Pardot Engagement Studio - Sneaky Details

Have you tried creating an Engagement Program (EP) in Pardot and discovered strange ways in which it works? I have had my share of confusion while running an EP and then analyzing its reports.

Last week I made a send using an EP. Due to some incident, the send got delayed. Once the incident was solved, I was informed by Pardot Support that it would take a while to clear the backlog for the Engagement Studio and for it to get back on track. But, by that time a day had lapsed and the EP had skipped about 8000 prospects and gone to the next step.

Hence, here are some of the learnings that I got from using Pardot EPs:

1. Using a particular date for email send only when required: Had I not set a date on sending the 1st email in my EP, EP would not have marked the Prospects as "Email not sent. Past scheduled date." Setting the email send to 'Immediately' would have been a better option since there were no Triggers or Rules before that node.


Image: Engagement Studio Email Report

2. Difference between the Total Sent on the EP report and the actual list of prospects to whom email has been sent: When I clicked the Email Template that was used in that EP, the report showed me that email had been sent to 7811 prospects, whereas, when I clicked on the Total Sent link it showed me 7809 prospects. It was later discovered that the gap of 2 prospects was because they were in the Recycle bin in Pardot. The list was showing the actual mailable prospects that exist in Pardot to whom the email was sent.

 
Image: Email Template Report

Image: List of Prospects - Email Sent

3. Using Dynamic Lists as Feeder Lists in EPs: If I use a Dynamic Lists as an Event Registration Feeder Lists in EPs and as prospects move down the flow, they are added to other dynamic lists, Event attended, Not attended, etc., based on their campaign member status, the prospects will keep getting filtered out of the actual Event Registration list based on their action and stop moving though the Engagement Studio program. They will not be sent emails for the next action node in the flow. Thus, I should create the Event registration List as a Static list so they are not moved out of it when their status changes.

4. Scheduling the Start and End of an EP: The last learning for me was that when we pause the program, we need to again mention if the EP should Start Now and Stop either Never or at a particular date. It resets when you pause the program. Missing this step might cause the program to not end even if the prospects have reached the End node.

Image: Engagement Program Start Dialogue Box

Hope these learnings have been useful for you and you will be able to build and test EP without any hassles.

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