Chaining campaigns together
More often than not, when one campaign ends or reaches a certain point, another separate campaign has to respond accordingly.
A master builder not only has a clear strategy to chain campaigns together, they also leave plenty of breadcrumbs for others to follow and understand what is occurring.
For this recipe, let's assume that when Campaign A (sales promo) ends, we want to trigger Campaign B (prospect nurture) to start.
Getting ready
We need to create a tag in a Functional category that will be used to chain together the campaigns. Once that is created, we need to be inside Campaign A.
How to do it...
- Open the sequence in Campaign A where we want to trigger Campaign B.
- Add a new Apply/Remove Tag process to the sequence's flow at the appropriate point. In the example here, we are triggering Campaign B after the last e-mail in the Campaign A sequence:
- Apply the functional tag that is being used to chain the campaigns together:
- Leave a canvas note explaining what campaign this tag application is impacting:
- Exit out of Campaign Builder and go into Campaign B.
- Drag out a new Tag goal and connect it to the sequence we need to start.
- Name it to indicate that it is triggered by Campaign A. In the following image, we are assuming that the form for Campaign B already existed prior to the start of this recipe. The bottom chain is the result of this recipe:
- Double-click the Tag goal and configure it for the functional tag being applied in Campaign A:
- Finish building the campaign and publish.
How it works...
When a contact reaches the step that applies the functional tag in Campaign A, the Tag goal in Campaign B will be triggered, effectively chaining Campaign B to Campaign A.
There's more...
We can have the same tag being listened for across multiple campaigns, such as, an Escape Hatch tag goal that we add to the end of every prospect marketing campaign. When a contact unsubscribes, the trigger can apply this Escape Hatch tag, effectively ending outbound marketing from any campaign with the hatch built-in:
Since a Tag goal is used to chain campaigns together, they can also be used to stop sequences, as in the preceding Escape Hatch tactic.
This recipe can also be modified to control behavior within the same campaign. For example, for auto-tagging from a link, click on an e-mail to start another sequence without stopping the main sequence of e-mails:
Remove any functional tags using a remove tag step within the resulting sequence to keep contact records clean. A functional tag should not be used for database segmentation.
Leaving notes isn't mandatory for functionality; however, it empowers others to perform maintenance without our presence.