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Outreach versus Program - who should win and when?

  • 12 June 2019
  • 6 replies
  • 176 views
nick_emmett
I'm a little confused, after reading some of the documentation, about when to use an Outreach and when to use a Program.



My initial thought on this was to use Outreach for single hit emails, where I might refresh the powerlist each day but send the same email to the new members of the list. I would then use Programs when I had a linked series of emails - for example a weekly onboarding series for new Community members.



I then read today it's something to do with sending emails at different times - what do you guys reckon?



I'm just creating a set of emails that will be singular, not part of a series, and was about to create an Outreach for them - we have our onboarding series set up in a Program and it works perfectly for us there.



Interested in your thoughts.



Nick


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Best answer by diane_morneau 8 July 2019, 14:32

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john_apple
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We mostly use programs now because the participant query and setup are all containerized rather than a separate powerlist and outreach section to modify. We can also clone an existing program and make minor changes without have to rebuild the outreach or powerlist. Programs also allow for exclusions, say if you know you dont want to send to some contacts. Additionally you can build custom mapped fields in Programs to pull data from any object you’ve included in your query.



We still use outreaches for occasional one offs because we already had a powerlisf and outreach built.



I think it really depends on how customized you need to the engagement to be. I did learn that you can’t send an email template with a survey embedded/linked in an email chain Program - it has to a be survey type program which has a lot of prebuilt steps. You cna however use an email template with a survey linked in an Outreach.



I’ve found it easier to build Programs and teach others that are new to Gainsight Journey Orchestrator but there are some scenarios where Outreaches can still be useful. As far as the time condition for Outreaches, you need to have a field that defines time as part of the powerlist and for us we don’t have a time delimiter field on accounts or contacts that would fit for sending at different times.


nick_emmett
Thanks for the reply @john_apple - I think I may switch my Outreach to a program in that case - I take it your use of Programs includes cases where there is one singular email, rather than a series of emails?


john_apple
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Correct - I would say most are single email sends. Some are one-offs but we also have some that are syncing daily to send to new accounts or to send a report.



Also, with Programs you can get a more elaborate query for your participants. For example, we have queries that pull data from multiple objects, merge them and potentially even do data transformation to provide a calculation or a count of something. If we had to do that with Powerlists and Outreaches, we'd likely be creating several different powerlists and outreaches to run concurrently rather than just the one Program to rule them all.


dstokowski
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Our product investment is going to Programs - so definitely recommend using that. We are working on optimizing for single reach type Programs too in our roadmap.


diane_morneau
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I did a comparison a while back as I was the early adopter of Program at my company. Perhaps it will help some people.



Why use Outreach



For scheduled single piece mailings like one offs, date specific mailings or straight forward campaigns. You can specify a field to control the timing of the distribution of mailings by time zone, avoiding the trouble and the management of multiple copies as is the case currently with Program.



Why use Program



For email chains requiring embedded email logic (like ensuring first message read before next one, conditional steps, etc.)



For the best survey experience (like integrating survey question into email)



For csv sourced mailings (and avoid having to import names in SF)



When you need to combine data from multiple tables to pick the recipients or include information in emails (you may need to code your own validation if the program is multistep)



When you need to plan mailings across relationships to avoid duplicates (faster than doing this filtering in Excel and then doing a csv-input mailing)



Why use eMail Assist



When you need the mailings to go out under control of CSMs (for timing or to allow customization - example Welcome letters)



For mailings which are timed by actions controlled by Playbooks



For responses to alerts


dan_ahrens
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@abhishek_sivaraman - can you share some of your current updates related to more granular control of scheduling of programs? It sounds like that's one area where more precise controls would be appreciated vs. legacy outreaches.


VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint

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