Campaigns

Campaigns are where you run a lifecycle program. Each campaign follows the same path: plan the brief and the messages it will include, generate and refine the content, then send the approved messages to your ESP. You can add messages over time as the program grows.

Overview

A campaign in Lifecycle Studio represents a single lifecycle marketing initiative: a welcome series, a re-engagement flow, a promotional push, or any other goal-driven message sequence. You describe what you want, and the agent drafts a brief, plans the messages it will create, and generates content you refine and send.

When to use campaigns

Use a campaign to run an ongoing lifecycle program, like a welcome series, a re-engagement flow, or a seasonal push: a coordinated set of messages the agent plans and drafts together. For a single one-off send, use Messages.

Create a campaign

To create a campaign, go to Lifecycle Studio > Campaigns and select Create campaign. The Campaign context form collects what the agent needs, organized into steps: Essentials, then Templates if the campaign includes email, then Assets. Only Essentials is required. Select Next to move through the steps, and Create campaign on the last step.

Essentials

Set what the campaign should achieve and who it's for.

1. Enter a Campaign name.
2. Select the parent model for audience data and the brand profile the agent should follow.
3. Choose the channels to include: Email, Push, or SMS. Including Email adds a Templates step.
4. Describe your Goal — what you want the campaign to achieve.
5. Choose the target audience:
   • Single audience — One audience for the whole campaign. Optionally describe who they are and where they are in their journey.
   • Multiple sub-audiences — A different segment for each message. The agent identifies the segments and plans messages for each.

Templates

The Templates step appears when the campaign includes email, and it's optional.

1. Select up to 10 email templates for the agent to start from.
2. Choose how the agent uses them. Adhere directly keeps the layout and updates only imagery and copy. Use as inspiration restructures into a new layout. Add notes to guide the agent if needed.
3. Set the Candidate quantity, the number of variations the agent generates per message.

Assets

The Assets step is optional. Use it to set personalization and give the agent anything else it should know.

1. Set Personalization to Allow so the agent can tailor content per recipient, or Don't allow to send everyone the same content. When you allow it, describe the personalization you want.
2. Under Products & images, select Add products or images to give the agent catalog items or images to reference.
3. In Additional context, describe how the agent should use the assets, upload files, paste reference links, or add notes such as promotions, copy to use or avoid, and tone.
4. Leave Plan review on to review the brief and message plan before the agent generates candidates. Turn it off to generate the brief, plan, and candidates in one pass.

If the campaign doesn't include email, set the Candidate quantity in this step instead.

Select Create campaign. The agent generates a brief and a message plan based on your inputs and the business context, brand guidelines, and guardrails configured in Context Hub.

Build and launch a campaign

After you create a campaign, it opens with three tabs: Plan, Create, and Launch. Work through them in order to take the campaign from brief to delivery.

Plan

After you create the campaign, review and refine the brief in the Plan tab. The brief captures the campaign goal, target audience, messaging direction, and constraints, and it's the foundation for everything the agent generates next.

You can refine the brief in two ways: give the agent direction in the chat, or select Edit to open the brief editor and change it directly. In the editor, select Update to save. When you save, you choose how to handle the message plan:

• Just save the brief — Save your edits without changing any existing message plans.
• Update message plans — Save your edits and have the agent revise draft message plans to match the updated brief. Plans you've already generated candidates from aren't changed.

When the brief and message plan look right, open the Create tab to generate candidates.

Create

In Create, the plan becomes real drafts. The agent generates candidates: several variations of each message in the plan. You review them and choose which ones to carry forward.

Select Generate all candidates to draft variations for every message in the plan at once, or work a single message with Generate more. If the brief targets multiple audience segments, the agent generates a separate set of messages for each segment, so the campaign can speak differently to each one.

From there, the work is comparing and narrowing:

• Review the variations for each message and favorite the ones you like.
• Select a candidate and tell the agent what to change in the chat, or open it to edit in the message editor.
• If nothing in a set lands, select Generate more for a fresh batch of that message.

A candidate stays a draft until you promote it. Select the candidate and choose Promote to Launch to move it to the Launch tab.

Adjust how the agent approaches a message

Each candidate is generated from a message plan: the agent's intended action, audience, and creative direction for that message. To change how the agent approaches a message, edit its plan.

Select Message plan for the message you want to change. You can revise three fields:

• Desired action — what you want the recipient to do.
• Creative guidance — the angle, tone, and constraints for the agent to follow.
• Recipient — who the message is for.

Save your changes, then generate again. The agent uses the updated plan for that message's candidates.

Add a message to the campaign

To add a message the plan didn't include, select Add messages and describe what you want. The agent updates the campaign brief and plans the new messages alongside the existing ones. Select channels if you want specific ones. Otherwise, the agent reuses the channels already in the brief.

Launch

Promoted candidates appear in the Launch tab. For each one, pair it with an audience, sync that audience to your destination, and export the message to your ESP.

Pair each candidate with an audience

Decide who receives each candidate. Audiences come from Customer Studio. The agent suggests an audience based on the message plan, or you can select an existing one or create a new one. Review each audience's size to check reach before you export.

Sync the audience to your destination

Once a candidate has an audience, set up a sync to deliver the audience data:

1. Select Add sync for the candidate.
2. Select a sync template, or create a new sync to send the audience to your destination.
3. Review the sync configuration.

Export the message content

The sync moves the audience. Separately, export the message content itself:

When you export to an email provider, choose the destination, then create a new template or update an existing one. Set the template name, subject line, and preheader.

Next steps

• Messages — Create and edit individual messages
• Templates — Manage structural starting points for messages
• Images — Manage the image library the agent draws from