Overview
The campaigns tool allows you to engage with your customers through multiple channels. To create a campaign:
- Navigate to Campaigns.
- In the upper left click Create New Campaign.
Campaign options
Type
There are currently three types when creating a campaign from scratch.
- One-Time: Send personalized messaging to a segment of your customers. The campaign's content is sent a single time.
- Behavioral: Contact customers on an ongoing basis when they trigger a particular event (such as sign up for your newsletter) or meet certain criteria (such as 3 days after an order). The campaign's content can be sent immediately upon event occurrence, or in a recurring (evaluated daily or weekly) or continuous (evaluated hourly) fashion.
- Web: Display a message to customers that visit your website. Learn more about web embeds or web modals. Web campaigns are not covered in this article.
Name
Naming conventions are important when managing campaigns. Be as specific as possible so that campaigns can be recognized in other areas of the app, such as reporting. After selecting a campaign, click into the Untitled Campaign field in the upper left to set a campaign name.
Tags
Tags allow for even more specifics when identifying campaigns. To add a tag, click the Add Tags button in the upper left next to the campaign's name. You will be able to select existing tags or have the option to create new ones. To create a new tag:
- Type the desired name into the Type or select tag field.
- Hit the enter key.
- Click the Save button in the upper right. The tag will not be created until you save.
Enrollment
There are currently three ways to target customers for enrollment into a campaign.
- Match a segment: Target customers that match a predefined segment or create a new segment as the campaign is being configured. When defining a new segment, click Apply to add the segment to the campaign. Segment targeted can be used for One-Time or Behavioral campaigns.
- Match an event (Behavioral Campaigns Only): Target customers based on events and reach them almost immediately following an interaction with your brand. For example, when a customer matches the event “Sign Up”, send an email welcoming them to the site.
- API: Programmatically send customers app push notifications by issuing HTTP requests containing your credentials, campaign identification, message, and customer ID to a Zaius endpoint.
Enrollment Rules
When segmentation is not enough, and there is a need to be more granular or strategic in the approach, add enrollment rules to be more specific about who receives the campaign's content. When applying an enrollment rule, be sure to review the reachable audience, as it may change.
Schedule
Set the campaign send schedule. The options will vary depending on which type of campaign is being sent. Campaigns that send immediately upon matching an event are not available for scheduling. All campaign types also include the ability to schedule additional touchpoints after the initial send.
Note: A customer's time zone is not collected by default. It must be provided to Zaius via the API or a third-party integration and placed in the customer timezone field using the IANA format.
One-Time
Send the communication exactly once.
- Send Date: Date to send.
- Send Time: Time to send.
- Time Zone: Time zone to start the send in.
- Use recipient's time zone when available: If this is selected, the touchpoint will send at the specified time in each customer's time zone. The very first time zone to send will be the time zone selected in the Date & Time account setting, followed by all remaining time zones in order. Any customers for whom a time zone is unknown will receive the communication in the time zone specified in settings.
Recurring
Send the communication in a repeating fashion. Only available in the Behavioral campaign type.
- Start Date: Date to start the campaign.
- Ends: When the campaign will stop.
- Never: Never stop sending.
- After [#] occurrences: The last send will be the #th occurrence.
- On: The date entered here will be the last date that sends. If "use recipient's time zone when available" is selected, the last time zone to send will be the last time zone of the last day of sends; this last day of sends will begin on the selected date in the selected time zone. If Timing is specified as 3:00 PM US/Eastern and the last date is set to 2019-01-01, then the last day of sends will begin at the 3:00 PM US/Eastern on 2019-01-01. The very last time zone to send will send around 24 hours later on 2019-01-02.
- Repeats: Depending on the selection made here, different fields will become available. These are marked below as Daily (D), Weekly (W), and Monthly (M) accordingly.
- Timing: Time to send.
- Time Zone: Time zone to start the send in.
- Use recipient's time zone when available: If this is selected, the touchpoint will send at the specified time in each customer's time zone. The very first time zone to send will be the time zone selected in Step 5, which defaults to your account setting, followed by all remaining time zones in order. Any customers for whom a time zone is unknown will receive the communication in the account time zone specified in settings.
Continuous
Send the communication as customers qualify for the segment. Only available in the Behavioral campaign type.
- Start Date: Date to start the campaign.
- Timing: Time to send.
- Time Zone: Time zone to start the send in.
- Ends: When the campaign will stop.
- Never: Never stop sending.
- On: The date entered here will be the last date that sends. If "use recipient's time zone when available" is selected, the last time zone to send will be the last time zone of the last day of sends; this last day of sends will begin on the selected date in the selected time zone. If Timing is specified as 3:00 PM US/Eastern and the last date is set to 2019-01-01, then the last day of sends will begin at the 3:00 PM US/Eastern on 2019-01-01. The very last time zone to send will send around 24 hours later on 2019-01-02.
Additional Touchpoints
Use additional touchpoints to add content to a campaign. A touchpoint can be disabled, without being deleted, which will mean that customer going through a campaign will not get that touchpoint. A touchpoint can also be cloned from another touchpoint, if the content will be similar.
Scheduling
Additional touchpoints after the first one are scheduled relative to when the previous touchpoint went out. For campaigns that are sent on an ongoing basis, each customer is assessed individually based on when they received the last touchpoint.
- Delay: Set the delay in hours, days, or weeks. The full time must pass before the optional Send Time is considered. If the previous touchpoint goes out late for any reason, the actual send time (not the scheduled send time) is considered when scheduling the next touchpoint. For example, a delay of 2 days requires 48 hours to pass before the next touchpoint can be considered.
- Send Time: The Send Time is optional, but can be used if a touchpoint should go out at a specific time. However, it must be considered when the Delay expires when using Send Time. If the Delay expires after that time has already passed, the campaign will wait for the next day.
Example:
- A campaign is sent at 12pm on Monday.
- The next touchpoint is scheduled for 2 days later (Delay) at 11am (Send Time).
- The next touchpoint will go out on Thursday at 11am. 2 days later (or 48 hours) is 12pm on Wednesday, which is already past 11am, so the campaign waits until the next time it is 11am.
- If 11am on Wednesday is desired, use a Delay longer than 1 day and shorter than 2 days (such as 30 hours), along with the desired Send Time. 30 hours later is 6pm Tuesday, so 30 hours later at 11am would send at 11am Wednesday.
Activate & pause campaigns
Preview & Test
The preview function allows you to review the touchpoint on-screen, while the test function allows you to send a test through the touchpoint channel instead. Both options are available in the upper-right when viewing a touchpoint within the editor.
Go Live
To make the campaign's content available to your customers.
- In the upper-left, select the campaign's name from the breadcrumb menu.
- In the upper-right, click Save to ensure all touchpoints are up-to-date.
- In the upper-right, click Go Live.
Pause
When a campaign is live, touchpoints will begin sending. If a campaign needs to stop, return to the campaign and click the pause button at the top.
Emulate
The emulate mode is used for testing to help determine which customers would receive which campaign communications on which days without actually sending any live communications. The emulated campaign runs per the schedule set to allow an understanding of campaign delivery but does not actually deliver anything.
Note: The emulate mode requires an opt-in. If you'd like to use this functionality, please contact your Customer Success Manager or the Support Team.