It can be hard to find the sweet spot between automated marketing sends and personalized communications to your client base. Auto-campaigns make it easy to accomplish this!
Auto-campaigns allow you to contact your clients at specific moments along their journey with your brand—from new client signups to purchase follow-ups to win-back messages. We offer 20+ ways to trigger your communications, so you can customize your campaigns to align with your unique business.
A few key things to know about auto-campaigns:
Auto-campaigns capture moments as they are happening and are forward-thinking.
For example, if you create an auto-campaign to target contacts who create a new profile in your booking software, this is only going to pull in contacts who create a profile from that day onward. Contacts who created profiles 6 months ago, or even 1 week before the campaign started, will not be captured.
If a contact has already met this entry rule in the past, they will not be pulled into the campaign.
Auto-campaigns are great for behavior-based, sequential messaging.
If you want to send a one-off message to a group of clients who have already taken a certain behavior in the past, you will want to create a Scheduled Email and Segment to accomplish this.
Let's get started by navigating to Automations > Marketing Automation in the top navigation bar.
Creating a New Auto-Campaign
Once on the Auto-Campaigns page, click Create an Automation in the top-right.
You will be presented with two options:
Browse our Templates: This option will allow you to select a template from a series of pre-built campaigns that focus on various themes we see commonly and successfully communicating around, such as lead conversion, intro offers, and win-backs. These templates are great starting points to build on and customize!
Create from Scratch: This option will allow you to build your auto-campaign entirely from scratch.
If you are a Pike13 customer, you will only be presented with the option to Create from Scratch.
Adding an Entry Rule
Once you have created your new auto-campaign, the first step will be determining your audience. Who are you trying to reach with this auto-campaign? At what moment are you hoping to have your touch-point? Xplor Growth has over 20 data points surrounding your clients and their interactions, so the opportunities are endless! Setting the right entry rule will ensure the right contacts are being targeted by your auto-campaign.
Reminder: entry rules are forward-looking by nature. If you turn on an auto-campaign today and a client has already taken the entry rule action in the past (i.e. purchased your intro offer, created a profile in your booking software, etc.,) they will not be caught by your campaign. More on this here!
Note: If you are a Mindbody user and have chosen to use a pre-built campaign template, the entry rule condition likely has already been set within the campaign. Still, you may want to make adjustments or drill down within the condition.
Ready to add your entry rule? Check out this article to get started.
Setting Your Goal(s)
Goals work opposite to entry rules - they will pull someone out of a campaign once met. When determining how you want to set your goal(s) for a campaign, it's best to consider your actual goals or intentions for the clients entering the campaign. Are you trying to get contacts to visit? To purchase a membership? You'll want to base your auto-campaign goal(s) around this.
If you are a Mindbody user and have chosen a pre-built campaign template, the goal condition likely has already been set within the campaign. You may want to make adjustments or drill down within the condition.
Ready to add your goal(s)? Check out this article to get started.
Adding Auto-Messages: Email & SMS
Auto-messages are the client-facing aspect of auto-campaigns. They are how you will communicate with your target audience, whether to convert new customers, engage existing loyal customers, or win back lost customers! You can choose to include emails, SMS messages, or both!
Clients have to be subscribed to the types of messages you are sending to be sent. For example, if all of your auto-messages are emails and a client in the auto-campaign is unsubscribed to emails, they will not be sent any of these emails. Xplor Growth cannot send any messages to unsubscribed clients.
Ready to add your auto-message(s)? Check out this article to get started.
Adding Auto-Actions: Tasks, Phone Call Reminders & Tags
Auto-Actions are internal-facing, task-management tools that allow you and your dedicated team to automatically generate to-dos and client tags - keeping you organized and efficient! Not all auto-campaigns will involve auto-actions, but they can be helpful in certain scenarios, such as reminding your team to call a new lead or leaving a t-shirt at the front desk to celebrate a client's 100th visit.
There are three different types of auto-actions:
Tasks
Phone Call Reminders
Tags
Ready to add your auto-action(s)? Check out this article to get started.
Setting Your Auto-Campaign Live
Once you have set up your entry rule and goal(s) and have added any relevant auto-messages and/or auto-actions, it's time to turn on your auto-campaign!
*Note: If your campaign has been sitting idle (either in draft mode or paused) for some time, we highly recommend re-saving your entry rule to bring the campaign up to date.
First, your auto-messages and/or auto-actions should be set to live by clicking into each of them and clicking the green Set Live button in the top right. Once activated, these messages and actions should show as green and "Active" within the campaign.
Once you have turned on all of your auto-messages and/or auto-actions within the campaign, it's time to start the auto-campaign! Click into the campaign and click the green master Start button in the top-right.
*Note: You will likely not see contacts pull in immediately. Remember, auto-campaigns are forward-looking by nature. Only clients who meet the campaign entry rule going forward will be pulled into the campaign. More on this here!