Overview
If you're looking to send something such as triggered daily or weekly update campaigns to all, or only a subset, of your contacts, then you can with the program builder. Assuming you're not trying to do anything too complicated, the structure of it can be fairly straightforward - featuring just three key steps. For example:
- Start - Enrol all relevant contacts, every day at 12:00.
- Campaign - Send a daily update campaign.
- End - Contacts exit the program, ready to be enrolled into it again tomorrow.
For more detail on setting this up, read on.
Good to know
Sending the same campaign to contacts every day or week may seem like an odd practice, but this is quite valid if you're using an external source to populate the content. Populating a campaign from an external source could be done by using either:
- External dynamic content - which will require a web developer to produce the content for you; or
- RSS feeds - which can be done using EasyEditor; but you need to have an active enough RSS feed to be sure the same content isn't coming in every day. You can set RSS feeds to refresh on each send of a campaign, ensuring this content is always up to date.
Configuring the start node
In the start node, you have three settings:
1. Enrolment scheduling — You're likely to want to select enrol Daily and for it to be set at the same time every day; or Weekly and set the days of the week you want enrolment, and thus sending, to happen on (if you select each of the days Monday through to Friday it will go every weekday and not at the weekend).
2. Enrolment rule — Create a segment that will include all of the contacts that you want to send the campaign to.
If you want this to be every contact, then include contacts that 'are present in any address book' or using 'data field 'Email' must not be empty'.
It's probably better to have a separate address book though (such as 'Daily/weekly update subscribers'), so that you can unsubscribe people from the address book without removing them from the account.
3. Enrolment limits — There are three enrolment limit options:
- The first is enrol contacts to the program only on the first time they meet the start criteria (for example in a triggered customer lifecycle program that kicks in when they've made their third purchase). We select this automatically if you create a program using a segment rule because we don't want you to accidentally trigger this program every day ad infinitum to the same contacts.
- The second is re-enrol contacts on the program every day they meet the start criteria (for example for a birthday or contract renewal program). We select this automatically if you create a program using the standard 'trigger from a date contact data field rule' because people will only get the emails again if their contact data field is updated, or if it's an 'anniversary' rule. You can also use this (as in this example case) to trigger the same email every day (or week) to a given list.
- The third option is a slightly more niche one; where you can send the same program again to contacts, but only after a set delay time. This is perhaps best for a re-engagement program.
So, for this example case, the second enrolment limit option should be selected.
Click Apply, add a campaign node with the campaign you want to send, add an end node, activate your program, and it's a case of mission accomplished!
Your program will send a daily or weekly campaign at the scheduled time to all of the contacts present in any of your address books, or those who are present in the address book you've selected - depending on whichever way you've chosen to set the rule up.