Building Nurture and Blast Campaigns

Overview

In EMP, campaigns are communication plans for interacting with a specific audience or purpose. Through campaigns, you can:

For example, you can create a campaign to encourage applicants to apply, or create one to guide them in completing their application.

Nurture vs Blast Campaign

Nurture campaigns are a series of automated outreach sent to students in various stages of the enrollment funnel, such as inquiry, applicant, or enrolled. For example, a nuture campaign might be set up so that when a student completes the inquiry form, they get a thanks for inquiring email. Then, three days later, they get mailed a viewbook. After a week, they get another email encouraging them to set up a visit. And two weeks later, they get a text message encouraging them to follow the school on Instagram.

Blast campaigns are one-time communication efforts meant to be sent to anyone who fits a certain criteria at the time of the outreach. For example, use a blast campaign to send out deadline reminders to inquiries who haven’t submitted your application.

Building a New Campaign

When creating a new campaign, you first set up the hierarchy of the campaign by segmenting the campaign into tracks. Tracks are the highest level in the communication hierarchy. For example, when creating a campaign for New Inquiries, you can create a track for freshman inquiries, transfer inquiries, and graduate inquiries. Then, you'll build your communication plan for each audience within the track.

To create a new campaign:

  1. Navigate to the Outreach drop-down menu on the top navigation bar and select Campaigns. 
  2. Click Campaigns and then New Campaign.
  3. Enter a name and description for your campaign.
  4. Choose the Type of Campaign. The remaining prompts will be slight different depending on your campaign selection.
  5. Choose your Campaign Objective.
  6. Click Save. Then, you can begin adding items to the Campaign Tracks area, where you'll configure the specific messages that will go to your audience.

Campaign Tracks

Campaign Tracks are individual communication plans within a campaign. Using tracks, you can establish a flow and cadence for all of the messages you intend to send to the applicable applicants. For example, within a Drive-to-Apply Campaign, you might have one track for foreign applicants and another for domestic.

Within each track, there are tiers. Tiers are the steps included in a track. For example, within a track for international applicants, your first tier might be a welcome message, while your second tier could be a message to remind applicants of missing materials. Each tier can also have multiple messages. For example, you may wish to create an email, text message, and voice message to go out to all applicants at the same time. Or, you may have alternate initial messages for different applicant segments.

To create a track:

  1. Under the campaign, click the plus sign to add a new track. 
  2. Name the track and add a description.
  3. Attach a Group to the track. You can also attach groups to individual communication if you don't want to attach a group at the track level. If you do not select a group at the track level or the individual communication, no filtering will be used, and all students within your EMP instance will receive the communication.
  4. Select a Stage(s) to receive the communication in the track. 
  5. Select your Campaign Objective. 
  6. Click Save. 

Campaign Tiers

Once you've established your Tracks, you'll use Tiers to pace your communication. Tiers allow you to determine when and how often you want your emails, text or voice messages, or print marketing to be sent to students. A tier can include groups of related messages that are scheduled to go to your audience. Each tier can contain several messages. For example, you might create a Tier 1 to send messages to your newest applicants. Within the tier, you may decide to schedule an email, a text, and a phone message to all go out around the same time. Then, you may schedule a tier to send out follow-up messages to the same audience a number of days or weeks later. If you have configured your campaign to send messages on a schedule of specific dates and times, tiers are referred to as Blasts.

  1. Your first tier appears after your track is created. You can create additional tiers by clicking Add Tier.
  2. Then, click Add Item to choose which media type you want to send. Your options may include:
    • Email Message: this option allows you to select which of your Email Templates you'd like to send.
    • Print Piece: this option allows you to send direct mail in your campaign, such as a viewbook or postcard. Work with a member of your account team to create your customized mailer.
    • Text Message: this option allows you to select the text messages of your choice to your recipients.
    • Voice Message: this option allows you to send a prerecorded message to each recipient's phone. You can use a recorded voice message or text-to-speech. Messages arrive as phone calls, and upon answering the call, the recipient hears your message.
    • To-do: this option allows you to add a task or reminder as part of your campaign. For example, you may add a to-do mid-campaign to reach out to students who haven't opened any of the emails or responded to any of the text messages to ensure they are receiving them.
  3. Click Save above Tier 1 to save your selections.
  4. Configure and customize the media in the tier.

Campaign To-do's

You can set up a to-do in a campaign as a task or reminder for admissions reps to complete as students move through the campaign's tiered communication. For example, you may add a to-do mid-campaign to reach out to students who haven't opened any of the emails or responded to any of the text messages to ensure they are receiving them.

  1. Add a Tier. Then, click Add Item and select To-do.
  2. Name the To-do. The name should be the action/reminder.
  3. Add a Group.
  4. Check the box to assign the to-do to the student's rep.
  5. Add a Due Date. This date indicates the deadline for completing the to-do, counting the days from when it first appears in the rep's account.
  6. Include additional information about what actions should be completed in the body text.
  7. Add a Label, if applicable, and Save.