The process of creating a campaign from scratch starts with naming the campaign and defining some basic information for it. The steps are described below.
In the Business Control Center Home page, select Operations > Outreach > Create a Campaign.
Specify a name and an optional description for this campaign. The name can include spaces and does not have to be unique. It is used by ATG Outreach only and is not visible to the campaign’s target audience. Note that it can be useful to append the word “campaign” to the name to make campaigns easily identifiable in the To Do List on the Home page.
Click Create. The Properties tab appears, which you use to enter general information for this campaign.
In the Assigned to Site field, specify whether this campaign applies to all your Web sites (a global campaign) or to a single site. This field appears only if ATG Outreach is running in a multisite environment. For more information on campaigns that apply to multiple Web sites, refer to Using ATG Outreach in a Multisite Environment. Important: If you choose to have a campaign apply to a single site, you cannot configure events and actions within that campaign to reference other sites. For example, you cannot create a campaign for Site X that includes a Logs In event where the login occurs on Site Y.
If you specify a single site, additional information appears:
Enabled Status: whether the site is enabled or disabled, which is a setting that is configured through the Site Administration utility. It indicates whether the site is currently available to visitors. If a site is disabled and a customer visits a URL associated with this site, either a “page not found” message appears or the user is redirected to a different URL. While it is possible to create a campaign that applies to a disabled site, for example because you anticipate the site will be enabled soon, caution is recommended if you do so.
Opening and Closing Date: The dates this site is available for customer visits. Some sites, in particular microsites, might be available for a short period only. The dates are optional and are configured through Site Administration. Exercise caution when designing campaigns that apply to sites that have opening and closing dates; typically you would not want a campaign to be active before or after the site is available.
If you want to select a single site but no sites appear in the list, make sure the Web sites you want have been registered in Site Administration and deployed through an ATG Content Administration project. For more information, refer to the ATG Multisite Administration Guide.
(Optional) Enter the campaign’s start and end dates and times using the formats shown. Specifying a start date allows you to control when the campaign begins. If you leave the start date blank, the campaign starts as soon as it is deployed and its first event is triggered.
Specifying an end date is strongly recommended for all campaigns. If you leave the end date blank, the campaign runs until you stop it manually, and unexpected results can occur. This consideration is especially important for campaigns containing events that wait for customer behavior (for example, visiting a given Web page). If the campaign does not have an end date, the event waits until you stop the campaign manually, and during that time the campaign advances for any participant who completes the event.
If you specify start and end dates but do not define times, the default time is used, which is midnight in both cases.
The Information fields are optional and allow you to enter data you can use to manage your campaigns and track their effectiveness. For example, if you enter an amount in the Estimated Cost field, you can compare this data to the actual cost when the campaign is complete. You can enter any text you like in any of these fields. The data you enter is displayed in Campaign Overview reports.
Click OK. Note: In some places in the Business Control Center, you can switch between tabs or pages without losing any changes you have made. However, in the Properties tab, you must click OK (or Apply) before moving to another page. Otherwise your changes are lost.
The Structure tab is displayed. See the next section, Defining the Root Stage, for information on how to use this tab.
To edit any of the information in the Properties tab at a later date, locate the campaign through the Browse Campaigns list or the To Do List in the Business Control Center Home page. For more information, see Editing a Campaign. Note that you may have to click Refresh in the Browse Campaigns page for a new campaign to appear.
