A recurring campaign is a type of Communicate Journey that delivers the same messaging over a consistent cadence to multiple audience groups.

This feature allows for frequent, targeted delivery of content to different audiences at different times. It’s ideal for scenarios with consistent, unchanging information such as onboarding, leave of absence, promotions, and stock grants.

The article provides detailed instructions on creating and managing recurring campaigns, including setting up audiences, building campaign messages, and analyzing results. It emphasizes the importance of finalizing communication strategies before building audiences and sending messages, as significant changes to recurring campaigns can result in data loss.

Information

Introduction

A recurring campaign is a type of Communicate Journey that runs the same messaging over the same cadence for multiple audience groups. Each group will receive the messaging relative to when their start date is. This setup allows you to frequently deliver the same content to different audience groups at different times in a consistent and targeted manner.

Tip: Tivian strongly recommends the use of Automatic Email Delivery for recurring campaigns. If you haven’t enabled Automatic Email Delivery, contact a member of your Tivian team.

Use cases

This setup is ideal for solutions that have consistent, unchanging information. Use cases include onboarding, leave of absence, promotions, and stock grants, or any time you need to convey the same information to different audience groups over time.

Recurring campaigns, once created, should not be edited or changed significantly. For this reason, Tivian recommends that you finalize your communication strategy before you start building your audiences and sending messages.

You can make subtle changes later on to your recurring campaign, such as editing the campaign’s pieces of content or changing the link to your CTA button. However, Tivian recommends that you be mindful when making changes to the recurring campaign, as significant changes could result in a loss of data.

Any changes made to recurring campaign messages after a campaign has started may result in a loss of historical data and additional analytics. Reach out to your Tivian team for more information.

Note: Recurring campaigns are not recommended for Communicate Journeys that you foresee significant changes needing to be made to, such as Open Enrollment.

Converting a one-time campaign to a recurring campaign

A one-time campaign can be converted to a recurring campaign, in the Preferences section of the Communicate Journey, if messages haven’t been sent yet. Once a campaign has started sending messages, the set campaign type will be locked.

Another option is duplicating a current campaign and making it a recurring campaign. If you want to duplicate an existing Communicate Journey, reach out to your Tivian team.

Note: If you change or duplicate an existing Communicate Journey, any other campaign message types besides emails will be automatically converted to emails once the campaign is converted to a recurring campaign. Web banners, Slack, and Microsoft Teams messages are completely disabled in recurring campaigns.

Create a new Communicate Journey

If you are licensed, you can follow the steps below. Contact your Tivian team for any questions.

1. Start in the Dashboard and click Add Journey tile.

2. In the pop-up window, select New Custom Journey and click Add.

3. In Preferences, select Recurring as the type for your Communicate Journey. The default type for a new Communicate Journey is One-Time.

Create a new audience

Each audience list will need to be created for each round of the campaign. Audiences cannot be re-used or repeated. For this reason, audiences are not shared between one-time and recurring campaigns.

1. Click the Start a New Audience button under the Audience area in the Preferences section.

2. Set the start date for this active audience. The Day 1 message will be sent to the audience on this date.

Note on Weekends

If you have messages set to be delivered on a Saturday or Sunday, they will be delivered on the Friday before instead, if they are not the first message. Messages will only be sent out on weekend days if they are the first message in the campaign (Day 1).

Note on Holidays

The system does not currently recognize holidays, so if you have a campaign message set for a weekday holiday, it will deliver normally.

3. Name your audience list. This name will be shown in the campaign timeline as the audience goes through each message.

Spark Tip

Tivian auto-populates the audience’s name with the start date. We recommend keeping this format, especially if you only have groups each week/month/etc. This will help to avoid confusion and be easier to follow. Example 01/01/2021 New Hires or February 2021 Audience.

4. Once you have set up the upcoming active audience group(s), ensure that Automatic Delivery is setup under Email Preferences. Read the Automatic Email article for more information.

Note: You cannot delete an audience once it’s been created, but you can update it by uploading a new file.

Campaign timeline

When you create an audience, it is considered active. Your active audiences will be listed in chronological order with their start dates. The campaign timeline will be organized by days, so the first message would be Day 1. An audience would receive the Day 1 message on their scheduled start date.

From there, the following campaign messages would be sent in relation to the start date. So, if the next message is the following week, the second message would go out on Day 7, the seventh day from the start date.

Note: The default for message deliveries are weekdays, however, the Day 1 message can be set to a weekend. Tivian does not recommend this as the following days will be not be sent on a weekend.

Once an audience has received all of the messages in the campaign timeline, they will be considered an inactive audience and will no longer appear on the campaign timeline and/or in Preferences. You will still be able to view all engagement results in the Analytics section.

Building your campaign messages

Ensure that your messages have been created and finalized prior to an audience starting the campaign. Changing messaging or adding new messages when audiences have already started may result in a loss of data.

1. Go to the Campaign section and begin building out your campaign messages. If you have purchased a Communicate Journey from Tivian, it will come with templatized messages.
2. To add a message, click Add New.

3. Your first message will default to Day 1.

4. When you edit your first message the following areas will need to be filled out:

• Title: How you locate this message in the timeline and the Analytics section.
• Notes: Informs you and your team what this message is and what your strategy is for the communication. It is not visible in the employee content experience.
• Type: The message format.
• Audience: The audience will remain “Everyone” as each new audience that comes through is set to only go through the campaign once.
• Date: The Day a message will be delivered, in relation to an audience’s start date. Please refer to the Campaign timeline chapter for more information on Days in a recurring campaign.
• Reminder: Sent to you and anyone you have added as a Notification Recipient. Notification Recipients are configured in the Preferences section.

• Destination: The piece of content you are highlighting with this message (video, PDF, or image). The message will drive the audience into the content experience to view this content.

Note: External URLs can also be selected, though the analytics on them will not be as in depth as CXI-based content.

• Thumbnail: The graphic representation of the selected content within CXI. This image is also used as the graphic portion of your communication.

The following fields may appear depending on your selected message channel. Here are some tips and best practices for composing your varied communications:

• Subject: Keep it short and sweet.
• Message: Keep it short and to the point, while also driving your audience to act.
• Call to Action: The text that will ask your employee to click the link and go to the experience. You will want to include an act for them to do, like “Click Here.”

Note: If you want to add sub-audiences to target specific employee groups, reach out to your Tivian team for recurring campaign best practices.

5. Make sure your content in the Experience section is set to Published. Read the How to Upload Content articles for more information.

6. Email and text messages will need to have the Approve to Send button switched on before the first audience’s delivery, for the audience to receive them. Unapproved messages will not be delivered.

7. Once an active audience has gone through Day 1, you can no longer change their start date but you can upload an updated CSV or update the audience via the public API if someone needs to be removed or added. The CSV file will need to match the previous version’s columns and format to ensure your analytics are accurate. Any added audience members, however, will not receive any of the previous messages that have already passed for their audience group in the timeline. Previous messages can be manually forwarded to those who have missed the previous Days.

8. To see when an audience will receive the next message, you can hover over the audience in the campaign timeline and it will show the date on which that specific audience will receive the next message.

Note: Avoid making significant changes to your campaign messages once an active audience has started the recurring campaign, as this can result in a loss of historical data. Recurring campaigns are meant to stay as is throughout their entirety. You can make slight changes, such as changing a CTA button’s destination, however, it is recommended you don’t make changes that could affect your analytics.

Testing a recurring campaign

Test your recurring campaign by creating a mock audience list containing you and your approved testers’ information. You can also set up reminders for yourself and other Notification Recipients for each campaign message in the Preferences section.

Be aware of the potential traffic of reminders coming through the inbox of Notification Recipients, especially if continuous active audiences are going through the campaign. When you receive a reminder email, it will include the active audience(s) that will be receiving that specific campaign message next.

Active audiences vs. inactive audiences

Targeted audiences created for a recurring campaign are stored at the campaign level, not the account level, though sub-audiences are available account-wide as they act as a filter for active audiences.

When you create audiences in a recurring campaign, they are automatically set as active audiences.

Active audiences are:

• About to start the campaign
• Have started the campaign
• Scheduled to start the campaign at a future date

In the Campaign section, an active audience will move down the timeline as each campaign message is received. This allows you to track where current active audiences are in the campaign.

Once an audience has received the final message, it is considered an inactive audience. You will no longer see an inactive audience in the list of audiences in the Preferences section, however, you will still be able to filter that audience’s behavior, results, and engagement in the Analytics section.

Analytics

The Analytics section includes the total analytics for all of the audiences, with the ability to filter behavior insights by audience group. The Recurring Audiences filter option lists all active and inactive audiences.  If your audience groups are smaller, some of the analytics may not be available, to protect those audience members’ PII. You will be able to filter in aggregate over many recurring audience groups.

Best practices

• Keep the start date at the beginning of your audience name, this will help you keep track of your active audiences and where they are in the campaign This also helps because the start date for an audience is only shown in an active audience. For example, 1/1/2021 New Hires.
• Emails return the most accurate analytics. Trackable assets and printed materials are not recommended as they have to be managed individually for each recurring audience campaign.
• If you have an expected audience coming through but do not have audience information yet, you can create a placeholder audience with a set date, the number of audience members via an uploaded CSV or HRIS Connector. Later once your CSV or HRIS is updated, you can then go into that active audience and revise it.
• Spacing out your campaign messages will encourage stronger engagement.

FAQ

Can I use web banners, Slack, and/or Microsoft Teams in a recurring campaign?

No, these message types are not available in recurring campaigns. If converting a one-time campaign to recurring, existing web banners, Slack, and Microsoft Teams messages will be converted to emails.

Is there a limitation of days for a recurring campaign?

Yes, a recurring campaign cannot exceed 999 days.

Can I delete an audience in a recurring campaign?

No, you cannot delete an audience, but you can update or edit one. You can modify audiences via an HRIS Connector or by uploading an updated version of the CSV file.

If a campaign message is forwarded to an employee who was added later to an active audience will that employee’s engagement count in the Analytics section?

If an email is sent to an HRIS/CSV file-based employee, it will count as views for that employee.

When posters and postcards are used are the links for each audience the same?

Poster and postcard web links, QR codes, and Text Keywords will be updated for every new audience. Posters and postcards will need to be printed for every round of audiences that come through. For this reason, Tivian does not recommend using posters or postcards in your recurring campaign.

What other topics are recommended for recurring campaigns?

Use cases include onboarding, leaves of absence, promotions, and stock grants, or any time you need to convey the same information to specific audience groups.