About campaigns

A campaign is a message or offer that is sent to a specific group of customers or recipients.

Use the Campaigns page to build the audiences to which you want to send messages or offers. Configure the campaign to send those audiences to downstream marketing tools, such as email service providers, SMS providers, paid media, digital advertising, personalization, and more.

About the Campaigns page

The Campaigns page enables the use of segments to define audiences that can be sent to any downstream marketing workflow.

The Campaigns page.

Use the Campaigns page to activate a variety of use cases across your marketing stack. For example:

  • View your recently edited campaigns

  • Messaging a group of high customer lifetime value (CLV) customers on Facebook for a VIP event

  • Emailing customers with an affinity toward blue button down shirts for a product liquidation

  • Targeting a segment of customers who are more likely to add a visit to the hotel spa

  • Messaging a group of customers likely to churn with a special offer

  • Showing an ad to re-engage customers who have unsubscribed from email

  • Reaching out to customers that have enrolled in your loyalty program

  • Identifying customers within existing lists, and then pushing targeted subsets for downstream messaging to any channel

  • Using a control group, along with any number of treatment groups, to measure the quality of a campaign

How campaigns work

A campaign is defined in the Campaigns page, from which you configure the audience and sub-audiences that will be associated with the campaign, the downstream locations to which the campaign will be sent, and the time at which the campaign is to begin.

The Campaigns Editor is accessed from the Campaigns page in Amperity.

Follow this sequence when building a campaign:

Step 1.

The campaign builder is available from the Campaigns page. The Create Campaign button in the top right corner of the page opens the campaign builder.

Give your campaign a name.

After the campaign builder opens, give your campaign a name.

Tip

Use good naming patterns to ensure that you can always find your campaigns in the various applications to which you will send them. The campaign name will always appear in the filename that is sent to any destination.

Avoid duplication between campaign and treatment group names.

Avoid using the names of destinations as campaign names unless the campaign is sent to only that destination.

Use a naming pattern that ensures the campaign name works across every treatment group that is configured within any sub-audience.

If brand names and/or region names apply to all sub-audiences in the campaign, consider using them within the campaign name.

Some examples:

  • “Birthdays_Under_40”

  • “Acme_Churn”

  • “Churn_HighValue_Early”

  • “Socktown_High_AOV”

Step 2.

All campaigns start with an audience. Choose a segment from the Include drop-down list. The customers in that list will become the audience for this campaign.

Choose one (or more) segments to form the audience for this campaign.

Tip

When a campaign starts with an audience that is defined by a single segment, you can use the segment insights for that segment as a way to measure the performance of that audience over time.

Step 3.

Sometimes campaigns need to exclude certain members of your audience. For example, a churn prevention campaign is often configured to exclude customers who have opted-out of SMS messaging and/or who have unsubscribed from an email list.

When you need to exclude audience members, choose one (or more) segments from the Exclude drop-down list. The customers in an exclusion list will be removed from the audience for this campaign.

Choose one (or more) segments to exclude customers from this campaign.
Step 4.

Some campaigns have just one audience, while others require sub-audiences.

Sub-audiences can be many things. How you choose to configure them is dependent on your audience, marketing strategy and goals, and the type of campaign you will run.

This topic uses sub-audiences to split the combined high-value audience into more specific audiences by lifecycle status.

Click Add sub-audience to open the Audience Builder, find the Predicted CLV Attributes table, choose the Predicted Lifecycle Status attribute, and then select “active”.

Choose the "active" lifecycle status.

Then update the name of the treatment group. In this example, it’s “Active_Socks”. This is part of the filename that you will see in the application to which you send this sub-audience. For example: “Churn_HighValue_Early_Active_Socks”.

A sub-audience for customers with an active lifecycle status.

Assign one (or more) destinations to this treatment group, and then edit the attributes to ensure Amperity is sending the right data.

Tip

Use good naming patterns to ensure that you can always find your campaigns in the various applications to which you will send them. The campaign name will always appear in the filename that is sent to any destination and the treatment group name is often appended. Use a naming pattern that allows the treatment group name to build on the campaign name.

Avoid duplication between campaign and treatment group names.

Avoid using the names of destinations as treatment group names unless the treatment group is sent to only that destination.

If brand names and/or region names are specific to sub-audiences, consider using the brand names within the treatment group names.

Add details like “historical”, “daily”, or “test” as appropriate. Be sure to include the region name if you have multiple regions.

Some examples:

  • “CA”, “NY”, “WA”

  • “Region_Daily”

  • “Active”, “CoolingDown”, or “AtRisk”

  • “90D_Loyalty”

The campaign and treatment group names are concatenated, typically as {{ campaign_name }}_{{ recipient_group_name }}. The campaign and treatment group names become part of the filename that will be visible to users in the application to which you send this treatment group.

Step 5.

The second sub-audience is similar to the first one, but instead choose the “cooling down” value from Predicted Lifecycle Status.

Choose the "cooling down" lifecycle status.

Then update the name of the treatment group. In this example, it’s “CoolingDown_Socks”. This is part of the filename that you will see in the application to which you send this sub-audience. For example: “Churn_HighValue_Early_CoolingDown_Socks”.

A sub-audience for customers with a cooling down lifecycle status.
Step 6.

The third sub-audience is similar to the previous two, but instead choose the “at risk” value from Predicted Lifecycle Status.

Choose the "at risk" lifecycle status.

Then update the name of the treatment group. In this example, it’s “AtRisk_Socks”. This is part of the filename that you will see in the application to which you send this sub-audience. For example: “Churn_HighValue_Early_AtRisk_Socks”.

A sub-audience for customers with an at risk lifecycle status.
Step 7.

A campaign can be configured to be sent once or on a recurring basis. A campaign can also be scheduled (i.e. “to be sent at the time you choose in the future”) or to be sent as soon as possible.

Give your campaign a name.
Step 8.

Enter the date on which you plan to launch your campaign. This date helps Amperity improve results tracking and campaign results measurement.

Configure the schedule and timing for your campaign.
Step 9.

When your campaign is ready, click the Schedule button in the top right corner of the Campaigns page.

Campaign types

Amperity supports the following types of campaign workflows:

One-time

A one-time campaign represents a specific campaign message that is configured to be sent only once.

A one-time campaign can be configured to run in a similar manner as a recurring campaign, but with the purpose being to communicate messages to customers they should see only once. For example:

  • A welcome message to a customer who has joined a loyalty program.

  • A message to a customer who has signed up for a credit card.

Recurring

A recurring campaign is sent automatically based on an updated/refreshed audience that a customer wants to receive in their outbound destination or a state change, such as an accepted return, a change to a loyalty program, or an alert based on credit card status, with a predefined campaign message and cadence to a list of recipients.

A recurring campaign has the following components:

  1. A state change that initiates a campaign message.

  2. A segment that defines a list of customers to which the campaign message applies. This segment can be configured to limit the list to certain types of users, such as only business travelers, high-value customers, and so on.

  3. A launch cadence that defines the frequency–daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly–at which the campaign messages are run.

Multi-channel

A multi-channel marketing campaign blends marketing strategies across channels (i.e. email, SMS, paid media, etc.) to provide customers a personalized experience, but with consistent messages, offers, and products across all channels.

A multichannel campaign defines combinations of sub-audiences and channels to define unique sets strategies, with each applied to a sub-audience.

A multichannel campaign has the following components:

  1. A state change that initiates a campaign message.

  2. A segment that defines the audience to which the multichannel campaign messages will be applied. This segment can be configured to limit the list to certain types of users, such as only business travelers, high-value customers, and so on.

  3. The use of sub-audiences to partition the audience into a variety of campaign channels. Each sub-audience may be configured to have its own control group.

  4. A launch cadence that defines the frequency–daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly–at which the campaign messages are run.

Campaign features

Campaigns have the following features:

Attributes

For many destinations for customer activation, you may configure the list of attributes (i.e. first name, last name, state, etc.) that are sent for each sub-audience. Click the Edit attributes link to open the list of attributes that are available for each destination defined for the audience. Use the drop-down menu to select the destination if there is more than one.

Important

Some destinations only support sending specific attributes. Review the requirements for each destination to ensure that you don’t attach unsupported attributes to your campaign send.

You may append attributes that are available in any database table that is available to AmpIQ. Click the + Add attribute link, and then name the attribute, specify from which table that attribute is sourced, and then specify the name of that attribute as it is defined in that table.

Audiences

All campaigns start with an audience. Choose a segment from the Include drop-down list. The customers in that list will become the audience for this campaign.

Choose one (or more) segments to form the audience for this campaign.

Tip

When a campaign starts with an audience that is defined by a single segment, you can use the segment insights for that segment as a way to measure the performance of that audience over time.

Control groups

A control group is the percentage of an audience who will not receive communications related to a marketing campaign. Use control groups to establish a baseline against which you can measure the success of a campaign over time.

Note

A control group is a completely randomized sample of customers that is pulled from the original audience.

A campaign typically has a single control group, unless sub-audiences are defined within the campaign. Each sub-audience may contain a control group.

Does a control group have consistent audience membership?

Amperity attempts to maintain (but does not guarantee) consistent audience membership for control groups that are associated with recurring campaigns.

  • When the audience size is unchanged across campaign sends, the membership of the control group will be unchanged.

  • When the audience size changes, the size of the control group also changes. Amperity IDs are added to the control group when the audience size gets bigger and are removed when the audience size gets smaller.

Audience members that are added to a control group may have belonged to a treatment group on the previous send.

Audience members that are removed from the control group will belong to a treatment group on the next send.

For example: A campaign is built using one segment, one control group, and one treatment group. The audience is refreshed weekly and contains a mostly static group of customers, but with small fluctuations in audience size.

  1. Today the size of the audience for the segment is 1200 customers and the size of the control group is 20 percent, or 240 customers. The campaign is sent to 960 customers.

  2. Next week the size of the audience is 1240, which means the size of the control group will be larger (248). The campaign is sent to 992 customers.

  3. And the following week the size of the audience is 1160, which means the size of the control group will be smaller (232). The campaign is sent to 928 customers.

Destinations

Destinations are the locations to which you will send the lists of customers that are associated with each treatment group within a sub-audience. You may send these lists to any destination that is configured for your tenant. You may send the same list to multiple destinations.

Step 1.

This topic describes adding destinations to your campaign. This is done from within the campaign builder for each treatment group that is part of a sub-audience. You can assign more than one destination to each treatment group.

The following sections show adding destinations for each of the “active”, “cooling down”, and “at risk” sub-audiences within the campaign.

Step 2.

A specific set of journeys and messaging creatives are built out and are tailored for customers who fall into the “active” lifecycle status. “Active” customers will be sent to the following channels:

  • Klaviyo, for email campaigns

  • Attentive, for mobile messaging campaigns

  • Criteo, for online display advertising

Click the Destinations column, and then select a destination from the list.

Select one or more destinations for each treatment group.

Do this for each destination to which you want to send this treatment group.

Destinations for customers with an active lifecycle status.
Step 3.

“Cooling down” customers are sent to the same channels as “active” customers, but journeys and messaging creatives will be tailored to the “cooling down” lifecycle status.

Click the Destinations column, and then select a destination from the list. Do this for each destination to which you want to send this treatment group.

Destinations for customers with a cooling down lifecycle status.
Step 4.

“At risk” high-value customers are sent to the same channels as “active” and “cooling down” customers and also to TikTok and Facebook. Journeys and messaging creatives will be tailored to the “at risk” lifecycle status, along with new channels for display advertising creatives that are tailored to customers who fall into the “at risk” lifecycle status.

Click the Destinations column, and then select a destination from the list. Do this for each destination to which you want to send this treatment group.

Destinations for customers with an at risk lifecycle status.
Step 5.

Each sub-audience that is configured for your campaign will have at least one destination associated with it. For each destination that is configured you must specify the set of attributes that will be sent from Amperity to that destination.

Click the Edit Attributes link to open the attributes editor. From the drop-down select each of the destinations that has been configured for this sub-audience, and then select which attributes will be sent to that destination.

For example, if you are sending a treatment group to Attentive to support an SMS-based marketing campaign, you will need to send a list of phone numbers from Amperity to Attentive.

Send a phone number OR an email address to Attentive, but not both.

Enable the checkbox next to the phone attribute, and then leave the rest of the settings as they are. Why are both email and phone optional? Attentive requires that you send only one of those values and the value that you should select is the one that your organization is using within Attentive to build customer journeys and support your marketing campaigns.

Tip

You should use the Merged Customers table for sending customer PII data from Amperity. The Merged Customers table is your best source table and contains the most accurate set of customer PII. Your Customer 360 table is built from the Merged Customers table.

Step 6.

The attributes that are available from the Edit Attributes window will vary, depending on the destination. Some destinations have strict naming requirements. Some destinations only allow specific fields to be sent. Some destinations allow only one or two attributes, whereas others have few restrictions.

For example:

  • Attentive Mobile requires a phone number or an email address. The one you choose should match how you have configured your instance of Attentive.

  • Klaviyo requires an email address, but can be configured to allow additional customer profile data, such as birthdays, favorite colors, and so on.

  • Criteo requires an email address and does not accept any other attributes.

  • TikTok Ads requires an email address and a phone number and will accept advertising IDs for Apple and Android.

  • Facebook Ads requires mapping fields in your customer 360 database to field in Facebook and applying a strict naming convention.

  • Cloud-based storage – Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure – and/or SFTP often have no restrictions.

    Note

    Workflows often use cloud-based storage and/or SFTP as a staging location before uploading that data to another application. That application may have specific requirements for which attributes are required. You will need to ensure that the list of attributes for those use cases are configured correctly within the campaigns builder.

Exclusion lists

An exclusion list identifies customers who should not receive communications related to a campaign.

Sometimes campaigns need to exclude certain members of your audience. For example, a churn prevention campaign is often configured to exclude customers who have opted-out of SMS messaging and/or who have unsubscribed from an email list.

When you need to exclude audience members, choose one (or more) segments from the Exclude drop-down list. The customers in an exclusion list will be removed from the audience for this campaign.

Note

When you select multiple exclusion lists, audience members will be excluded when they belong to either list. This is the same behavior as when the OR operator is used in SQL. “Exclude customers from this audience when they belong to segment A OR segment B.”

Choose one (or more) segments to exclude customers from this campaign.

Treatment groups

A treatment group is the percentage of an audience who will receive communications related to a marketing campaign. A campaign may have more than one treatment group.

You may configure more than one treatment group for each audience and sub-audience within a campaign.

Sub-audiences

A sub-audience is a list of customers who will receive a specific type of communication related to a marketing campaign.

A sub-audience may define users by brand, most commonly purchased sub-brand, product affinity, product category, product type, demographics, etc.

A sub-audience typically represents a set of users for which you have a better understanding of marketing preferences and will receive more specific messaging as part of the campaign. For example, you might split a spring sale email campaign by product affinity so you can send out an email showcasing shorts to customers with a high affinity for shorts and another email advertising t-shirts to customers with a high affinity for t-shirts.

A sub-audience enables you to measure the performance of individual communications in a campaign. For example, you can see how the shorts sub-audience email performed as compared to the t-shirts sub-audience email within the same campaign. Each sub-audience can be configured to use its own control and treatment groups, providing even greater control and flexibility.

Timing and launch dates

A campaign can be configured to be sent once or on a recurring basis. A campaign can also be scheduled (i.e. “to be sent at the time you choose in the future”) or to be sent as soon as possible.

Give your campaign a name.

Enter the date on which you plan to launch your campaign. This date helps Amperity improve results tracking and campaign results measurement.

Give your campaign a name.

Email notifications

Email notifications will alert you when there is an issue with campaign delivery. For example, email notifications are sent when Facebook Ads is missing an external identifier or two-factor authorization is not enabled for Google Ads.

Email notifications will describe the issue and the steps that are required to resolve the issue, and will provide a link to the Workflows page in Amperity.