Campaigns are at the heart of what makes Outstand so effective, and they place you in charge of your own marketing strategies. Campaigns allow you to customize a string of messages, sent to a customized group of recipients, with a customized send schedule.
That might seem like a lot to handle all at once, but Campaign creation is actually fairly simple. In this article, we’ll review how you can create, track, and modify your own Campaigns.
Creating your own Campaign
From your home Dashboard, click the Campaigns menu in the top navigation bar.
Select “Create New”.
Title your Campaign in the top-left corner of the screen. Make sure to give your Campaign a unique title, so you can easily find it later.
Below your Campaign’s title, you’ll find an email message icon with the number “1” above it. This area is the Campaign timeline. Its first message will be the start of your Campaign. Below the Campaign timeline, use the search bar on the left and/or the filter menu on the right to locate your desired first message.
(NOTE: Only saved messages in your Library will appear here. If you wish to add an unsaved draft to your Campaign, you must first add it to your Library using the Tracker tool.)
Preview, then select your first message (don’t worry, you can go back and change it later before you send).
Choose how your message will be triggered (scheduled). For your first message, you may choose to send two ways:
Send Immediately: sends the first message once the Campaign launches.
Send Manually: sends the first message after the Campaign launches AND when you manually select to send that leg of the Campaign.
After choosing your trigger, select the plus icon (+) in the Campaign timeline. This will create an additional leg to your Campaign.
(NOTE: For additional Campaign legs, automatic triggers are set to send in time intervals. This means that you can schedule the next leg to send after the previous leg is sent within your specified timeframe.)
Repeat steps 4–7 until you’ve finished crafting your Campaign, then click “Create Template” in the top-right corner.
Launching a Campaign
After your Campaign is created, it will appear within the Campaigns menu under “Templates”. Select “Launch” to review your Campaign before sending (The Campaign won’t actually launch until you tell it to in later steps.)
Check to make sure your specified sending profile is correct. If not, you can change your profile here.
Name this Campaign’s iteration.
(NOTE: When you designed your Campaign, at first you named the Campaign’s template. Since you can launch multiple Campaigns using the same template, it helps to change this title.)
Select the Campaign recipients, either via Groups and/or Contacts.
(NOTE: You may choose to send to a particular Group, but not some Contacts within that Group. Doing so will not remove these Contacts from their Group, just the Campaign.)
Once everything looks correct, click “Launch”. Outstand will now prepare to activate your Campaign.
If the first leg of your Campaign is triggered automatically, the Campaign will start its send schedule.
If the first leg of your Campaign is triggered manually, the Campaign will be activated but will not send yet. This will also be the case for any other legs that are triggered manually. Follow the next steps to send these manually triggered legs:
Within the Campaigns menu, select “Active”, then click on your Campaign.
Within your active Campaign, locate the manual leg, then select “Send Leg”.
(NOTE: You may also choose to pause a leg for specific Contacts. To do this, first select the recipient below the active Campaign’s timeline, then click “Actions”, then click “Pause Recipients”. These Contacts will not receive any more messages in this Campaign until you unpause them in “Actions”.
Modifying and reviewing a Campaign
You may copy, delete, or share a Campaign template at any time.
You can check on your Campaign’s progress by locating it in the “Active” menu. You can review the results of previous Campaigns by locating them in the “History” menu.
You can also review how specific messages performed in the Tracker menu.
To pause, resume, or end a Campaign
From your list of active Campaigns, select the More Options icon on the right ( … )
Select “Pause”. The Campaign is now paused and will not take any more immediate action.
To unpause, select More Options again, then click “Resume”.
(NOTE: When you unpause a campaign, automatic triggers will start where the Campaign was paused.)
To end a Campaign, select More Options again, then click “End”. You may choose to end the Campaign, or delete it.
(NOTE: Both ending and deleting a Campaign will cancel it, but in different ways. Ending it will save your Campaign’s history, while deleting it will erase it from your account forever.)