When our company began using Eloqua 10 we found that we needed a way to reserve segments to be used for future dates. The idea here is that by reserving a segment you could then suppress those users from similar emails going out in the same time frame. By using a combination of a shared list, a segment and the campaign canvas I was able to approximate this functionality. This is not a perfect solution and it requires a bit of work (you end up building a campaign for each week of the year), but it does ensure that our audience is not inundated with a wave of similar emails on the same day or week. Additionally, if we provide a quote to a client or salesperson for a set number of emails, by reserving the segment we know that we have that same number of users available to be targeted on the day requested.
A simple alternative to the method I describe below involves building a shared filter: Build a shared filter that filters for users who have received at least one email from the email group you are interested in within the past day, week or whatever time range you like. Add that shared filter to your campaign as a decision step. Users that get caught in the filter can either drop off of the campaign or you can put them in a wait step and run them through the decision step at a later time. This approach works well if you do not need to guarantee a certain number of emails going out on a certain day.
Goal:
In the end you will be scheduling and suppressing users contained in segments based on the type of email group they are going to be emailed. In this case, we are using an email group "Press Release" as an example.
The workflow:
- A marketer informs you that they need a set of names that meet a certain criteria for a press release email for a new product announcement happening next month.
- You build the query in Eloqua, save the segment and you report back to the marketer letting them know the number of names you have available for them.
- The marker replies happily with: "Excellent - I want to target all those names. We must email all of these users on 02/05/2014. I'll get you the HTML a few days before then."
- You now need to reserve the names in this segment because you know that there are going to be a series of other press releases going out that same week and you don't want to hit the same audience with a multiple emails that look the same a muddle your messaging.
- When the next marketer requests a similar mailing for this same week, as you build the segment you will exclude the names that are already reserved. The count that you provide for this second request will reflect what is actually available.
Built it:
- Create a new shared list called 02-03-2014 Fatigue Press Release (note that 02/03 is the Monday, the first day of the week for the week of our scheduled email)
- Create a new segment called 02-03-2014 Fatigue Press Release
- You only need to add one criteria to this segment: "Sent Emails from Email Groups" - set the email group to the type you are concerned with and set the date range as "within 2/03/2014 - 02/07/2014"
- Why bother with this step if we only care about segments scheduled in the future? Because adding this segment means that if we accidentally forget to schedule our segments, at least they will get added to our system once they deploy.
- Build a campaign called02-03-2014 Fatigue Press Release
- Now, add the segment and shared list we built and add one wait step. Set the wait step to hold for 90 days.
- Connect the elements as in the image below:
- Now, right-click on the segment and select "configure" and chose the selection for "add members hourly until campaign is deactivated"
- Note: only make this setting for this one segment. The other segments should have standard configuration.
You are now at a key point in the process. If you stop adding items to this campaign and go ahead and activate it, you will have a built a sort of collector campaign . It will will add anyone who gets sent an email of the type you specified in the 2/03/2014 - 02/07/2014 daterange to the shared list.
- To make the magic happen, you need to add the segment that you want to have reserved to this campaign, then activate the campaign. Like so:
- Activate the campaign now. Users will flow from the "segment that I want to reserve" into the shared list. And now that those users are in a shared list you can suppress them from any segment or campaign.
- When you need to schedule another segment for this same week, just deactivate this campaign, add it to the campaign, and reactivate it.
Rinse and Repeat:
- The ugly side of this process is that you have to create a new shared list, segment and campaign for each week. But you can speed up this build process by building all these elements in big chunks of time. Once you are comfortable you should be able to build a few months worth in just an hour.
Notes:
- What if you forget to add segments to the reservation campaign? If that happens, some users may get a few extra emails, but by adding that first segment to the campaign those users will still get added to the shared list once they get sent an email. So if you are building segments later on during the week, at least the users who got an email on Monday are going to be included in the shared list.
- Before you jump into this, consider how many segments you would be adding to one of these campaigns and how often a segments gets rescheduled.
- You can, of course, include multiple email groups in this one setup. You would just need to add those email groups to the filter criteria of the one segment that you build for each week.
Please let me know if I can clarify anything or if you have suggestions for a better approach.