Creating RCS Campaigns

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This Guide Only Covers the Creation of One-time, Triggered & Recurring Campaigns

Looking to automate Transactional RCS campaigns? Let's get you started!

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Pre-requisites For RCS Message

Before you set out to create and send RCS messages, kindly make sure you have your RCS Service Provider (RSP) setup and add the Whitelisted Message Template.

To know how to set up RSP and add templates, kindly refer to the RCS Integration guide.

Your dashboard comes with a highly intuitive campaign creation interface that makes it easy to execute highly personalized campaigns in minutes!

Now, let's walk you through the campaign creation process.

Create Campaigns

As shown below, the campaign creation interface can be accessed by clicking the Plus icon placed on the top left of the central hub of RCS. In doing so, you will be prompted to select the type of campaign you'd like to create.

Camapign Type

Let's quickly walk you through each campaign type:

One-time

These are stand-alone messages that are sent to your users only once and generally comprise time-bound offers. These campaigns end as soon s they are delivered to the target audience.

Triggered

These are ongoing cycles of communication sent to only those users of your target audience who perform a particular event on your app/website.

Recurring

These are ongoing cycles of communication that are scheduled to be sent periodically to its target audience. Such campaigns help you automate communication for several recurring events in your user's lifecycle like subscription renewals, policy renewals, bill payments, recurring investments and so on.

Transactional

These are highly contextual messages that your users expect to receive while interacting with your brand through your app, website, or offline. This could be acknowledging user interactions like sign up (welcome newsletter), password reset, payment confirmation (invoice), order confirmation, and so on.

Audience

This is where you set the basic details for your campaign like name, audience type, and so on.

Campaign Name

The first step is to give your campaign a unique name that helps you identify its purpose.

Campaign Tags (Optional)

Tag is a handy feature that helps you categorize your campaigns as per their purpose, target audience, frequency, or any other parameter that makes them easier to search for. Tags also help you analyze campaign results for a group of campaigns that belong to a tag.

Audience Type

One of the key differentiators of successful campaigns is that they're tailored to the behavior and preferences of a specific group of users. Thus, by selecting an Audience Type, you can choose to target a specific segment of users or combine several segments to define your RCS campaign's audience.

As shown below:

• Select Send to users in single segment to target all users who are included within a particular segment.

• Select Send to users in multiple segments and/or don't send to users in certain segments to narrow down the audience to a very specific user persona, defined by including and excluding several segments from the target audience.

Send To

Depending on the option you selected in Audience Type, the answer may vary.
Here's how you can set up each Audience Type:

1. If 'Send to users in single segment' is selected as 'Audience Type'

As shown below, click the dropdown nested beside Send To, to specify the target segment.

Let's quickly walk you through Segment Preview:

• Reachable Users: Indicates the number of users from the selected segment that can be engaged through RCS as a channel at present.

• Rules of Segmentation: You can choose to segment your entire user base by 3 broad parameters - User (attributes), Behavior and Technology. Thus, Segment Preview presents a snapshot of all the users against the parameters based on which they have been grouped.

Detailed Read on Segments.

2. If 'Send to users in multiple segments and/or don't send to users in certain segments' is selected as 'Audience Type'

When you want to Include a set of target audience:

Using multiple segments to define the target audience is an excellent way to target users who have similar preferences, belong to the same location, or perform certain actions on your app/website without creating a new segment.

Here's how you can go about it:

• Step 1: Select a Condition

  • Select Users in ANY of these segments to send the campaign to all the users included within each segment.

  • Select Users in ALL of these segments to send the campaign only to those users who are shared by all the segments.

• Step 2: Select a Segment

• Step 3: Click Add Segment to select another one.

For example, in the above visual, we have selected Users in ALL of these segments. This means that the campaign will be sent to only users included within all three segments at any given point in time. Users who are a part of 2 or fewer segments will not receive the message.

When you want to Exclude a set of target audience:

You can choose to exclude a segment or multiple segments from the target audience by configuring the field, Don't Send To. This is a great way to engage users that match a specific persona selectively.

Here's how you can go about it:

• Step 1: Select a Condition**

  • Select Users in ANY of these segments to prevent users in each segment from receiving the campaign.

  • Select Users in ALL of these segments to prevent only those users from receiving the campaign that is common between all the segments.

• Step 2: Select a Segment

• Step 3: Click Add Segment to select another one.

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When Segment Isn't Specified Under the field, 'Send To'

By default, a campaign is set to be delivered to All Users. Thus, if no segment is selected under Send To AND segments are specified under Exclude Users from These Segments, then the campaign will be sent to all the users who are reachable on RCS AND are not included within the specified segments.

WebEngage allows you to Edit and Create New Segments while creating campaigns.

Edit Segment
Click on the Edit icon, placed towards the right of the dropdown to edit the selected Segment. In doing so, you will be prompted by a pop-up, pre-populated with the existing segmentation rules, as shown below.

Make your edits and click Save to proceed. In doing so, you will preview the number of reachable users as per your edits.

Create a New Segment

You can create a new Segment_of users by clicking the _Plus icon placed towards the right of the dropdown. In doing so, you will be prompted by a pop-up, allowing you to build a new segment, as shown below.

Once created, you will be able to access the Segment through the List of Segments and while creating a campaign/journey.

Create a New, Single-use Segment

You can create disposable segments or segment users specifically for the campaign and avoid adding it to the List of Segments in your dashboard. This can be achieved by leaving the field Name blank while creating the segment. In doing so, it will become an Ad hoc segment in your dashboard, which will be available only for sending the campaign you're currently creating.

Remove Duplicates

For One-Time and Recurring campaigns, Remove Duplicates option will automatically ensure that a particular phone number doesn't receive any RCS campaign multiple times if your project has multiple users with the same phone number.

If multiple users have the same phone number (as shown in the example below), WebEngage will only pick one of these users while sending the campaign.

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Please Note

Remove Duplicates option will be enabled by default for new campaigns created. However, you can disable it manually as per your campaign's requirement.

Apply Universal Control Group

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Conditional Option

This is a conditional option which will be shown only if the you have created Universal control group in your account. Click here to know how to create Universal control group.

• When the box is checked, the campaign will not be sent to users who are part of the Universal Control Group in the segment that is selected.
• When the box is unchecked, the campaign will be sent to all users that are part of the segment inclusive of the Universal Control Group users.

When to Send

This step of campaign creation allows you to:

• Specify when and how often you'd like the target audience to receive the RCS.
• Manage the role your campaign plays in your overall engagement strategy.

Hence, When has been divided into two sections:

• Campaign Schedule
• Frequency Capping, Throttling & DND

Let's get you acquainted with the workings of each:

Campaign Schedule

Here you can specify when and how often the target audience should receive your campaign. This can be determined by configuring the Campaign Type selected when you initiated campaign creation.

• One-Time
• Triggered
• Recurring

Here's how you can go about it:

One-time Campaign

• Step 1: Specify the Delivery Time. You can choose to send the campaign Now or Later at the selected date and time.

• Step 2: If Later is selected, you can send messages per each user's timezone by selecting In User's Timezone from the last dropdown!
  You can choose from the 2 options i.e. Send Intelligently or to send at a specific time.

  • Send Intelligently: optimizes campaign send-time for each user, our system intelligently decides the best time to send a campaign based on your user’s interactions with past campaigns of each channel. Click here to know more.
  • Send at Specific Time: You can specify the time at which you would like to send your campaign to your users, either from the users time zone or the campaign's project time zone.

Triggered Campaign

• Step 1: As shown above, select the event Upon the Occurrence of which the campaign will be triggered or sent to the user.

• Step 2: (Optional): Add Attribute Filters to the Event by clicking the filter icon. Further, you can choose to club multiple event attributes by the AND/OR logic to define the scope of occurrence of the event.

• Step 3: Specify the Delivery Time of the triggered campaign
  As shown in the below:
  • Select Send as soon as the event occurs to deliver the campaign immediately
  • Select Wait for (duration) and then send to deliver the campaign after sometime
  • You can set up a wait time in Minutes, Hours or Weeks, after which the campaign will be sent to the respective users

• Step 4: Specify the Start Date or the date-time on which the triggered campaign should start getting delivered to the target audience. You can choose to send the campaign Now or Later at the selected date and time.

• Step 5: Specify the End Date or the date-time on which the triggered campaign should cease getting delivered to the target audience. You can choose Later to stop the campaign at a specific date and time or Never to run the campaign indefinitely (you can always Pause the campaign through Campaign Overview.

Recurring Campaign

• Step 1: Specify the Delivery Time or the frequency and date-time of campaign delivery.

• Step 2: Specify the Start Date or the date-time on which the recurring campaign should start getting delivered to the target audience. You can choose to send the campaign Now or Later at the selected date and time.

• Step 3: Specify the End Date or the date-time when the campaign should cease getting delivered to the target audience. You can choose Later to stop the campaign at a specific date and time or Never to run the campaign indefinitely (you can always Pause the campaign through Campaign Overview).

Frequency Capping, DND & Throttling

Here you can leverage the features of Frequency Capping (FC), DND Hours, Queueing, Throttling to determine how a user perceives your RCS campaign in the context of your entire brand experience. These features allow you to manage the frequency and timing of campaign delivery for each user.

Let's get you acquainted with the workings of each:

Frequency Capping

Using Frequency Capping, you can control the number of campaigns a user receives within a Day, Week, Month and maintain a consistent gap between consecutive messages (sent through multiple channels or the same channel).

If you are sending time-sensitive messages, then you can ignore Frequency Capping.

Set Frequency Capping Limits

If you have not set up Frequency Capping yet, then you can choose to configure it by clicking the Configurations > Frequency Capping on the left panel. Once set, you will be able to send all your campaigns with FC enabled, including the existing one.

Detailed read on How to configure FC & Time Gap.

DND

Using the DND Settings of your account, you can prevent users from receiving campaigns during specific periods, such as when they may be asleep, and so on. The best part - DND hours are determined individually for each user. This means that the duration specified by you will be applied to all your users only in the context of their time zone!

You can skip DND while sending time-sensitive or urgent messages.

Set DND Hours

If you haven't set up DND Hours yet, then you can choose to configure it by clicking on Configuration > DND on the left panel. Once set, you will be able to send all your campaigns with DND hours enabled, including the existing one.

Detailed Read on How to configure DND Hours.

Queueing

If you choose to send a campaign with Frequency Capping or DND enabled, then Queueing is automatically enabled. It's a feature that allows delayed delivery of the message to a user in cases where immediate delivery is not possible due to your FC or DND settings.

• Select Queue message for up to..., to enable the feature and specify a custom queueing duration for the campaign in Minutes, Hours or Days.
  • Doing so will ensure that we hold on to the campaign for the specified duration and send it only when a combination of your FC and DND settings allow us to. (How delivery time is determined for queued messages)
• Select Do not Queue messages... to drop the message if we're unable to deliver it to a user due to FC/DND settings (Disabling Queueing for a campaign)

Throttling

• Select Do not throttle campaign... to send all messages instantly to the entire target audience.

• Select Throttle campaigns as per channel throttling limits to control the number of messages delivered per minute.

• Select Throttle campaigns at... to specify a custom message throttling duration for this campaign.

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Please Note

This limit cannot be higher than the channel-level throttling limit specified under Configurations > Throttling.

Detailed read on How to setup Throttling.

Message

As highlighted above, the message creation interface comes loaded with intuitive features like Variations, Dynamic Personalization, and User Preview - enabling you to create high-impact messages in minutes.

Let's see how you can create a message in minutes:

Select a Message Template

From the list of whitelisted message templates added to your WebEngage account, select a template that you would like to send to your customers. Templates can be of text, image, video and document types.

Populate Personalization Variables

Personalization variables help you send highly targeted messages.
Click on the Icon and choose the User and Event Attributes from the drop-down to complete the message template as shown below:

1. While Approving the template at RSP end: When getting the template with dynamic buttons approved, add the destination domain as https://weurl.co/{{1}} OR if you have configured a custom domain then configure the same domain. For example if your custom domain is wsins.com, then, add the destination domain as https://wsins.co/{{2}}.
2. Once the template is approved and added in WebEngage dashboard, select the template while configuring the 'Message' tab of your campaign.

Preview Message

As highlighted above, the top panel of the message creation interface allows you to toggle between a Raw Preview and User Preview to gauge each Variation's message's appearance. Here's how it works:

Raw Preview

It displays the raw message and attributes, as added by you.

User Preview

Allows you to view the message for an actual user from your account by populating it with data from their user profile, as per the elements of personalization added to the template.

• Step 1: Select User Preview from the top panel.

• Step 2: Enter the User ID, preferably of a power user included within the target audience.

• Step 3: Click the Search and Populate button.

• Step 4: Click the See Preview button on the pop-up to visualize the notification with real user data.

Create Variations

Variations are just different versions of the campaign's message that facilitate easy multivariate testing and are referred to in the following manner in your dashboard: Variation A (the first version of the message), Variation B (second version of the message), and so on for subsequent versions.

As shown above, by default, the message creation interface consists of a single Variation A. You can create up to 5 variations of the message by clicking on the Plus icon.

• Select Create New to start building the new Variation from scratch

• Select Copy from Variation A (or any of the previous versions) to make minor edits to the new Variation

• Each Variation can be created independent of the other, allowing you to test varying messages and links to identify what works best with your target audience.

• The percentage values indicate the share of users that will receive a Variation and can be customized during Conversion Tracking.

Test Message

You can easily test the message with an internal segment of users before sending it to your entire user base. As shown below, click the Test Message button to select a Variation and Test Segment.

Conversion Tracking

This part of campaign creation allows you to measure the effectiveness of your campaign in various ways like:

• Tracking conversions for a specific goal.
• Comparing performance against a control group.
• Testing multiple variations of the message to identify a winning version.

Hence, it has been divided into two sections:

• Conversion Tracking
• Variation Distribution

However, depending on the number of message variations created by you, the view of Conversion Tracking will vary:

When only 1 Variation Exists

On proceeding to this step from Message, you will be welcomed by an interface on which Conversion Tracking is disabled.

When Multiple Variations Exist

As shown below, on proceeding to this step from Message, you will be welcomed by an interface on which:

• Conversion Tracking is disabled
• Variation Distribution meter indicates the share of the audience that will receive each Variation

Now, let's get you acquainted with the workings of Step 4: Conversion Tracking:

Conversion Tracking (Recommended)

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Must Read

We recommend that you gain a broad understanding of how Conversion Tracking works in your dashboard before proceeding. Doing so will lay a strong foundation for understanding whether or not you need to enable Conversion Tracking for the campaign and its impact on Revenue Tracking.

By default, Conversion Tracking is disabled for all RCS campaigns. As shown below, you can use the toggle switch to enable it.

The Conversion Tracking can be set up by:

• Selecting a Conversion Event
• Selecting Conversion Deadline
• Selecting a Control Group (Optional)

Select a Conversion Event

The term, Conversion Event is an alias that helps identify the event you expect users to perform after receiving the message.

As shown above, you can choose from a list of all the Custom Events being tracked for your account to specify the campaign's conversion goal.

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Pro Tip

We recommend that you map all the Custom Events that record the occurrence of a monetary transaction in your app as Revenue Events in your dashboard. This will help ensure that selecting the respective events as the Conversion Event of a campaign helps track Conversions and Revenue for the campaign and its channel.

Add Attributes to the Conversion Event

Depending on the end goal of the campaign, you can choose to narrow down the scope of conversion to a specific action. This can be done by adding attribute filters to the selected Conversion Event.

Here's how you can go about it:

Step 1: As shown above, click on the filter icon placed next to the drop-down

Step 2: As shown below, click Add Filter to add more attributes to the event and apply the AND/ OR logic further.

Select a Conversion Deadline

The Conversion Deadline is a duration defined by you that tells us when to stop tracking conversions for a campaign.

This means that once your campaign is delivered, we will track users who perform the Conversion Event in the context of its attribute filters (if any), only till the specified Conversion Deadline.

By default, a Conversion Deadline of 7 days is set for all campaigns. You can choose to specify a custom duration in Hours or Days, as per the campaign's end goal.

Select a Control Group (Optional)

A Control Group is a small portion of the target audience of a campaign that is randomly selected, representing the behavior and preferences of the entire segment, and does not receive the campaign.

An optional but recommended step, adding a Control Group to the target audience allows you to compare the campaign's performance against the organic behavior of Control Group users. This makes for the perfect benchmark to assess the true impact of the campaign on influencing user behavior.

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Detailed read on Control Group.

On checking the Control Group checkbox, you are presented with another choice called 'Target Control Group', that lets you choose between two options.

• Set a new control group for this campaign
• Custom Control Group

Option 1: Set a new control group for this campaign: This will be a campaign level control group which means a control group that is created for a specific campaign only. The users in this control group are randomly added from the selected segment in 'Audience' tab. This control group is good if the aim is to measure impact for a specific campaign.

On clicking this option, the Variation Distribution slider is exposed that allows you to select percentage of users to be added in Control Group from target audience.

Option 2: Custom Control Group: This option is shown when at least one Custom Control Groups is created in your account. Click here for detailed read on creating custom control group.

Since this is a pre-created control group, overlapping users within this group and the target segment won't be receiving the campaigns.

Custom control groups are good for analyzing effectiveness of multiple campaigns. For example: Analyzing effectiveness of SMS and Email campaigns during Diwali sale.

Unlike Campaign level control group, the percentage of users to be part of control group cannot be controlled when Custom control group is selected.

Variation Distribution

If you have created multiple variations of the Message, you can choose to automate the testing process by enabling Send Winning Variation Automatically. Doing so will allow you to test all the Variations (and Control Group if enabled) with a smaller test audience. We will automatically send the winning variant to the entire target audience.

However, you can opt to test the Variations and Control Group manually if you cannot automate testing due to the small size of the target audience (less than 2,000 users) of a One-time or Recurring campaign. Or if you are unwilling to test a Triggered campaign with a minimum of 500 messages.

Detailed read

Send Winning Variation Automatically

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Must Read

• Basics of setting up Send Winning Variation Automatically for a campaign

• How Send Winning Variation Automatically enables intuitive multivariate testing for your campaign

Depending on the campaign type selected at the steps of setting up automated variation testing will vary as:

• One-time Campaign
• Triggered Campaign
• Recurring Campaign
• Manual Distribution

One-time Campaign

Given the short lifespan of One-time campaigns, we suggest that you launch the campaign well in advance for testing and schedule it for delivery at the most viable time slot. Doing so will ensure that your users receive the most effective version of your campaign at a time that records the highest engagement rate.

• Step 1: Specify Size of Test Audience

• Step 2: Define Time to Test

• Step 3: Select Win Criteria

Detailed Read: How automated variation testing works for one-time campaigns

Triggered Campaign

Triggered campaigns are ongoing cycles of communication that are sent to users only when they perform a certain action or Event. Thus, the most scientific way to test Variations of a triggered campaign is by ensuring that a significant number of messages are delivered before we draw a comparison.

• Step 1: Specify Size of Test Audience
• Step 2: Select Win Criteria

Detailed Read: How automated variation testing works for triggered campaigns

Recurring Campaign

If you choose to create a Recurring campaign, then the entire first run of the campaign will be considered its Test Audience by default.

• We will calculate the test results 1 hour before the second run of the campaign to identify a winning variation.

• A winning Variation will be determined as per the Win Criteria and sent as the only campaign to all users from the second run onwards.

Thus, as shown below, we just need to define the Win Criteria as Clicks or Conversions, and we will take care of the rest.

Detailed Read: How automated variation testing works for recurring campaigns

Manual Distribution

If you are unable to set up Send Winning Variation Automatically due to the small size of the target audience (less than 2,000 users) of a One-time or Recurring campaign, or if you are unwilling to test a Triggered campaign with a minimum of 500 messages, then you can choose to test the Variations manually.

Detailed Read: How manual Variation Distribution works

Impact on Variation Slider if Control group is enabled

In case the Control Groups have been enabled the Variation Distribution slider behaves differently based on the type of control group selected:

If Campaign level control group is selected: In this case, the user will have the option of adding the control group by deciding the percentage or size of the control group on variation distribution slider.

If Custom Control Group is selected: You will not be able to manually select the size of the control group using the variation slider since the Custom Control Group is pre-created and overlapping users in the selected Custom Control Group and target segment, won't be receiving the campaign.

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Keep in mind

• In a particular campaign, Custom Control Group and campaign control group cannot be applied together.

• Universal control group can be added irrespective of Custom Control Group or Campaign Control Group is selected.

• In case multiple control groups are applied within same campaign (E.g: Universal Control Group + Custom Control Group or Universal Control Group + Campaign control): In this case, since the users in both the control group are mutually exclusive, the overall control group size will increase and the target audience size will decrease.

Test Campaign

Iron out all the creases in your RCS message by testing it with internal team members for maximum impact!

While this is an optional step, we recommend that you test all campaigns to ensure that everything's in order.

However, you can always choose to skip it by clicking the Skip Test & Proceed button to skip to the next step Preview and Launch.

Test Message Variation

Now, let's show you how you can test all the message Variations:

Step 1: Select a Variation
Select the variation you want to test.

Step 2: Select Test Segment

All the test segments created while testing a campaign, for any channel can be found under the dropdown, Send Test Message To, along with details of all its users.

Step 3: Personalize Test Message

You can test personalization in two ways:

• Use own data of users included in the test segment to receive a message personalized to your user profile
• Use data of a specific user to receive the exact message that the selected user would receive.

Here's how you can personalize the message to a specific user:

• Step 1: Click the Search User button.
• Step 2: Add the User ID.
• Step 3: Click the Search and Populate Values button.
• Step 4: Click the Save and Return to Test Campaign button to proceed with the selected user.
• Step 5: Click the Send Test & Proceed button to test the campaign.

Creating Test Segment

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Prerequisite for adding internal team members to a test segment

As you are aware, all the data stored in your WebEngage is either gleaned from your integrated apps and website or can be manually uploaded as a CSV file. Thus, it may so happen that details of internal teammates may not be readily available in your dashboard (even if they are account admins).

Hence, we recommend that you request the respective members to opt-in to RCS on your platform so that we can populate their respective User Profiles with their personal and behavioral data. Doing so will come in handy when:

• Creating Test Segments

• Personalizing the test message to the data of users added to the test segment

• Viewing a User Preview of the message

Step 1: Name Your Test Segment
As shown below, the segment's name is prefixed with TEST - and can be customized henceforth.

Step 2: Add Internal Users Through Filters

Step 3: Click on the Create Test Segment button.

Editing Test Segment

WebEngage allows you to Edit the test segment in two simple steps.

Step 1: Click the Edit icon placed next to the field - Send Test Message To to edit the users included within the selected Test Segment.

Step 2: Make all your changes and click the Update Test Segment button to proceed.

Deleting Test Segment

You can delete a test segment in two simple steps:
Step 1: Click the Bin icon placed next to the field - Send Test Message To to delete the selected Test Segment.

Step 2: Click the Delete Segment button on the pop-up.

Preview & Launch

Once you are satisfied with the test results, it's time to send the message to your users! But before that, we recommend that you conduct a quick preview of the campaign's message and settings to ensure that it's in line with your end goal.

As shown above, the last step of campaign creation presents a snapshot of its:

• Target Segment
• Campaign Type, Delivery Time, Frequency Capping, DND Hours, and Queueing settings
• Message Variations
• Conversion Tracking and multivariate test settings

Edit Campaign Before Launch

You can always choose to edit a step by clicking the Edit icon, placed next to each step's header. In doing so, you will be directed back to the step, as shown below. Make your edits, save them, toggle back to Preview & Launch to continue your review.

We hope this has equipped you with a robust understanding of how you can create RCS campaigns for various campaigns, track conversion, automate multivariate testing and test your campaign internally before launch. Please feel free to drop in a few lines at [email protected] if you have any related queries or feedback. We're always just an email away!