Plan campaigns and approve every piece

A campaign is a marketing goal with a brief. It holds its pieces, called assets: emails, social posts and videos. Every asset is reviewed and approved by a person before it goes out, and ContactRoll then sends or publishes it at its planned time and records each step.

Campaigns live under Marketing, at https://app.contactroll.com/marketing.

Start a campaign

1. On Marketing, press New campaign.
2. Fill in the brief: Name, Objective, The core message, Product it promotes, How often, Audience, How it sounds, What the reader should do, Starts and Ends, and the Channels it uses.
3. Save it.

A campaign runs for up to twelve months, and every piece is planned inside its dates. Its status follows what is in it: draft until something is approved, then upcoming, active while its dates are running, and completed when they end or everything in it has gone out.

Add assets

On the campaign's page, under Assets, press Add email, Add post or Add video. ContactRoll offers the channels your organization can publish to: email once your sending domain is verified, and each social account or video channel once it is connected.

On an asset's page you write what goes out and choose When it goes. Saving makes a new version. Every version is kept, so the page always shows exactly which version was approved.

Submit, review and approve

1. When an asset is ready, press Submit for review.
2. An Owner or an Administrator opens it, looks at What goes out, and presses Approve version, or Reject with a reason.

Before you submit, ContactRoll scores the version with a pre-flight check (a clear hook, one message, a matching call to action, the channel's length and more). Below your organization's bar, submitting asks for a one-line reason.

ContactRoll also flags anything worth a second look: a number, price, comparison or "best" that your brief, your product's facts or your brand kit do not state, and any word or claim your brand kit lists to avoid. Approving with a flag open asks for a line under Why the flags are fine.

An approval belongs to one version. Editing an approved asset makes a new version, which goes back to draft and needs approving again.

The Review page at https://app.contactroll.com/marketing/review lists everything waiting, with filters for channel and status. On a campaign's page, Approve all approves exactly the versions you were shown.

Schedule it

Once an asset is approved, its button says exactly what it will do, such as "Schedule for Sep 30, 12:40 AM · 1 person", or Send now when the planned time has passed. At that time ContactRoll's scheduler sends or publishes the approved version by itself. Before it does, it checks the approval again, and an email's audience again. If an email's audience has grown a lot since approval, ContactRoll holds it for review again.

To change the time, press Move it on the asset's page. A new time keeps the approval. Cancel it stays available until the asset goes out.

The calendar

The Calendar at https://app.contactroll.com/marketing/calendar shows a month at a time, with Earlier and Later. Every planned piece is on its day. At a desk, drag a piece to another day and it keeps its time of day. Move to… on a piece sets any day and time, and works on a phone and with a keyboard.

ContactRoll also points out clashes, each with a suggested fix: two posts to one account too close together, a person who would get two marketing emails too close together, a piece planned outside its campaign's dates, a piece due soon that is still unapproved, or a destination that needs reconnecting.

History and notices

A campaign and each asset keep a history of everything that happened: created, each version, submitted, approved, scheduled, sent and more, each with who did it. If a piece fails to go out, the campaign's owner and its approver get an email straight away, and Retry what did not go sends it again to the ones it missed. The daily digest also lists what waits for review and what is planned soon without approval.

Who can do what

Owners, Administrators, Supervisors, Agents and Marketers plan campaigns, draft pieces and submit them. Owners and Administrators approve, reject, schedule, publish, cancel and retry.