Campaign Main Page Overview
Once the initial two steps have been completed—namely, editing and saving a template or simply saving it to ensure it appears among the available templates for campaign creation, and creating a Recipient List or selecting one of the default options—you are prepared to initiate your new recurring campaign. First, let's take a moment to review the layout of that page.
When you navigate to the main Email Campaigns tab, you will notice several familiar buttons, along with some new information. In the upper right-hand corner, there is a "Create Campaign" button. Selecting this button will direct you to the email campaign creation interface, which we will review shortly.
Within this section, we can observe several visual data representations. This provides an overview of the ongoing and completed email and text campaigns. The graphs displayed illustrates the status of the recurring campaign, detailing the number of requests alongside metrics such as deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces (e.g., invalid email addresses), and emails marked as spam. For texts, it tells us which ones were delivered, undelivered or failed to send. The central segment features the five most recently sent recurring campaigns along with their corresponding dates. Lastly, the section concludes with the total number of emails and texts dispatched this month across various campaigns.
Below this, we have a screen that displays the campaigns, presenting information similar to what we see when reviewing the recipient lists, but specifically for recurring campaigns. As illustrated in the screenshot below, each line for a recurring campaign includes the campaign's name, the name of the recipient list, and the number of recipients since the last update of that list. Additionally, this line shows the location from which the emails or text campaigns are sent, the date of the last modification, and whether the campaign is in the scheduled section or has already been sent. The "scheduled" section pertains to ongoing campaigns, while a "sent" designation indicates that the campaign has already been dispatched. This section will also indicate if there are future dates for additional emails or texts associated with this campaign, or it may display an orange icon that you can hover over to reveal that there are no further occurrences to be sent for the recurring campaign. Furthermore, the status reflects whether the email campaign was a one-time send, encountered an error and did not send, or is currently ongoing. The last button on the far right is the actions button, represented by three dots, where you can edit an existing recurring campaign or delete one.
(**Please note that similar to what is described in the recipient list section, if you accidentally delete an email campaign, you can utilize the filter tool to view deleted campaigns, and then use the action button associated with that campaign to restore it.)
Creating the Recurring Campaign
When you are ready to create a new recurring campaign, you will navigate to this main Campaigns page by clicking Edit, Automation Suite, Recurring Campaigns. Next, you will click the orange "Create Campaign" button in the upper right-hand corner. This will take you to the new campaign page, and the first step is to pick the template. This is the step that defines which type of recurring campaign is created. There is an email and a text button; for this example I will click the email button and choose an email template for my recurring campaign.
Once I have clicked this, it takes me back to the Create Campaign screen where I can pick my recipient list, template, and more. First, I will pick the Campaign name (which will be the name of the Campaign within email Campaigns). Then I will fill in the Campaign subject (which will show up as the subject line for the actual email). Next, I will select the location from which the recurring campaign is being sent and the recipient list I want to use. Lastly, I will choose the Campaign Event. Currently, the only option available is patient care follow-up, but more options will be added in the future. All of these fields are required and must be filled out to move on to the next campaign creation step.
After I select the Campaign Event, some additional fields populate below it. First, I must pick the date and time for the campaign to send. Below that is a box that says "This is a Recurring Campaign." If I select this box, I will see a pop-up where I can add the recurrence frequency and dates. I also need to pick an end date if it is a recurring campaign. I would choose something like "repeat every 1 month" or "2 weeks," and then put an end date of a specific date or after a certain number of recurrences. Once I have it ready for a recurring campaign or as a one-time campaign without selecting the box, I am ready to click the Save button. In the example below, I have chosen it to be a one-time email campaign.
Once I hit save, it takes me back out to the main Campaigns page in the Automation Suite and displays the data for the most recent campaign I created. We can see the recipients are marked as zero, this is normal and it will stay as zero until the Campaign sends, at which point it will update. It also shows the date it is scheduled to run, and the status is set to Scheduled. Once it sends it will change to Sent status and show the correct send date.
As always, if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to reach out to Cloud 9 Support by emailing us at cloud9support@planetdds.com, or chatting us online using the chat bubble on the lower right at https://cloud9support.planetdds.com/hc/en-us, or giving us a call during our business hours of 8:00 AM EST to 8:00 PM EST at the 1.800.394.6050 option 2.