Planning the perfect campaign can be tricky. Series’ visual builder makes it a lot easier, but we’ve also collected some of our top tips and examples here to get you off to a great start.
Tip 1 — Annotate your series with note blocks.
Add note blocks in a series to give extra context on the behavior you’re trying to influence. You can explain why you’ve used certain data points or goals and make it quick and easy to understand when you share it, or come back to it later:
Notes always show who was the last person to edit them, and when. Just drag and drop a note block from the menu on the right:
Tip 2 — Start with your series goal in mind.
Before you start planning a series, begin with a clear picture of the action you’d like your customers to take, and the possible ways they could get there. For example:
I want my customers to upgrade to Pro. So, they need to see the value in my product. So, I need to target them based on their most used features. |
This simple process lets you plan your series in reverse, which makes it easier to identify the required steps.
Example: You have a photo and video sharing app with a limited free plan. You could create a series with two paths, which customers enter based on the features they use the most:
Message points customers to the upgrade page.
AFTERThey have reached 80% of their photos limit.
AFTERThey enter the path for heavy users of photos.
OR
Message points customers to the upgrade page
AFTERThey have reached 80% of their video limit
AFTERThey enter the path for heavy users of videos.
Tip: This example, also considers the best place to reach a customer. We’re assuming videos take longer to upload, so customers might not be in the app when they reach their limit. For this reason, we send them an email, instead of a Post message in the app.
Tip 3 — Give people more chances to receive content.
When you add a message to your series, you can set exactly how long you’d like it to attempt to send. Increasing this period means that more of your customers will engage with your content at the right time, and progress through your series without being overloaded with messages.
It’s a simple step that adds tremendous value:
Tip: If your series is time based, e.g. before a trial expires, add all potential wait blocks together to be certain that your users see the right info in time:
Tip 4 — Chain rule blocks to avoid multiple matches
There may be situations where customers enter different paths based on different criteria, so you’d create a series like this:
Bonus Tip — Tag your customers as they progress through a series
Auto tagging customers as they reach milestones in your series opens up a number of options. You can use tag rules to:
You can even create a series that only tags customers. This lets you control the exact conditions when a customer should be tagged, with the simple visual builder and use series stats to track how many are being tagged over time, or compare two groups of customers:
Tip: There's no need to tag customers to set up entry rules to another series. You can do this with built in series engagement rules.
Best practices for targeting users
It’s a good idea to follow up with users who clicked a link in one of your messages, but didn’t take the action you wanted. For example, users who clicked a link in your upgrade prompt message but don’t sign up for a paid plan might need a stronger incentive like a discount:
If you want to prevent a group of users who have received one message from getting another message, you can add the rule ‘Hasn’t received message x’. This is useful for sending two different versions of a similar message to two different groups of users. For example, you won’t want to send active users the same upgrade message as users who are slipping away:
Take into account when people are not engaging with your content to try a different approach, or stop contacting them for a time altogether:
Best practices for message content
Here are some useful tips for crafting engaging, relevant messages that encourage users to hit the goal you’ve defined.
Think carefully about whether your customers should get each message by email, in-app, push message or another channel. For example, if your customer has yet to take the first important step after signing up, you might want to send them an email to bring them back into your app:
Expose features to your customers gradually, and at a time and place that makes sense to them. For example, right after a customer takes their first photo in your app, you can send them a mobile carousel that shows them how to share it:
Strike a balance between messages that encourage action and messages that educate your customers. Once a customer has uploaded a few photos, for example, it’s a good idea to highlight similar features they might like:
Pro tip: Check out this best practice guide for more tips on how to keep your message content engaging.
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