3. How to create a campaign

As you can see on the left, there are several channels that can be selected for the creation of a new campaign ("Which channel are you going to communicate on*"). However:

• SAM can only manage directly emails, advantages and web links:
  • Emails: This will be the most usual option to choose. Through this option, you will be able to link the campaign to an email template, one or multiple targets, and an advantage at the same time. We'll explore this option below in this page.
  • Advantages: Selecting this option, you will be able to distribute an advantage to one or more targets without sending an email or any kind of notification. Therefore, there are no GDPR restrictions whatsoever.
  • Web link: This last one is not properly enabled to be created from here. It is, however, the type of campaign that would be automatically generated from the URL builder.
• SMS: This option needs to be discussed with the project manager if you'd be interested in using it. The possibility of enabling it depends mainly on the country and the phone services providers.
• Letters and phone calls: You will be able to link these kind of campaigns to a target. However, you will have to manage making the phone calls and sending the letters outside of Secutix. Therefore, you will not be able to get an analysis of your campaign through Secutix, you'll have to manage it aside, externally.

As well as the channel, you will have to choose the type of campaign that you'll like to create (What type of campaign do you want to create?*). Most of them are just informative and work in exactly the same way, but there are a couple of important exceptions :

• The "Information directly related to a contact's purchase or reservation" will bypass GDPR restrictions: Even if a contact has chosen not to receive any kind of marketing "communications from your institution" (see contact file), when they make a purchase or reservation they do agree to receive a communication directly linked to those. For example: This kind of campaign should be use to communicate to your clients that an event they purchased a ticket for, or made a reservation, has been postponed or cancelled.
• If you want to distribute single use codes, you must choose the "Invitation" campaign type: It is fundamental that the email template that will be linked to this campaign type has an "invitation/advantage code" merge tag (see picture on the left). In addition, when linking the message template to the campaign, you need to set how many codes per user you want to sent. Even if it doesn't appear as mandatory*, it is!

As you can see in the image above, you can link products and advantages to your campaign:

• Advantages: If you have a "invitation/advantage code" merge tag in your email that is not a single use code (see invitation campaigns above in this page), or if you want to distribute an advantage among your contacts and tell them about it in the email, you must link the advantage here.
• Products: The linking of products, however, is almost never used as it doesn't track the sales: It's just informative.

Within the CAMPAIGN INFO TAB, you will be able to set the campaign parameters:

• Internal name* and Code*: Remember that the campaigns are visible by all the organisms within your institution, so we recommend to choose a name that will help you identify and find it fast when ordering the list of campaigns by name. For example, you could always start it with the acronym of your organism.
• Channel: Already selected on the previous step, cannot be changed.
• Description: We recommend writing a clear and detailed description of the campaign.
• Season, type and state: As you are already working within a season, and the type was selected on the previous step, they cannot be changed. The state will evolve as the campaign is launched. We'll see the life cycle of campaigns later on.
• Budget and expected result: When giving information on the budget allocated to a campaign, SAM will automatically calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) by substracting the budget to the income generated by the campaign. You can also introduce an expected result as reference.
• Point of sale*: In order to be able to track any URLs and advantages in your campaigns, and in the case of unsubscriptions, we need to link campaigns to a point of sales.

Within the TARGET TAB, you will be able to link as many targets as you want to the campaign by clicking on the "New" button.

SAM will automatically carry out a deduplication to avoid sending the same email to a contact found in two targets.

As you can see, there are some targets in blue, and some in black:

• The blue targets are targets that are already being used in at least one other campaign.
• The black targets have not yet been linked to any campaign.

If you click on the "Calculate" button", you'll be able to see the details of the real volume of emails that will be sent in the campaign: taking out duplicate contacts, duplicate emails, contacts that have not accepted to receive marketing communications (applicable if it's not a campaign related to a purchase or reservation...). If the targets you selected are dynamic, the calculations will vary accordingly.

Finally, in the MESSAGE TAB you'll be able to select the message template* you wish to use for your campaign.

Do not forget to save and close!

The campaign you just saved will now appear with all the others, but just in an open state: You won't see any of this symbols  beside its name. To launch it, you will have to select the row and click on the "Run/Send" button.

In the pop-up screen that will then appear (see image on the left), you'll be able to select whether you want to:

• Immediately launch the campaign, just once: Send now.
• Choose the date and time for the campaign to be launched once: Send later.
• Create a recurrent campaign: Set a recurrence. Each sending is an execution. This type of campaign is principally meant to be used with dynamic targets.