With Campaign Manager you are be able to create single sendouts as well as a chain of mixed events scheduled over time.
- General
- Create a campaign
- Editing
- Activating
- Editing an active campaign
- Extending a finished campaign
- Stopping an active campaign
Campaign Manager and Journeys have a lot of things in common, not only look and feel but many of the steps are available in both features.
General
The contacts matching your campaign criteria will follow the campaign flow from start to finish. Other contacts will not be able to join after the campaign has started.
All steps in your campaign needs an execution date for when they will run. The execution dates will only be considered for activate campaigns.
Active campaigns can be edited as long as the steps are in the future. You can for example update the content or you can add or remove steps. The active flow must be paused in order to change the flow (the step structure).
If your campaign is completed you can later on add a follow-up.
Create a campaign in Campaign Manager
Find Campaign Manager in the main menu and hit Create campaign. You'll then select your project, list and give your campaign a name.
The campaign builder will open and you can start editing.
Editing
As mentioned earlier, the interface is similar to Journeys and editing your campaign will follow the same manner. For a single sendout campaign, you'll only add one message step, and for a multiple sendouts campaign you'll add as many steps as you need.
Each step is edited by clicking on it.
Starter conditions
You already selected a project and a list when creating your campaign, so what's left to add to your starter is your target group (add a segment) and set a timezone.
On all starters you select whether you want to include the project segment (if any). If you include your project segment this will be added to your other conditions in your starter and also follow throughout any following message steps in your journey.
You can also switch starter type to API request.
The API Request starter allows you to trigger a campaign from some other service. When using the supplied API method that connects to your campaign, the contacts included in the request will immediately start the campaign. This starter is suitable when you want to do a pre-selection of contacts in another system.
Learn about the integration here.
| Please note that the instant journey starter API Request will not take project segment in consideration to stop contacts from entering. However, if enabled, the project segment will be applied to all message steps and prevent a message from being sent if a contact doesn't match the segment. |
Contacts that are temporarily blocked will enter a campaign when matching the starter criteria but will not receive any communication as long as they are blocked.
Step execution
The main difference to Journeys is the scheduling part. As campaigns are only executed once, you won't find any wait steps, instead you'll set an exact date and time for each step in your campaign.
Click the step date to set a new execution time.
You can choose to execute multiple steps at the same or you can set different send times for different steps. The time you select, must be within the range for the previous and the following step (and not be in the past). If the order of your flow doesn't match your selected send times, you'll get alerts for the steps in need of your attention.
Depending on the size of your database (and chosen segment), the time it takes to execute each step varies; so don't schedule your steps too tight. If your starter isn't finished by the time of your next execution time, the runner up will get delayed.
If you for some reason need a tighter schedule, run a test on your starter first (click on Test). Note the time and use that as your absolute minimum time between steps and add a buffert time.
A five minute buffert time will always be added to ensure a safe scheduling. I.e. if you, at 10.01, activate a campaign where your first step is scheduled to run at 10.05, the actual start time will be 10.06.
API triggered campaign
If you are doing a selection of contacts in some other system and want to trigger a campaign for these contacts only, you can click Switch to API on the starter. Learn more.
Activating
When you're happy with your campaign and want to activate it, you hit the Publish button and confirm that you want the campaign to start and run accordingly your given schedule.
You will see that the status label will turn green an show Active.
Edit an active campaign
Active campaigns can be edited as long as the scheduled time is not passed.
To edit content, simply click on the step and select Edit. You must publish your new content version before the step is scheduled to run.
To edit the flow of your campaign, click Live edit and you'll be able to make your changes.
You must publish your changes before the upcoming step in your campaign is set to run. Otherwise your changes will be discarded.
You can edit:
- Any step not reached yet, including adding new ones and extending your campaign.
You cannot change:
- Position and properties of any steps that are already executed.
- The position of the step where your contacts currently are located — however, you can change the type, execution date and properties of this step.
Extending a campaign
If your contacts have reached the end of your campaign you can easily extend your flow if you want to add a reminder or any other follow-up activity to your campaign.
Click Extend campaign in the top and your campaign will go editable. Add the step(s) you want, starting from your end step(s).
Commit your changes and your new steps will be executed at your scheduled time.
Stop a campaign
If you need to call off a started campaign, simply hit the Stop button and scheduled steps will get cancelled.
Note that stopping a campaign while messages are being sent will cancel the sending as soon as possible, meaning some messages may already have been sent while the remaining part will get cancelled.