Best Practice Guide - Conceptual Campaign Design

The first steps to any successful campaign are design and planning. This is especially true of campaigns that involve a customer journey.

It is recommended that you create the campaign design on paper before building it in Campaign Manager or Campaign Designer. There are several benefits to this approach:

• Turn those initial concepts into a tangible view.
• Visualize the high-level concepts and scenarios.
• Consider the complexities of the campaign design up front, not in the product itself but on paper/whiteboard.
• Close gaps and loose ends to ensure recipients are not stuck in a void with the campaign flow.

To avoid falling into complexity too early, we suggest that you ignore some of the concepts inherent in the Campaign Manager application, for example:

• Tracks: A Campaign Manager function that you do not need to consider in campaign design delivery. Use of Tracks will come when the design phase is complete.
• Time Items: Items such as ‘Do Immediately’ will come out in build, but the design will inherently consider this as accepted.
• Go To Track: Tracks and any perceived transition of tracks.

NOTE:

Even though tracks are being ignored, working with a left to right design in Campaign Manager will be very useful in later stages. The application UI and the back-end processing are both geared towards a left to right processing method, so adopting this in the paper design is useful.

The objective of this example campaign is to drive a second purchase after an initial purchase from a Customer. The campaign is ongoing and has no End Date.

• A campaign audience is defined as any Customer who has made their first purchase after the campaign start date.
• A multi-channel campaign, targeting Email and Direct Mail Customers.
• A test is performed to see if Customers prefer the offer by Email or Direct Mail.
• If the initial Email is not opened within 7 days, send follow up through direct channel.
• Flag and suppress any customer making the second purchase.

Consider what status or flow information is to be stored against a recipient. In Campaign Manager this is typically assigned as variables. The default variables state what values are set when a recipient enters a campaign. These are required to be set before any action is taken on a recipient.

The following table gives an example of variables in a campaign and their values.

Variable Name	Initial Variable Value	Description
Stage	Start	Used to store the overall status of the recipient in a multi-wave campaign.
Status	1P	A status variable used to store the current state of a recipient and record any outcome. Initial value 1P = first purchase.
Media Code	Set in campaign segmentation	What channel or route this particular recipient will take. Used to record channel segmentation.

How you create your campaign flow is a matter of personal preference. Below are two example flows, one has been created using Visio, and the other is a simple list flow.

The next section (1.6) explains how you would use Campaign Manager tools to implement the design in the list flow example.

Visio Flow

List Flow

1. Campaign Start – Define Audience and “Recipients enter the START” of the campaign.
   1. New data will be loaded overnight but we do not want any new recipients to be contacted before 11am, so START will be on a schedule at 11am.
2. Check channel preference column and segment accordingly.
   1. Email Only
   2. Email or Mail (50-50 Split if they don’t have a preference)
   3. Mail Only
   4. None – Taken as do not contact
   5. Remainder – Showed other channel as preference, leave unprocessed
3. Set Media Code.
   1. Email Only - Media Code “EO”
   2. Email or Mail (50-50 Split if they don’t have a preference)
      1. Email - Media Code “EM”
      2. Mail - Media Code “ME”
   3. Mail Only – Media Code = “MO”
   4. None – no action
   5. Remainder - Media Code “NO”

NOTE – We have defined two routes which are:

1. Direct for Media Codes “MO” and “ME”

2. Email for Media Codes “EO” and “EM”

4. Implement Tactic for the recipients.
5. For Email tactic, wait 7 days then check if Email has been opened.
6. If they opened the Email send to end of campaign.
7. Email was not opened, Set Media Code = “MF” and send a Direct Mail follow up re-using previous actions, then send to end.
8. Event Management needs to monitor the transaction data for a second purchase. If second purchased occurs set Statue variable = “2P” and send to end.

The above is a basic flow. The next stage is to assign relevant tools in Campaign Manager and then to assign track logic.

Using the above list flow example, this section describes a suggested list of tools you can use for each stage.

NOTE: Experience of, and familiarity with using Campaign Manager tools is assumed. See the Alterian online help for instructions on tool usage.

1. Campaign Start – Define Audience
2. In Start track use ‘On a Schedule’ time item for 11am.
3. Check Channel Preference with Waterfall tool and segment accordingly, Set Status with Set Variable tool.
4. Set Media Code – Set Variable tool and Split tool for 50-50 split.
5. Note: We have defined two routes:
   1. Direct for Media Codes “MO” and “ME”
   2. Email for Media Codes “EO” and “EM”
6. Implement Tactics – Implement Tactic nodes.
7. For Email tactic, wait 7 days – ‘After a Period’ time item.
8. If they opened the Email send to end – Check Event.
9. If Email was not opened, Set Media Code = “MF” Set Variable node and Send a Direct Mail follow up re-using previous actions. – Implement Tactic.
10. Event Management needs to monitor the transaction data for a second purchase. - When In Segment If second purchased occurs set Statue variable = “2P” – Set Variable node.
11. If second purchase occurs, send to End. – Go To Track.

After the main tools have been allocated, the Audience Rule can be constructed with the user interface, and the campaign built ready for testing.

NOTE:

Audience rules will refresh at least once a day, so it is important to ensure that recipients do not fall out of a campaign, For example, in the above example if the audience query is: Select Customer Where Days since first purchase = 1 customers who purchased their first product yesterday would be included, but the next day they would fall out of the audience. Therefore, the rule needs to encompass the range to make sure recipients stay in the audience for the duration of the campaign. This example is expanded on below.

The Audience rule would be as follows:

This is anyone who has made a first order, and where that order is after the campaign has started. This ensures only current new Customers are contacted. There is no need to have a closing date on the audience as we will leave people in the End Track once they pass through the campaign.

The Track logic can then be assigned. Some useful rules for assessing use of tracks are:

• A new Track will be required if a Time Item is required.
• A new Track is required if a node has two inputs.

For example:

• ‘On a Schedule’ is Stage 1 = START TRACK
• Email Tactics have two Inputs – i.e. Media Codes “EO” and “EM” – Email Track
• Direct Mail Tactic has two Inputs – i.e. Media Codes “MO” and “ME” – Mail Track
• After a Period Time Item – Wait 7 Days Track
• END TRACK

In Track campaigns this could be created as:

In the campaign, if there is an overriding event logic that says if at any time a recipient is found to have made a second purchase, they should not receive any further communication.

The best way to achieve this with our scenario is to analyze the Transaction table and create a Global event. The assumption here is that the transactions are loaded into the Engine database overnight so within 1 day we can tell if a second purchase has occurred for a recipient by using a ‘When in Segment’ node to query the transition table.

The query would be against the Order table where an order is placed after the first order date and before the end date of the campaign, and where the number of orders placed by the recipient is greater than 1.

A Global Trigger moves those recipients to the End track regardless of where they were.

To support and promote this approach to campaign design, the Alterian Professional Service team offers consultation on planning - from simple to complex campaigns. The team uses a Visio toolset to achieve visual planning, an example is given below.

For more information, contact your Alterian Account Manager.