Question: How does the Campaign List Sync feature work in Drip Marketing campaigns in Act! Marketing Automation?
Product Details:
- Product Family: E-marketing
- Product: Act! Marketing Automation
Answer:
The campaign list sync feature allows you to automatically add new members in your Act! groups to your already active campaigns. By turning this feature on in your campaign, you are allowing the campaign to update along with your updating groups.
So for example, if I am sending to an Act! group that is regularly removing and adding contacts, I can choose to sync my campaign to check the group periodically. This means that if anyone NEW has been added to the group, they will be added to the beginning of this drip campaign as well. And similarly, if anyone is removed from the group, they will be removed from the campaign at whatever step they were on. This list sync can be set up to check your list either hourly or daily at a specific time.
To turn the campaign list sync on in an existing campaign in draft mode or paused:
- In the opened campaign, click Actions > Campaign List Sync.
- Click the first drop down and switch it to Campaign List Sync On.
- In the next drop down, select Hourly or Daily. This determines how often this campaign will check your list for new or removed contacts.
- If you selected Daily, select the time and time zone you would like it to sync. This means, that if you select 8AM, your sync will occur at that time. So if there is a new contact in your group, that contact will be added to the campaign at 8AM and begin down the flow of the campaign.
- The next drop down allows you to set end date for when you want this campaign to discontinue syncing to your list. For example, if you are running a promo campaign for Q2 and want new members in your Act! group to be added to this campaign automatically, but you do not want anyone new getting this email once Q3 begins, you can set that date to make sure this list sync occurs only until that time. Or, you can keep the selection on Continue Forever if you do not want the sync to end for this campaign.
- If you did select set end date in the previous drop down, you then will enter the email of the user you wish to be notified once the list sync does become disabled again. This ensures that you are updated when the feature is cut off. You can enter as many email addresses here as you want. The notification will come via email as a nurture alert.
- Click Actions > Save to save this sync and return to your campaign flow.
Note: It is very important to note that if you have this feature turned on, then it is recommended that you do NOT have a specific date/time set for the steps in your campaign. For example, let's say that your first email in the campaign is scheduled for April 3rd and you have Campaign List Sync turned on. If any new contacts are added to your group after April 3rd and list sync is still on, then that contact added after April 3rd will skip that email step and not receive the email.
However in some cases, this may be intentional where you have a campaign that contains multiple email steps that are time sensitive and may no longer be relevant after their scheduled date. In this case, a user may wish for the new contact to skip any out-dated emails until they reach an email step that is still scheduled for a future date/time.