How To Create An Outbound Campaign

How To Create An Outbound Campaign

Overview

The Webio's  Campaigns screen simplifies the way you manage your Bots schedules . It allows you to send Bots to your customers by letting you set up either Inbound or Outbound Campaigns. 

Outbound campaigns can be set to go as:

  • Once Off campaign ( you can only use this campaign once)
  • Daily campaign (you can use the same template multiple times)

You can search through your Campaigns, using the search feature at the top of the screen and expand each campaign to check its details and schedules' status.


You will see the Campaign's schedules for the days and times the Bot can be sent out. A Campaign can have one or multiple schedules for your Bot to be sent out at the same or different time of the day. If there are no schedules for that day you will see the message "No Schedules belong to this campaign".



Before starting, decide what your Campaign file will be called (for Daily campaigns this needs to be unique) and have a test file ready.
Before starting, ensure you have a Bot available to be sent in Outbound or Inbound campaigns. 
The documentation below describes the process of creating Campaigns on our new Web App. If you are looking for old UI documentation please follow this link.
If you are looking for Quick Campaigns, please follow this link.

Set Up A New Outbound Campaign

On the Campaigns Screen, click CREATE NEW


Campaign General Configuration

Give your campaign a unique name then fill in the remaining details.


If this will be a reoccurring campaign, remember to change the dates as required.

  1. Set the campaign Validity Period.                                                                                                                                                                                                      
  2. If it is active on your organization, select a Propensities model. 
  3. Take your sample file and drag it into the drop box on the top right corner. 
                                                                                                                                   
  1. Campaign File Example                    
  2. Accepted file formats are CSV, XLS or XLSX.
  3. The name of the file must be unique. For the Daily Campaigns, every time you drop the file to activate the campaign, the file needs to be named and formatted the same as the first time you created the Campaign.
  4. When you just update the data in your file but don't change any field names (Headers) you can keep simply dropping the same file anytime you want to activate the campaign. When, instead, you add additional field names (Columns) to your file, you will have to re-map the campaign. (Make sure to update your Bot too if it is needed). 
  5. For phone numbers including WhatsApp, Viber Numbers include the national code without the + (E.g. 447846587486)
  6. Make sure there are no empty spaces in the field.
  7. You have to store at least your customers channel IDs in one column (E.g. Phone number). That column header has to match the Sent To field in your Bot configuration.
  8. Other customer data are optional. You can enrich the conversation flow when they are present. The names of the remaining headers have to match the field names your Bot is using.
  9. You can alter a field name in the target column during the campaign field mapping process.
  1. Choose either Daily of Once-Off.                                                                                                                                                                                                       
    1. For a Once-Off Campaign the contacts in the file you will import will receive the Bot, for a daily campaign they won't.
    2. For Daily the file you upload is the template according to which your future uploads must be structured and named. When you select Daily, you will  need to set the days and times at which you want to be able to import data then drop the file into the Campaign Drop Box to activate it. 
 
  1. If needed, set automate RPM.                                                                                                                                            
When you're happy click NEXT.

Calculated Fields

After the campaign general configuration, you will land on the Calculated fields screen.


Leave the fields empty and click NEXT.
Get in touch with support@webio.com if you want to learn more about these features.

Fields Mapping

Your Campaign File column headers will be pulled through the Field Mapping Screen.

Select the Type of each field. Most fields can be set to Data.  You will need to set the field that contains the phone number or ID you want to send to as one of the ID types e.g. if you are sending SMS set the field that contains the mobile number to type = Phone Number.  

The field that you tag as Customer ID will appear in your data export.





















If you need to alter the field names to match the ones your Bot is using, you can do so under the Target column, this is quite useful when, for instance, the Bot you are going to assign to the campaign uses different custom values from your Campaign file.

Group By

The 'Group By' feature helps you organize your customers' records by grouping rows of data containing the same value within the field name you have selected. Select the field name you want this feature to branch on and the system will generate as many groups as the different values you have in the field name you have selected. You can then set an outbound schedule for each group that has been created. Learn more here.

Duplicate By


When creating a Campaign, the 'Duplicate by' feature lets you remove duplicate data and ensures you only start the conversations you want.
You can do this on any field, and we will only import the first instance of the value we get to but won't import any others.



Click NEXT.

Outbound Schedule/s

Select Per Group if you have grouped your data on the previous screen and you want to create a different schedule for each group, select the 'Per group' option, then configure the schedule for each group. Select ' For All ' if you need the same schedule for all your contacts. 



For Once-Off Campaigns

Select:
  1. Now - You will have to set the schedule end times, the Bot you are sending and the rate per minute. The schedule will start as soon as the setup process is completed.  
  2. Future - You will have to set the start and end times, the Bot you are sending and the rate per minute. The schedule will start accordingly to what you have configured in here.

For Daily Campaign

Tick the days you want to send your Bots.  Then set the start and end times, the Bot you are sending and the rate per minute. 
The rate per minute is calculated from the start of the schedule window. If a file is dropped in after that time then it calculates how many messages should have been sent up to that point and sends those all at once, the campaign is trying to catch up. So if I have a file of 100 contacts and I have a schedule start time of 09:00 and an end time of 09:10, with a campaign rate of 10 per minute the following would happen: A file dropped in before 09:00 would schedule to start at 09:00, then send 10 messages at 9:00, 10 at 09:01 and so on. But if I dropped the file in at 09:05 it would send 60 messages at 09:05 (the 50 that should have gone between 9 - 9:04 and the 10 from 09:05).



Once that's all done click SCHEDULE then DONE.

Your Campaign has been created.

Once-Off Campaigns will be started according to the schedule/s you have configured, Daily Campaigns, instead need to be activated. (Check below how to activate a Daily Campaign.)
Please refer to the following documentation to learn more about Daily Campaign and Future Schedules. 

Activate The Daily Campaign

For Daily Campaign you will have to:

  1. Locate your campaign through the search bar.
  1. Activate your Campaign by dropping the file (Make sure to do so according to the import schedule you have set up during the campaign configuration process. (If you drop the file outside the Import Schedule and the Running time has not expired yet the Campaign will try to recover) 
Once this is done, your campaign will be up and running following the time you have set in the Outbound Schedule/s configuration.
 


    • Related Articles

    • How To Create A Quick Campaign

      Overview The Quick Campaign feature, allows you to send out an SMS Information message to your customers, without the need to build a Bot first. You will need a Campaign File, containing customers phone numbers and any other customer's details you ...

    • How To Create Outbound Bots

      Overview The simplest Bot you can create is an Outbound one step Information Bot. This will send a message to the recipient and move to the next step. The documentation below describes the process of building Bots on our new Web App. If you are ...

    • How To Create An Inbound Campaign

      Overview Set up a chat widget for your website, or simply provide your customers with a channel (SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger or Viber) they can reach out. Thanks to Inbound Campaigns, your Bots can greet visitors, answer questions, and guide them ...

    • Creating a campaign

      Before you start Once you have logged into your account, you will land on the Campaign view, if not click into Campaigns. You'll see any campaigns that are running or waiting to run for the current day. You can set up either inbound or outbound ...

    • How to stop an ongoing campaign

      Fantastic question! If you'd like to stop an ongoing campaign from executing what was initially scheduled and put in place, you can click on the orange STOP! button on the Campaigns screen.