Campaigns
Set-up and edit a campaign, use campaign shortcuts, statistics, broadcasting as well as cancelling one.
What are Campaigns?
Campaigns let you schedule a series of messages with custom timing. You decide the content, delay, and audience to fit your workflow.
Setting Up a Campaign
1. Go to Campaigns in the left hand navigation bar and click “New”
2. Name your Campaign, this name will be used for internal purposes only. Please note that the system will auto format your campaign names to lowercase and all spaces will become underscores (e.g “Sample Campaign” will become “sample_campaign”)
3. Write your first message. To add custom variables, click Personalize, for example using $FULL_NAME will insert the recipient’s full name from your contact list. Learn more about custom variables here.
4. On the next part, you can set-up how the campaign will behave.
- THEN SET A CONVERSATION STATUS TO - After the campaign is sent, your selection here will update the conversation status. By default it will not touch the conversation status but you can set it to be set to New, Open, Pending or Closed
- FOLLOW UP AFTER A DELAY OF - This determines when the next message will be sent. You’ll see the next message scheduled in the conversation window labeled “via campaign”
- DON’T FOLLOW UP IF SOMEONE - This setting controls how the campaign ends. By default, it stops if someone opts out of your number. You can also choose to stop scheduled messages as soon as the recipient replies.
5. Here’s an example of a completed campaign. In this case, one follow-up message is scheduled to send 5 minutes after the initial campaign message, with the conversation status unchanged. If the recipient replies within those 5 minutes, the follow-up message, “This is the second message!” will be canceled.
6. Now you can either click Save in the top-right corner or add another step by selecting Add Step. Each new step creates a new chained campaign and is named sequentially. For example, the earlier follow-up message is now labeled “sample_campaign 2”. We suggest you keep this naming for simplicity and easier tracking.
Each time you add a step, it is automatically named in sequence to help you keep track. For example, a campaign called “Sample Campaign” will have its next steps labeled with the same name plus a number as shown below. You will see all of these in the campaign list.
How to Send a Campaign
Sending a campaign is simple! Just type the campaign shortcut in the chat textbox and hit send. Shortcuts follow the format $campaign_[campaign name], in our example earlier it is $campaign_sample_campaign
How do I Find the Campaign Keyword
You can find and copy the shortcut from the campaign list.
If you have “pre-populate and stylize variables” turned ON in your profile. You can also type in $campaign in the chat text box and a window will appear where you can select existing campaigns.
Do Campaigns Follow Office Hours?
Campaigns will follow your office hours. If a message is scheduled outside of hours, it will send at the next available time. Learn more about Office Hours here.
How to Cancel Ongoing Campaigns
You can cancel all ongoing campaigns by going to the selected campaign, and at the very end of the edit page you’ll see “Campaign Actions”.
Ways to Use Campaigns
Below are some ways on how to use campaigns with Avochato’s other features!
- Broadcasts: Add a Campaign shortcut to reach a group.
- Keywords: Trigger a Campaign when someone texts a Keyword.
- Direct messages: Send a Campaign one-to-one.
- Auto Responses: Pair Campaigns with Out of Office or other automated replies.