Campaign Invitation + Automation Invitation Best Practices (Preventing Scheduling/Automation Failures)

Keep the following information in mind when inviting retailers to campaigns, and when inviting retailers to an automation schedule:

The Task of automating shares cannot happen before the task of inviting retailers.

When you want campaign invites and automation scheduling to occur at the same time, we recommend you invite retailers and schedule automation in the same workflow. See below for an example of this:

We start with a newly-created draft campaign, set to launch Friday, Dec 10 at 12pm:










Notice how I'm scheduling a campaign invitation email and setting up the automation schedule in the same workflow...


Whenever you schedule automation in the same workflow as scheduling campaign invitations, our system knows to process the campaign invitations prior to scheduling automation.

There is a catch, however...

Notice how the campaign is set to go live Dec 10th at 12pm, but I scheduled the first automated post for Dec 10th at 12:30pm...

You should always leave AT LEAST 30 minutes (preferably longer) between the task of automation and when the first automated post is scheduled to go live. If I decided to schedule this share for 12pm, at the same time as the campaign invitations are going out (and the task of automation has not yet occurred), the automation will not be scheduled; once our system gets around to the task of automation, it's too late.

...

If you choose to schedule a campaign invitation, and return later to schedule automation  separately, everything described above should still be applied.


RECAP

1. The Task of automating shares cannot happen before the task of inviting retailers.

2. When scheduling automation, make sure the first share is set to go live at least 30-60 minutes after the task of automation is scheduled to occur. A longer time between invites and the first automation is even more preferable (i.e. several hours).

3. When scheduling automation after you've already scheduled campaign invites, make sure you schedule the task of automation to occur at least 30-60 minutes (preferably longer) after you schedule the task of campaign invites.

4. When scheduling automation and campaign invites in the same workflow, our system knows to finish sending campaign invites prior to sending automation, but the first scheduled post needs to be at least 30-60 minutes, preferably longer, after when invites start going out.