unintended consequences, potentially disrupting the customer experience and diminishing the effectiveness of your efforts.
Instead, leveraging Marketo's Engagement programs can offer a more robust solution for orchestrating drip campaigns. Engagement programs provide a structured framework for managing emails, allowing you to schedule and deliver content regularly per the stream set cadence.
In conclusion, while wait steps offer valuable functionality for timing interactions in Marketo, exercising caution and foresight is essential when incorporating them into your campaigns.
Happy Marketo’ing! 💜