Create a campaign

Last update: March 7, 2025

CREATED FOR:

  • Beginner
  • User

To create a new campaign, browse to the Campaigns menu on the left rail, then click Create campaign. You can also duplicate an existing live campaign to create a new one. Learn how.

Before starting, read out the campaign prerequisites in this page.

Select the campaign type

When you create a new campaign, you must first select the type of campaign. Three types of campaigns are available:

  1. Scheduled - Marketing - These campaigns are executed immediately or on a specified date. Scheduled campaigns are aimed at sending marketing messages, or create inbound actions. They are configured and executed from the user interface.

  2. API-triggered - Marketing - These campaigns are executed using an API call. Select this type of campaign to send personalized marketing communications to targeted audiences. Learn how to trigger a campaign using APIs

  3. API-triggered - Transactional - Same as for API-triggered - Marketing campaigns, these campaigns are executed using an API call. API-triggered transactional campaigns are aimed at sending transactional messages, i.e. messages sent out following an action performed by an individual: password reset request, cart purchase, etc. Learn how to trigger a campaign using APIs

Define the campaign properties

Once the campaign is created, you must define its properties. Follow the steps below:

  1. In the Properties section, enter the name and a description for your campaign.

  2. (optional) Use the Tags field to assign Adobe Experience Platform Unified Tags to your campaign. This allows you to easily classify them and improve search from the campaigns list. Learn how to work with tags.

  3. (optional) You can limit the access to this campaign based on access labels. To add an access limitation, browse to the Manage access button at the top of this page. Make sure to select only labels you have permission for. Learn more on Object Level Access Control.

Define the campaign audience

Now you can select the audience of your campaign. An audience is a set of people who share similar behaviors and/or characteristics.

IMPORTANT

  • The use of audiences and attributes from audience composition is currently unavailable for use with Healthcare Shield or Privacy and Security Shield.

  • For API-triggered campaigns, the audience must be set via API call.

To define the population targeted by a scheduled marketing campaign, follow these steps:

  1. In the Audience section, click the Select audience button to display the list of available Adobe Experience Platform audiences. Learn more more about audiences in this section.

  2. In the Identity type field, choose the type of key to use to identify the individuals from the selected audience. You can either use an existing identity type or create a new one using the Adobe Experience Platform Identity Service. Standard Identity namespaces are listed in this page.

    Only one identity type is allowed per campaign. Individuals belonging to a segment that does not have the selected identity type among their different identities cannot be targeted by the campaign.

    Learn more about identity types and namespaces in the Adobe Experience Platform documentation.

Select the channel

You can now select the channel and its configuration. Follow the steps below:

  1. In the Action section, select the communication channel.

    The list of available channels depends on your licensing model, and add-ons. For API-triggered campaigns, only Email, SMS, and Push notification channels are available.

  2. Select the channel configuration.

    A configuration is defined by a System Administrator. It contains all the technical parameters for sending the message, such as header parameters, subdomain, mobile apps, etc. Learn more.

    Only channel configurations compatible with the marketing campaign type are listed in the drop-down list.

    NOTE
    If you are creating a push notification campaign, you can enable the Rapid delivery mode, which is a Journey Optimizer add-on that allows very fast push message sending in large volumes. Learn more

Edit the content

You can now define the content of the message, from the Edit content button. The content creation process depends on the channel you selected.

Learn detailed steps to create your message content in the following pages:

email

Email

sms

SMS

push

Push notification

direct mail

Direct mail

in-app

In-app

web

Web

code-based experience

Code-based experience

content cards

Content cards

Once your content is defined, use the Simulate content button to preview and test your content with test profiles or sample input data uploaded from a CSV / JSON file, or added manually. Learn more. To browse back to the campaign creation screen, click the left arrow.

In addition to the message content itself, you can configure the following settings:

  1. (optional) In the Content experiment section, you can use the Create experiment button to test out which content works better. Content experimentation capabilities are detailed in this section.

  2. In the Actions tracking section, specify if you want to track how your recipients react to your delivery: you can track clicks and/or opens.

    Tracking results are accessible from the campaign report once the campaign has been executed. Learn more on campaign reports

Schedule the campaign

By default, scheduled campaigns start once they are activated manually, and end as soon as the message has been sent once.

If you do not want to execute your campaign right after its activation, you can specify a date and time at which the message should be sent using the Campaign start option. The Campaign end option allows you to specify when a campaign should stop being executed.

For Email, SMS, and Push notification campaigns, you can define a frequency at which the campaign’s message should be sent. To do this, use the Action triggers options in the campaign creation screen to specify if the campaign should be executed daily, weekly, or monthly.

NOTE
When scheduling campaigns in Adobe Journey Optimizer, ensure your start date/time aligns with the desired first delivery. For recurring campaigns, if the initial scheduled time has already passed, the campaigns will roll over to the next available time slot according to their recurrence rules.

Other settings

Some settings are specific to the communication channel seleted for the campaign, or used for specific use cases. They are detailed below.

  • For emails, you can create specific IP warmup plan activation campaigns. Learn more in this section.
  • For web, in-app, and code-based channel, you can assign a priority score to your campaign. Learn more in this section.
  • For content card campaigns, you can enable additional delivery rules to choose the event(s) and criteria which trigger your message. Learn more in this section.
  • For in-app messages, you can use the Edit triggers button to choose the event(s) and criteria which trigger your message. Learn more in this section.

Next steps

Once your campaign configuration and content are ready, you can review and activate it. Learn more

Previous pageGet started with campaigns
Next pageReview & activate a campaign

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