What Are Smart Campaigns

Smart Campaigns let Program Managers, Administrators, and Channel Contributors set up intelligent email and push notification campaigns while creating and publishing a piece of content in Studio. Permission Note: Studio users with the Publisher role will not see the Smart Campaigns.

Some of the advantages of Smart Campaigns:

• Drive 2x the engagement with your posts.
• Reach your users where they are - email or mobile.
• High priority campaigns will automatically remind users that have not met your specified Goal.
• Acknowledgment goal campaigns will collect explicit user acknowledgment, giving you trackable metrics for important communications such as compliance.

How Do Smart Campaigns Work

Smart Campaigns allow you to configure both email and push notifications for a post while creating or editing that post. If you have both email and push notifications set up, the campaign will send push notifications to mobile users and email to the rest. If a push doesn't go through to a particular user, we will re-send to that user by email.

Each user will only receive one communication. We do not send both an email and push notification, only one or the other. In addition, we only send one communication per user even if you target more than one group and a single user is a member of multiple groups.

Users will only receive the Smart Campaign message if they can access the content's channel(s). A Smart Campaign can be targeted to one or more groups. A post is targeted to at least one channel. It is possible to select a group for the Smart Campaign that includes users that do not have access to the post's channel(s). We will only send the Smart Campaign to users that can access the post's assigned channels.

You can enable one Smart Campaign for each content card. Once that campaign has run, you are not able to create a second Smart Campaign for that same piece of content.

Smart Campaign Email From Address

If you've set up customized email contact addresses in Studio under Connect, Administrators and Program Managers can choose any Sender for the Smart Campaign. Channel Contributors can choose Senders that are associated with their assigned channels.

If you do not have a customized Default Address, then Smart Campaign emails from your program will have the from address and reply-to address of tech@socialchorus.com.

Smart Campaign Goals

With Awareness, Discussion, Sharing, and Acknowledgment goals, you can specify what you want the post to achieve.

Some of the goals change how the post is presented to users:

• Discussion - the commentable setting will be enabled and users will see comments.
• Sharing - the shareable setting will be enabled and users will see the share option.
• Acknowledgment - a button will appear on the post with the configured message.

The goal will also control who receives the automated reminders for High priority smart campaigns (Standard priority have no reminder emails). For example:

• Awareness + High priority = reminders are sent only if the user has not viewed the content yet. 
• Discussion + High priority = reminders are sent only if the user has not commented on the content yet.
• Sharing + High priority = reminders are sent only if the user has not shared the content yet.
• Acknowledgment + High priority = reminders are sent only if the user has not acknowledged the content yet.

Smart Campaign Priorities

Use Standard or High priority to control the number of notifications that go out and the delivery cadence. 

Standard priority will send one notification to users at the specified time. You can choose to send both push notification and email (each user will only receive one or the other), or you can send just one type of notification.

High priority sends out follow-up reminders based on the goal and length of the run time. You can vary the tone of the reminders to catch interest or convey increasing urgency.

For High priority campaigns, choose one of our provided run times and we'll automatically set the follow-up cadence. Note that the provided run times will skip weekend days. You can also choose to specify your own time range or get very customized by choosing Custom Timeline. Custom Timeline allows you to set each notification down to the minute. If you use a Custom Timeline, the notifications will go out on weekends. For all run times, the last reminder is sent one day before the end of the duration.

How to Create a Smart Campaign

1. While creating or editing a post in Studio, select "Promote this post with a campaign."
   
2. Choose your Goal.
   
   
   • Awareness - any scheduled reminders will be sent only if the user has not viewed the post.
   • Discussion - comments will be enabled and any scheduled reminders will be sent only if the user has not commented on the post.
   • Sharing - sharing will be enabled and any scheduled reminders will be sent only if the user has not shared the post.
   • Acknowledgment - available for articles only. A button configuration will become available, and any scheduled reminders will be sent only if the user has not acknowledged the post.
   • Click on the downward arrow to choose the text displayed on the button. Choose one of the presets or enter your own custom text. For custom button text we recommend less than 40 characters.
   • Language note: If you choose one of the presets they will localize to the user's device language. If you enter your own custom text, it will appear as written to all users regardless of their device's language.
3. Choose your Priority.
   
   
   • Standard - one communication to users at the specified time. By default, this will be when the post publishes but you can choose to delay the notification.
      
     
     
   • High - more than one communication to users. Choosing High priority will open the Run Time options. Choosing a Custom Timeline will open an additional setting on each notification for scheduling the timing.
     
     Run Time options:
     
     
     If you choose Custom Timeline you will see settings per reminder:
     
4. Choose a group for this campaign to go out to.
   
   Start typing the name of a group and select a group from the results list. You must specify at least one group (such as Not Blocked), but you can add more than one group.
   
   Channel Contributors - you will only see groups for users following your assigned channels.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Select if you want to send both a Push Notification and an Email, or only one communication method, by checking or unchecking the boxes next to each option.
   
   When both options are selected, we will only send each user one or the other. Which notification a user receives will depend on their reachability.
   
   Standard priority example, both types selected:
   
   
   
   
6. Configure your messaging for your push notification copy and/or email subject line.
   
   For emails, choose both the email subject line and header text that is shown in the body of the email above the post. Up to 250 characters of header text can be added.
   
   Optional: Type {{ to include personalized variables for each user like {{first name}}.
   
   
   
   
7. If available, choose the email from address by selecting a customized sender. See above for more details.
8. Send yourself a test by clicking the Preview button.
   
   We will send a test email and/or push notification to the user that made the request (you, under the email that you used to sign in to Studio).
   
   Note: Preview will not be available if the post itself has not been saved, scheduled, or published. You can click Done, save the post, and return to the Smart Campaign to generate the preview.
9. Click Done to save your changes. The campaign will become active as scheduled.

You can edit a Smart Campaign if the post has not been published yet. Simply select the campaign summary in the bottom right of the post setting panel and make your modifications, then click Done to save the changes. You can also cancel the Smart Campaign by clicking Remove Campaign.

How to See Who Completed the Goal

Once your Smart Campaign has started, you can see which users have or have not completed the campaign goal (view, share, comment, acknowledge).

You can also download the list of the users. After download, you can create your own reports. Or, use the list of users to create a custom group via import, which you can then target with a manually created follow-up campaign.

1. Navigate to Publish > Planner and select Edit for the content card with the Smart Campaign.
2. In the sidebar, you can see a summary of the campaign. Select View Metrics.
   
3. Under the Metrics tab, you can review the engagement metrics.
4. To see which specific users have completed the campaign goal, click on Completed Goal.
   
5. You can page through the users or click Download List to see a list of all targeted users with their goal status (both completed and incomplete), and the date of completion (N/A if incomplete).
   

Old Smart Campaigns vs New Smart Campaigns

In September 2020 we made a major update to the Smart Campaign interface, unlocking more options and nuanced control.

If you want the same behavior as the old interface (Campaign Type: Announce, Promote, or Require), we've mapped out how to create the same result with the new configuration below: