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Why timing is everything in Pardot Engagement Studios

Best Practices, Tips & Tricks Leave a comment

When creating an email series or drip campaign in Account Engagement (Pardot), getting the timing right on wait steps is so important.

Unlike other MAPs, Account Engagement does not have specific “wait” steps to add to a flow.

Instead the waiting is added to the next step in the Engagement Studio. For example, send an email and then on the next email, add a wait step of two days after the Prospect arrives at the step before sending.

When you include Evaluation or Listen steps to the process the timing becomes more important.

Your instinct might be to set the wait step on the next email before you send it.

In an Engagement Studio with three emails and Listen steps after each email sending step, you should add the wait step to that step, not the next email send step.

Example:

Send email 1
Listen for email link click (set wait/evaluation to two days after prospect joins step
Send email 2 (send immediately)

Repeat the process above for each of the email sends and evaluation steps.

By doing this you are ensuring that the process of evaluating the email actions from the previous email happens in a fluid motion followed immediately by sending the second email.

The second email will be sent two days after the first, and you will have given the recipients of the first email two days to take actions that would send them down the Yes or No path.

I have made the mistake in the past of setting the wait steps on the email send step and not the evaluation step. When that is chosen the email sends and the listen step is immediately evaluated, which ensures no one goes down the Yes path and has necessary actions taken.

Don’t make the same mistake!

(NB yes I know evaluating on email clicks is not best practice, it’s only for the sake of the example 🤪)

Ben LaMothe
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