Creating a Multi-Message Campaign

Multi-message campaigns let you automate a series of SMS and email messages over time or based on subscriber actions. You can personalize the messaging journey depending on whether subscribers clicked, opened, or made a purchase from previous messages. Robust segmentation and detailed analytics help you understand and optimize your campaign performance, step by step.

In this article, you’ll learn how to set up and send a multi-message campaign.

How it works

With multi-message campaigns, you can send multi-step, multi-channel campaigns, with the option to condition and create tailored journeys based on the following: 

• If customers clicked the previous message
• If customers purchased from the campaign
• Coming soon! If customers belong to a specific segment, for example, Loyalty members vs. non-Loyalty members

Creating a multi-message campaign

To create a multi-message campaign:

1. In your Yotpo SMS & Email main menu, go to Campaigns > My campaigns.
2. Click Create campaign.
3. Select Multi-message and click Create campaign. You’ll be taken to the multi-message campaign builder.
4. Give your campaign a memorable name. You can update this at any time by clicking the edit (pencil) icon.

Adding an audience

Select the audience for the first message in the sequence. You’ll be able to narrow down this audience for messages sent later, but you won’t be able to add new audience members. For this reason, this initial audience should include everyone you want to receive a message at some point during the campaign.

To add an audience:

1. Select the audience you want to send the first message to. You can send it to:
   • All subscribers
   • SMS subscribers only
   • Email subscribers only
   • SMS and Email subscribers
   • Any of your predefined audiences. To learn how to create an audience, see Lists & Segments in Yotpo SMS & Email.
     
     Please note:

     To improve your email deliverability, customers who soft-bounced in the last 3 months will be skipped by default. You can adjust this period to 7 days or turn off the feature by unchecking the checkbox.
2. Click Next.
   

Adding a message

To create the first message in the sequence:

1. In the campaign builder, click the + icon and then click Add message.
2. Choose if you want this message to be an SMS or Email, and click Next.
3. Select the date and time when you want the message to be sent and click Next.
   
4. Click Save under Create new message. A drawer will open, where you can edit the content of your message. 

Editing message content

After you’ve selected to create a new message, a drawer will open where you can edit the content of your message. You can edit the following:

For SMS messages

• Step name: Name the step or leave as is to be ordered numerically
• Message content: Write the copy for your message
• Include opt-out instructions: Keep this checked to ensure that your message is compliant
• Message timing: Edit the date and time when the message will be sent

When your text message is ready, click Save.

If you’re new to SMS marketing campaigns in Yotpo, you can see some tips and tricks in the SMS campaign creation article.

For emails

• Step name: Name the step or leave as is to be ordered numerically
• Email content
  • Email subject: Add a subject that will engage your recipients
  • Preview text (optional): Enter preview text that will appear after the subject line
• Email preview
  • Change template: Select a template for your email. To learn more, see applying templates.
  • Edit: This opens the email editor, where you can add your email content. To learn more, see designing your email and working with the editor.
• Message timing: Edit the date and time when the message will be sent

When your email is ready, click Save.

Adding conditions

You can define which audience members will receive your messages, based on how they interact with your campaign. For example, you might want to send your second message only to recipients who did not interact with your first message.

To add a condition:

1. After you’ve created your first message, you’ll see an additional option in the + dropdown to Split by condition. Select this option.
2. Choose the condition you want to add. These include:

• Clicked previous message: Recipients who clicked a link in the previous message in the sequence
• Purchased from previous message: Recipients who purchased a product by clicking a link in the previous message in the sequence
• Opened previous message (available only after an email step): Recipients who opened the previous email in the sequence

Your campaign will now be split into two branches: the “Yes” branch, for recipients who met the condition, and the “No” branch, for recipients who did not meet the condition. Put simply, if you've selected "Clicked previous message", your audience will be divided into subscribers who clicked the previous message ('Yes') and those who received it but did not click it ('No').

Configuring your settings

Configure general settings for your multi-message campaign, including smart sending, your sender details, and the amount you’re willing to spend on this campaign.

To access your general settings, click the Settings icon on the top-right corner.

Audience optimization

To further refine your audience, you can exclude subscribers who have made a purchase attributed to this campaign by checking the checkbox.

Smart Sending
Smart Sending prevents you from bombarding your subscribers with messages. When enabled, any contacts who recently received a message from your brand (not including this campaign) will be skipped. You can enable Smart Sending only for text messages, only for emails, or for both.

To change the number of hours that should pass before sending another message, go to your General Settings > Compliance.

Sender details
Update the sender name, sender email, and reply-to email for this campaign.

Campaign spend limit
You can cap the amount of money you’re willing to spend on this campaign. After you reach this limit, no further messages will be sent.

Sending a test message

We recommend you send a test for each of your text messages and emails to make sure everything looks good before sending it out to customers.

You can send a test message from the campaign builder or from the message drawer.

• To send a test message from the campaign builder, click the 3-dot menu and select Send test (for SMS) or Send test email (for email). Enter the relevant mobile number or email address, and click Send.

• To send a test message from the drawer, in the top-right corner, click Send test (for SMS) or Send test email (for email). Enter the relevant mobile number or email address, and click Send.

Launching your campaign

When you’ve finished building and testing your campaign, click Launch campaign.

Analyzing your campaign

After you’ve sent your campaign, you can view its progress and performance.

To view the campaign performance:

1. In your Yotpo SMS & Email main menu, go to Campaigns > My Campaigns.
2. Identify your campaign from the campaign list and click See analytics. You’ll be directed to your Campaign Analytics page:
   • To the left, you’ll find a diagram of your campaign with a summary of the performance per step. Click on any step to access detailed analytics and preview the message content.
   • To the right, you have the Campaign overview.  To open a drawer with all the metrics, click View aggregated analytics. There you can analyze the performance per channel by selecting SMS or Email from the Channel drop-down menu in the top-right corner.

To learn more about Campaign Analytics, see:

• Reviewing Your SMS Marketing Campaigns in Analytics
• Understanding Email Deliverability Analytics

FAQ

Where can I see the full cost of my multi-message campaign?
Because multi-message campaigns target dynamic audience segments, the final number of recipients who will receive each message is only calculated when you send the campaign. For this reason, we can only estimate the cost of the first step.

Can I send messages to recipients in their time zone?
Due to the need for a time interval between each message, and the complexity of scheduling a sequence of messages to many recipients simultaneously, we do not allow sending messages according to the recipient’s time zone.

If I set up a campaign that includes both email subscribers and SMS subscribers, will subscribers who are not on both lists still receive both text messages and emails? 

Each subscriber will receive messages only from the channel(s) that they are registered to.

Are there any limitations?
While this feature is still in beta, some functionality is still not available. This includes the following:

• Sending discounts
• A/B testing
• (For SMS steps) AI copy assistant, SMS templates picker, and suggested sending time