Campaigns
Overview
A campaign is the one term for everything that gets sent — the one-off newsletter as much as the multi-step welcome journey. The difference between them is not a separate thing but a question in the wizard: how does it start?
- “Audience now” or “At a point in time” makes it a one-off send: one send run to a list of
recipients.
- Anything else — a tag, a form, by hand — makes it a journey: one run per recipient, with waits
and branches in between.
Both stay tied together by the UTM campaign key. It runs from the ad through the form all the way into the CRM pipeline — and is the reason it is answerable at all which effort produced revenue.
Core tasks
Create it in three steps. Name and goal → how does it start (tiles) → first message (channel, template, subject). At the end the campaign exists with its first message and is off. The wizard sends nothing.
Have it suggested from a brief. In the first step you describe in one or two sentences what the campaign should achieve. Name, subject lines and the waits in between come out of it — in one go, so the messages build on each other. The suggestion lands in the form, not in the campaign: until “Create” nothing exists, and every value stays editable.
Work in the builder. A campaign is a vertical sequence: entry, then message, wait or branch. Between two steps sits a “+” — that is where you insert later without renumbering the rest. Wait and branch read as plain sentences (“after 3 days”, “if message 1 was opened”).
Edit a message. Every message has its own full-height page: subject, preheader, template and the content areas of the template. The template frame stays locked — what you change is what sits inside it.
Check & start. Before going live a checklist runs: is there a message? Content — your own mail or a template? A subject? An entry path? For a one-off send additionally a send time, and exactly one message. An open item blocks the start.
The checklist is only the preview: the same rules hold on the server and therefore on every route — campaign builder, automations screen, API and AI tool. A campaign that cannot send cannot be switched on anywhere; it would otherwise sit in the list as "running" and silently do nothing. For the same reason the send time and the audience of a running campaign cannot be removed again. Switching off always works.
Test it. The dry run shows what would happen without anything leaving the house.
Fields in detail
The What it does column answers what changes in the system — not what the field is called. The grey name behind the label is the API field: the same thing runs under that name through automation, import and AI tools.
A campaign is the bracket, not a single send. What goes out is a dispatch within the campaign.
Creating and editing a campaign
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Name name | yes | text | What the campaign is called. It appears in list, reporting and in the origin details of the contacts it creates. |
Description description | no | text | What the campaign is running for. |
Goal goal | no | text | What is to be achieved. It stands next to the result in the report — the only way to make "successful" checkable. |
Purpose purpose | no | the same key as on the consent, newsletter for instance | What is being promoted. It is the axis of the topic unsubscribe: whoever opts out of this purpose leaves exactly the journeys carrying it and stays reachable for the rest. Without a purpose only a full unsubscribe stops delivery. |
Audience audienceId | to start | an existing audience | Who is addressed. To switch on, a one-off send needs it; a journey needs it or an entry tag. |
Entry mode entryMode | no | one-off, continuous | Whether the audience is determined once or people keep joining. Continuous turns the campaign into a journey that still takes new recipients tomorrow. |
Entry tag entryTag | no | a tag | Whoever receives this tag enters. The usual way to start a journey from day-to-day work. |
Re-entry after (days) reentryDays | no | number | After how many days someone may enter again. Without this lock the same contact would get the same journey repeatedly. |
Exit rules exitRules | no | conditions | When someone leaves the journey — after a purchase, say. Without them the campaign keeps advertising what was bought long ago. |
Start startsAt / End endsAt | no | date | Term of the campaign. |
Send time sendAt | for a one-off send | point in time | When the send goes out. For a one-off send it is the trigger — without it the campaign cannot be switched on. |
Owner ownerId | no | an employee | Who is responsible for the campaign. |
Sender profile senderProfileId | no | a configured sender profile | Whose name the campaign goes out under — sender name, address and reply address. Empty = the brand or the house default decides; a single message may deviate. |
UTM campaign utmCampaign | no | text | The campaign name in the target addresses. Only with it can you later say which revenue came from this campaign. |
Smart links smartLinks | no | pairs of address fragment and tag | Assigns a tag on click: if the clicked address contains the stored fragment, the recipient gets the tag. That turns interest into an attribute without anyone reading along. |
Brand brandId | no | one of your brands | Which brand sends — determines sender, design and unsubscribe page. |
Settings & permissions
- Module
module.marketing— fail-closed: with the module off, deep links are dead too. marketing.campaign.manage— maintain campaigns, messages, audiences and templates.
Pre-assigned to the role Vertrieb.
marketing.campaign.send— actually trigger a send. Deliberately a separate, elevated right
and pre-assigned to no role: maintaining is preparation, sending is irreversible.
marketing.brand.allfor the cross-brand view.- A campaign's state is derived — draft, running, finished — and is not maintainable master data.
A second switch next to “active” would be the day the two drift apart.
FAQ & troubleshooting
Where did “journeys” go? A journey is a campaign. The old menu entry redirects to campaigns; old bookmarks keep working.
“Campaign cannot be activated: no message.” The campaign has no send step. Insert a message in the builder via the “+”.
I can create campaigns but not send them. Then marketing.campaign.send is missing. That is deliberate: maintaining and triggering are separate decisions.
The campaign does not show up in the report. Without a UTM campaign key there is no attribution — and without attribution no row in the analysis.
The WhatsApp step does nothing. WhatsApp is off by default and requires templates approved by Meta. Until it is set up the step is skipped, not attempted — the campaign carries on.