Campaigns
Set-up and edit a campaign, use campaign shortcuts, statistics, broadcasting as well as cancelling one.
Table of contents
- What are Campaigns?
- How do I set up a Campaign?
- How do I make sure my Campaign doesn’t send if I’m not in the office?
- How long can my Campaign be?
- What are Campaign Shortcuts?
- Can I edit an active Campaign?
- What happens if someone responds to a Campaign message?
- Broadcasting with Campaigns
- Keywords with Campaigns
- Direct Messages with Campaigns
- Auto Responses with Campaigns
- Canceling a Campaign
What are Campaigns?
Campaigns are a series of messages that you can schedule to be sent on a time delay. The message, time delay, and audience can all be customized to fit your business needs.
How do I set up a Campaign?
Navigate to the Campaigns tab on the left sidebar (available on Standard plans and above).
To create a Campaign:
- Click the “New” button on the top right corner.
- Name your Campaign. This name will not be visible to your contacts.
- Write your first message.
- Set the timing for the follow up message by choosing from the options in the drop-down list. You can customize the follow up text message by minute, hour, day or week.
- Decide what happens if a person responds to the first message. Learn more about this step below under the section titled “What happens if someone responds to a Campaign?”
- Write the second message.
- If you have more messages to add to your Campaign, click “Add Step +”. Continue the same process as above.
- Make sure and click “Save” when you done building your Campaign.
- Once you’ve created your campaign, you’re ready to start sending it! When you send a message that says “$campaign_NAME” you will trigger the campaign to start in that conversation. You can always trigger that message in a broadcast, in response to a keyword, through our API, or using any of the other message sending tools in Avochato.
How do I make sure my Campaign doesn’t send if I’m not in the office?
You can configure your Campaigns to ensure that they adhere to the office hours that you have established in Avochato. Once the appropriate settings are enabled, if you are marked out of office over the weekend, a message that is scheduled for the weekend would instead send on the next available day where you have available office hours. Set up or make adjustments to your office hours at Settings > Office Hours. After you make sure your office hours are configured, go to Settings > Conversation MGMT and toggle on the below setting.
How long can my Campaign be?
At the basic level, the default setting for a Campaign is a message and a follow-up message. If you click the “Add Step +” button, it will create another message in the Campaign series. You can continue to add messages to the Campaign as necessary. Watch this short instructional video to learn how here.
What are Campaign Shortcuts?
We have made it easy for you to embed Campaigns into a variety of features within Avochato using the Campaign shortcut. Copy the shortcut to a Broadcast or Keyword Auto-Response to launch the Campaign. If you click into a Campaign, you can copy the shortcut quickly by clicking on the “Copy Shortcut” button in the top right corner.
Can I edit an active Campaign?
Yes. You can edit Campaigns after they have been sent. This will change the Campaign for all future contacts that receive your Campaign message. Any edits will not affect messages from a Campaign that have already started. Make sure and save all changes once you have made the updates. Note, if you have already created a campaign, you can edit but you don’t have the ability to add additional steps after it has been created.
What happens if someone responds to a Campaign message? Will they receive the next scheduled message?
You can decide what happens when someone texts in the middle of a campaign. When creating your Campaign, you will have two options on the “Don’t Follow Up If Someone” box:
- Cancel the scheduled message(s) by selecting “Responds or Opts Out”
- Send the scheduled message(s) by selecting “Opts Out”
Modify Status After Send
On your initial message in a Campaign, you can elect to modify the status of that ticket. It will default to “Keep the same”, but you can modify it to update to New, Open, Pending or Closed. As a reminder, all inbound messages will move the ticket back to the “Open” status.
Broadcasting with Campaigns
Launch a Campaign to an audience of your choice by pairing Campaigns with Broadcasting. First, create your Campaign following the steps outlined above. Once the Campaign is built, click “Copy Shortcut” and paste that shortcut in the Broadcast draft. As you complete the flow, you can see a preview of your message on the “Schedule” page.
Keywords with Campaigns
You can also embed a Campaign into a Keyword Auto Response. When someone texts you that given Keyword, you can launch your Campaign. Follow all the steps above to set up the Campaign. Then add the Campaign shortcut in the message body (…Auto Reply with). Configure Keywords at Settings > Keywords.
Direct Messages with Campaigns
Campaigns can also be sent to contacts in a one-to-one fashion. After you have built the Campaign, copy the shortcut link. Paste that link into the message body and send or schedule send as required.
You can also search for Campaigns within the Templates selector.
Auto Responses with Campaigns
Campaigns can also be added to Auto Responses. The Campaign shortcut needs to be copied into the message body for that given Auto Response. Navigate to Settings > Auto Responses to set up. One popular use for Campaigns can be with Out of Office Auto Responses. You can schedule the campaign to send a follow-up message during normal business hours to make sure no one falls through the cracks.
Canceling a Campaign
When you send a contact a Campaign message, the scheduled message will be previewed in the message panel. You can click the red “Cancel” button to cancel that scheduled message.
If you set the campaign to cancel upon response, follow up messages will be automatically canceled as soon as the contact sends you a message. Beneath the final step under a given Campaign, you have the ability to cancel all pending messages or delete the campaign entirely.