Set up recurring campaigns

Recurring campaigns allow you to schedule a message to be sent automatically to a target audience on a repeating basis. This feature is available for both email and text message campaigns. Use recurring campaigns to engage your subscribers consistently with timely content like reminders, regular updates, or milestone messages.

You can use recurring campaigns for a variety of purposes, including:

• Sending annual messages, like birthday greetings to loyalty members for their specific birth month
• Distributing daily or weekly reminders, like prompts to place regular orders or reminders about recurring daily or weekly events
• Sending monthly winback messages to a targeted audience
• Reminding subscribers about product maintenance, such as a six-month or one-year alert for filter replacements
• Alerting subscribers to use discounts/offers, for example, a monthly reminder to those who haven’t used their welcome offer

Create a recurring campaign

Follow these steps to set up a recurring campaign:

1. Go to Campaigns.
2. Click + Create campaign.
3. Click Recurring text campaign or Recurring email campaign.
4. Begin creating your campaign.
5. Click Add In the When to send panel.
6. Configure the schedule for your recurring campaign:
   • Start sending on: The date the first recurring message will be sent.
   • How frequently do you want to send this campaign?:
     • Choose between day(s), week(s), or month(s)
     • Specify the number (e.g., repeat every 3 day(s) or 1 week(s))

   • Repeat on: If you select week(s) check the specific days of the week (e.g., Mon, Tue), you want the message to be sent.

     Note: For the month(s) option, keep in mind that if messages are sent on the 30th or 31st of the month, they may not be sent for shorter months.
   • Stop sending on: The end date for the recurring campaign.
   • Preview occurrences: This section shows the next five scheduled send dates based on your settings.
   • Time: The time of day the message will be sent.
     • A specific time (e.g., 01:20 PM).
     • Subscriber’s local time
     • Send time AI
7. Click Save.
8. Finish setting up your campaign, then click Review and schedule campaign.

Manage a recurring campaign

You can always edit recurring campaigns just as you would any other campaign. Keep in mind that editing will unschedule all future messages in the campaign. Once you’ve made your changes, all of those changes will apply to the current occurrence and all future occurrences.

View recurring campaign performance

You can always view the performance of recurring campaigns just as you would for any other campaign.

Important considerations

Keep in mind the following as you create recurring campaigns:

• Message content: The same message content will be sent for each occurrence unless you edit the campaign.
• Dynamic content: Any dynamic elements like variables or product recommendations will remain dynamic and refresh for each individual send.
• Audience refresh: The audience is refreshed before each send. This means that subscribers who newly qualify will be included and those who no longer qualify will be excluded depending on the segments you include or exclude in your audience.
• Scheduling visibility: You’ll only see one upcoming scheduled message for a recurring campaign on the Campaigns page. Once the current message begins sending, the next message in the series will be scheduled and will appear on the Campaigns page.
• Changes to campaigns: Changes to recurring campaigns, including changes to message content and schedules, will apply to all future occurrences in that campaign.

Example configurations

Follow these steps to configure annual recurring campaigns like birthday greetings: 

First, create a dynamic segment for each month of the year. For example, create one segment for all members born in January, another for February, and so on. These segments automatically update in real-time, so any new subscribers who meet the criteria will be added to the correct segment.

Next, create a separate annually recurring campaign for each of these monthly segments. For instance, set up a campaign specifically for July birthdays, and when creating this campaign, select your "July Birthdays" dynamic segment as the target audience.

The dynamic segments and recurring campaigns work together to ensure your subscribers will receive a timely birthday greeting during their specific birth month.