Messaging Campaigns

Last Modified: Aug 16, 2024

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Overview

Messaging Campaigns let staff reach out to a group of students on specified dates about things they need to do or activities they need to attend. This type of campaign has no objective, unlike Appointment Campaigns, so students receive all messages in the campaign. 

Strategic questions should be asked when creating messaging campaigns, such as:

• How would you like to impact your students with campaigns? What student populations do you envision this would be used for?

• Who should be launching campaigns? Should campaigns be part of each staff member’s personal workflow? Or should they be more centralized and launched by unit leaders?

• How will you plan to follow-up on the campaign messages or responses from students? 

Getting Started

Begin by opening the Campaigns menu item and clicking the Messaging Campaigns header.

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Alternatively, you may add a new campaign immediately by choosing the + Add New button.

Creating the Campaign

Campaign Definition

The New Messaging Campaign page opens. Set the criteria for the Messaging Campaign. The fields that must be filled out are listed and defined below.

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Campaign Name

Campaign Name is visible to the person creating the campaign and any other users who have access to view campaigns, but not visible to the student.

Tracking URL

The URL you want students to click. This will show instead of the display value in an SMS nudge.

Tracking URL Display Value

The text students will see in an email message encouraging them to enroll. When students click the text, they go to the Tracking URL.

Add Students to Campaign

The next step is performing a search to find recipients for the campaign. If you are adding students via a search, set your criteria and perform the Advanced Search. The search results page appears.

Select the students to add to the campaign and click Continue. You may also save this search if you want. Once you’ve gone to the next step, this list is static and does not update.

Review the students on the next page. If a student should not be in the campaign, select the box next to their name and choose Remove Students from Campaign from the Actions menu.

Once finished, click Continue.

Add Welcome Message and Nudges

Each nudge is an email sent to your campaign list. Welcome messages send immediately after starting the campaign. Other nudge message are sent the morning of the date chosen when you create the nudge. Some may be slightly delayed. as with any large transmission.

To create the welcome message and other nudges, define your campaign and create your list of students for the Messaging Campaign. The Compose Nudges page follows the student list definition.

Click + Add Welcome Message to create your first nudge. Note that you can only create one nudge per day. You must create at least one nudge per campaign. However, there are no limits on how many nudges you can send.

Enter a subject line and customize the message. For email messages, you can add an attachment to the message. The available Merge Tags are in the rich text editor. You can see a preview of the message in a panel right of the composition panel. You can also attach a file to this message.

Fields used in the message composition are:

Email Subject

The subject of the nudge email going to the student.

Message

The customized email message going to the student. Merge tags are available for this message and are shown beneath the message field.

Send Date

The date the nudge is sent. This field does not appear when creating the Welcome Message, as the nudge will send immediately after starting the campaign. If you set the campaign start date for the next day or after, the first nudge sends at 10 AM Central Time of the date set. If you add students later, the send date will be immediately after they are added to the campaign. For non-Welcome Message nudges, you can send a message on a Specific Date or a Relative Date.

After creating a nudge, click Save Welcome Message/Save Nudge to continue. You may continue creating nudges after this.

Relative and Specific Nudge Dates

For nudges that are sent after the welcome message, you can send the nudge on a specific date or a relative date. 

Sending on a specific date is more useful if you have a narrow, time-bound campaign that will not add many (if any) new students. If a student is added after a specific date nudge, they do not receive the nudge.

A relative date may be more helpful if you are using an automated action to add students to the campaign, or if you will be adding new students to a campaign regularly. This allows you to send a nudge X number of days after being added to the campaign based on what you enter in the Send Offset field.

Important. Your Messaging Campaign "ends" when your last message is sent. You can continue to add Nudges after the last message is sent, if this is helpful to your Messaging Campaign.

Confirm and Send

Review your campaign details, nudges, and recipients on this page.

Click Start Campaign when you are ready to send the invites to the selected students. If your welcome message is the same day as your campaign creation date, the nudge will send almost immediately (if there are recipients in the campaign already). If the welcome message is the next day or after, it sends around 8AM PT on that date.

Reviewing Campaign Metrics

After sending the campaign, returning to the campaign page will display available metrics for nudges and other basic campaign details.

The following metrics are available in the Messaging Campaigns detail page.

Students in Campaign

The number of students who were sent the campaign message.

Click to Open Rate

The click-to-open rate (CTOR) compares the number of unique clicks to unique opens.

Emails Sent

The number of messages sent by the Messaging Campaign. This number may not be the same as the number of students in your original list.

Emails Opened

The number of messages sent by the campaign that were opened.

Links Clicked

The number of times the link in the campaign message was clicked.

Beneath the metrics is a table called Students in Campaign. The list may be exported as a CSV file from the Options sidebar.