This page focuses on emails and nurture programs, owned and managed by Lifecycle Marketing, Marketing Campaigns, and Marketing Operations. The Campaigns Team is heavily focused on driving leads from Unknown > Inquiry > SAO, leveraging an "always on", logic-based and persona-driven nurture engine.
The Intelligent Email Nurture (launched 2021-12-17) aims at progressing leads from INQ > SAO, and leverages segment/region data to provide the *right offer to the right person at the right time - based on their segment, region, and placement in the buyer journey (lead funnel), with persona-focus as a second iteration.*
Related Handbook: Email Management
Key foundational elements to achieve this:
The calendar below documents the emails to be sent via Marketo for:
Note: emails in the future may be pushed out if timelines are not met for email testing, receiving lists from event organizers late, etc. The calendar will be updated if the email is pushed out.
In the event of an severity::1 (critical) security vulnerability email communication is needed during the holidays, please create an issue using the incident_communications template and ping in #marketing_programs tagging @marketing-programs and #mktgops. Follow addititonal directions here.
**The following process is the technical process for creating a new email send program that is then activated in the appropriate streams/channels of the Intelligent Nurture. The project management process is integrated into the epic/issue creation for our core tactics that would be dropped into the nurture (new content, webcasts, workshops, analyst reports).
A Campaign FolderType-ShortContentName (i.e. ebook-scaledci or webcast-simlifycicd or wrkshp-security)Master Email Programs (Intelligent Nurture)Link to New Marketo Program
After you have created the Email Program (see above: Creating a nurture email program for the Intelligent Nurture) and tested your email (including checking UTM parameters), your email is ready to be activated in the Intelligent Nurture.
Work with the Campaigns Team to indicate the appropriate streams for the offer to be included (this is based on segment/region/funnel stage).
Type section, select ProgramProgram Name section, begin to type in the name of the corresponding email program (i.e. ebook-10stepsciso) and select the program you created for this offerSmart Campaign section, select 01 Send ControllerActivate if it is not an upcoming eventEdit Availability if it is an upcoming event and set the "End Date" for the date of the event. This will automatically stop the email from sending when the event has taken place.What happens to Marketo when a contact is a member of a program equal to True.
Marketo within the engagement programs will try to send the number 1 email of the stream. If the contact does not comply with the requirements, Marketo will try to send the mail number 2 and so on until only 2 things happen: 1 – that the mail is sent or 2 – that no mail is sent from the stream and the contact becomes exhausted.
In the image below there is an explicit way on how Marketo “plays” with the send controller of 2 different emails on the same day.
The ONLY way for a contact to advance from one stream to another is when it generates enough interaction and its scoring increases enough to move it from RAW to INQ from INQ to MQL or from MQL to SAO.
Also the only way for a contact who already has exhausted status to change status is to continue adding new content in the streams.
Which would lead us to the next solution. Once the contacts fall into exhausted status they should be moved to a list of "Non-Responders" and then moved to a specific Nurture to increase interaction with the company.
UTMs
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The following are active GTM motion nurture programs, which each contain content streams for awareness, consideration, and decision/purchase stages. They send bi-weekly with the date of deployment included in each bullet. The Prespriptive Buyers Journey Nurtures have separate tracks for Practitioners and for Managers. They are designed so that they send the right content at the right time to the right persona (aligning with to stage of the buyers journey).
Note: Nurtures were moved from every-other-week to be weekly on 2021-01-16 to accelerate INQ > MQL conversion. Issue for Reference >
Note: Salesforce campaigns should NEVER be created for emails or nurture programs. This is because the utms within the emails are captured on the Bizible touchpoints to tell us about this channel driving engagement.
Note: in our future state nurture system, leads would be nurtured appropriately through logic based on:
These future state nurture programs will be aligned to GTM Motions, with three streams to clearly designate the stage of the buyer journey (Awareness, Consideration, and Purchase/Decision) and therefore deliver content relevant to their stage of the buyer journey.
With Intelligent Email Nurture launched, all net-new leads will be automatically added to their appropriate nurture program. We are still migrating existing leads into the programs, so in the meantime, for programs that were set up before 2021-12-15, there still be an add to nurture smart campaign. That should be updated as follows:
Update the smartlist and run: Remove all other smartlist steps except the two noted below
NOTE: These are pre-built in the templates, no need to edit!Member of smartlist IN Nurture Emailable - DO NOT EDIT*Air Traffic Control Automation.00 - Movement - Existing Leads ProcessorRun Once > Choose Run Now > Click RunOnce activated, the leads will flow through the appropriate processing campaigns to put them in the right nurture. If they are already in an existing nurture program, they will not be added. That means you do not need to filter out new vs existing leads when updating the smart campaign above.
There is no need to request addition of leads to a nurture, since all leads will be in their appropriate nurture at all times.
To see all the emails, click here
To see slide deck, click here
These are also known as:
We launched these for:
Iterations:
We changed send time from 9am UTC every day (5am on the US east coast, 2am pacific) to 4PM UTC. This Change went live April 29, 2021. We could use April 30th forward for a comparison.
Who’s part of this project?
So what’s the deal?
Basically, we have a series of emails that deploy to net new namespaces. The goal is to get free users to use features of the product. There are 4 tracks - adopt Create, adopt Verify, invite Team, try a Trial. Each track has 3 emails that try to nudge users to take action. If a user takes the action referenced in the email, they will not get the next email in the series.
Keep in mind that:
Sisense data
From email and reply-to email
team @ gitlab.com - which is a group inbox. Amy is also a member of this group inbox.
Mailgun
These emails are sent “from the product” meaning the growth engineers build the emails in the product and use Mailgun as the SMTP. All of these emails are tagged “marketing” in Mailgun so when you view analytics, it’s an aggregate look for all of these emails. There is also a Mailgun unsubscribe link. All of this data lives in Mailgun.
HTML files
All of the HTML email files are in Litmus.
For more in-depth information about how these emails are implemented, please view the project epic and all associated project issues.
Open an issue using the Newsletter Request Template, including the newsletter send date in the issue title.
Epic of Past and Upcoming Newsletters
A day or two before the issue due date, create the newsletter draft. It's easiest to clone the last newsletter in Marketo:
YYYYMMDD_Newsletter Template, right click and select Clone.A Campaign Folder.Name field enter the name following the newsletter template naming format YYYYMMDD_Newsletter Name.Folder field select Newsletter & Security Release. You do not need to enter a description.Bi-weekly Newsletters, Monthly Newsletters or Quarterly Newsletters).Newsletter.Edit draft.HTML button on the menu bar and edit the HTML so you don't inadvertently lose formatting.Email actions from the menu at the top, then Send sample to preview.Person field, then in Send to you can add any other emails you'd like to send a preview too. We recommend sending a sample to the newsletter requestor (or rebecca@ from the content team for marketing newsletters) for final approval.Approve and close from the Email actions menu.Schedule box, enter the send date and select Recipient time zone if the option is available.Head start is checked too.Approval box, click on Approve program.Until our foundational Marketo database segmentations (noted in the overview at the top of this handbook page) are rolled out, there are challenges in targeting audiences efficiencly. If you would like to propose an MVC email, please remember that the tactical execution may be beyond bandwidth constraints.
For one-time emails (i.e. a blast to promote a program for which we do not receive leads):
A campaign folderAd-hoc (one time) emailsYYYYMMDD_NameOfEmail where YYYYMMDD is date of send (i.e. 20210603_DORAsurvey)How-to videos:
Target list issue templates are an interim solution while foundational work is being complete for overall Marketo database audience stretegy for lifecycle marketing engine (DRI: Nout Boctor-Smith).
sales segment Marketo segmentregion Marketo segmentsub-region Marketo segmentWhat to do with DemandBase Lists: In the Marketo smartlist, add filter for either Account ID (18) or Email Address (depending on what is provided in the DemandBase target list export that the requester has submited) and paste the list of Account IDs or Email Address from the DemandBase target list export.
To assist in building email target lists, MktgOps has developed a series of Marketo smart lists that can be used to determine how active a lead is based on specific time increments. Call on these smart lists to get the most up to date active user list for your email sends. The smart lists are located in the Database section of Marketo. They are:
PLEASE READ IMPORTANT NOTE IN SECTION ABOVE PRIOR TO SUBMITTING
To request an email send, please open an issue for consideration of your MVC email idea, and provide as much detail as possible (especially around the audience), and please respect if the determination is that "the juice isn't worth the squeeze" and that we may want to delay the launch until some foundational audience segmentations are established. Please review the Email Review Protocol section below for more detail.
SLA: There is a standard 5 Business Day SLA in place for new email requests. All details in the "Submitter Checklist" of the issue must be complete in order to be triaged to the appropriate Campaign Manager.
*Urgent security emails are exempt from this SLA.
All links in email sends, going to about.gitlab.com will need to be appended with utm parameters, following the nomenclature outlined in this document. This is the way we track and give attribution to emails.
Below are the information from the issue template that will need to be filled out before the Campaign Manager will create the email in the appropriate system:
Go to this page to read more about email management and the different types of emails.
Marketing related ad-hoc emails are sent at the discretion of the Campaigns team.
Terms of Service or Privacy Policy updates that impact all users must be announced on the company meeting, in the #whats-happening-at-gitlab and #community-advocates Slack channels, and approved according to the table below prior to submitting the Email Request.
Support and Security emails sent to a small subset of users should be announced in #community-advocates and #support_escalations Slack channels, and mentioned in #whats-happening-at-gitlab if relevant.
The approval table below applies to non-Marketing emails.
| Users to be contacted | Approval by |
|---|---|
| < 1,000 | reply-to owner |
| 1,001-4,999 | PR, reply-to owner, community advocate |
| 5,000-499,999 | PR, reply-to owner, community advocate, director+ in originating department |
| 500,000+ | PR, reply-to owner, community advocate, director+ in originating department, e-group member |
To view current benchmarks in Marketo, go to the Email Insights Tab.
Delivery Rate:
Our delivery rate should be in the high 90s. Anything below this number needs to be addressed. A low delivery rate could be indicative of two things: poor list quality or the wrong email service provider.
How is the delivery rate calculated? Number of emails delivered divided by number of emails sent.
Example: 950/1000 = 95% Delivery Rate.
Open Rate:
Our email open rate is directly tied to our subject line and possibly our subheader. What is considered a good open rate will vary by industry, but on average, a healthy open rate may be anywhere between 15%-25%.
If our open rate is low, consider testing different subject lines or preheaders to see what style works best with our customers. How is the open rate calculated? Number of emails opened divided by the number of emails delivered.
Example: 200/1000 = 20% Open Rate
Click Through Open Rate:
There are several factors which could go into a low click-through-to-open rate, such as our email design, our content, our call to action — really any element in the body of our email.
It is a little more challenging to isolate what may be causing a low click-through-to-open rate, which is why we need to set up some A/B test splits to determine the cause.
How to calculate the Click Through Open Rate: Unique Clicks divided by number of emails open.
Example: 50/200 = 25%
Opt-Out Rate:
Generally a good (low) unsubscribe (or opt-out rate) is below 0.2%. But anything above 1% is a problem. Determining why customers are opting out can be a challenge, so be proactive. Set up a brief survey for people who do opt out asking why.
How is the Opt-out rate calculated? Total Opt-outs divided by the number of emails delivered.
Example: 5/950 = 0.5% Unsubscribe Rate.
What are email templates? An email template is a reusable HTML file that is used to build email campaigns (according to Litmus).
Why are email templates important? Using an email template allows you to produce campaigns faster, since the underlying code is already written. Instead of having to rewrite an entire email from scratch for every send, you can simply add copy, images, and links to an existing template before testing and sending it to your subscribers (according to Litmus).
What email templates are available for us to use? In Marketo (Design Studio > Email Templates), the following email templates are available:
| Template Name in MKTO | Use For | Image Specs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| A - Event Invite v2.0 | Events or asset downloads | Background image - jpg 600px wide. Example here. | Top button is not removable |
| B - Newsletter Dark Mode v1.0 | DevOps Download developer newsletter only | The only image we swap out is the background image of the release section - 600px wide. The top image (infinity loop) is 600px wide also. | For DevOps Download newsletter only |
| C - Event Invite 2 buttons and speakers v1.0 | Webcast invitations, events, ABM, anything really | Headline background image - 600px wide; Speaker images - 300px wide | The text version will need to be updated manually due to limitations with marketo variables |
| D - Letter format v1.0 | Any letter-like communication such as account update | N/A | N/A |
| E - Newsletter Remote v1.0 | Remote newsletter only | TBD | N/A |
Template notes
If you don't have Marketo access and would like to see what the email templates look like, please view the project Epic and corresponding issues.
NOTE: It is very important that you format your copy to align with the design of the email template you're using. This will improve efficiency of building emails, and ensure copy is best fit to the layout.
What if I want a custom email template? You may submit a request for a custom layout, but please note that the critical priority currently is to efficiently launch emails and nurtures into market. In your request, please tag @nbsmith and clearly describe why the existing layout is not satisfactory, how often and broadly the requested template will be used, and quantifiable benefits we anticipate from the new layout. To reiterate: Upon implementation of the critical emails and nurtures, we plan to devote more time and energy to developing and testing new templates, however the launch of lifecycle emails takes precedence over these requests.
All Campaign Managers and reviewers should adhere to the following protocol for every marketing email that is sent to ensure brand consistency and quality in our email program.
We use both Marketo and MailJet to send ad-hoc emails. Marketo is the primary system for all marketing emails and the regularly scheduled security updates. MailJet should be used for emails to gitlab.com users as these users are not in our marketing systems (unless they have signed up for content). Examples of emails to be sent through MailJet: Critical security updates, support updates that impact a specific subset of users, suspicious account activity notifications.
To send via MailJet, fill out an issue and follow protocol found here.
In some cases, when invitations need to be more specific for an event, the Sales Nominated flows are used to allow sales to nominate who will receive the invite.
Note: if someone is nominated, but is unmailable (due to unsubscribe, invalid email, or hard bounce), they will not receive the invitation.
Sales Nominated automation smart lists are applied to Marketo program templates where sales nominated flows are relevant.
Review the Email:
Send sameple to the DRI for the program (i.e. workshop owner) who is responsible for testing and QAing the email. The email can be found under the Assets folder in the program. For some programs, the Marketo My Tokens are included in the Sales Nominated invite to make the email setup more efficient.
Review the smartlist and schedule recurrence of email:
Schedule RecurrenceYou can remove specific recurrences of scheduled sales nominated deployments. The FMC is responsible for this change for field marketing activities, and campaign managers are responsible for this change for demand generation activities.
To cancel a send, follow these directions.
Example:
| Add to google calendar | Add to other calendar |
Note: gmail inboxes a majority of our sends, according to litmus analytics pixel data. Outlook makes up 3-15% of our recipients. This is exactly what Limus did:
It’s virtually impossible to support all the calendar applications available. To help us understand what calendar tools to focus on, we took a look at our Email Analytics data. The most popular email clients our subscribers use are Apple Mail, Gmail, and Outlook. Using this data, we focused our efforts on creating a “add to calendar” button that would be compatible with iCalendar, Google’s calendar, and Outlook’s calendar. Learn More Here
<a href=“http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&dates=20200206T035000Z%2F20200206T065000Z&text=Nouts%20test%20event&location=5107%20Oakbrook%20Drive%2C%20Durham%2C%20NC&details=nout's%20test%20event%20”>Add to Google calendar</a><a href=“link goes here”>Add to other calendar</a>