Campaigns

A campaign is a name for one push: a launch, a sale, a festival week. Posts, tracked links and ad campaigns can belong to it, so you can look at what they did together instead of one by one.

Open Campaigns in the Plan group of the sidebar. Everybody on the brand can read the list. An Editor or an Admin can make and archive campaigns (see People and roles).

Make a campaign

Under New campaign, fill in:

• Name: what you call it. This is the only required field.
• Slug: the short name that every tracked link of the campaign carries. It is filled in from the name as a suggestion. Use lower-case letters, digits and hyphens, starting and ending with a letter or digit.
• Starts and Ends: optional. The end cannot be before the start.
• Goal (optional): a line saying what the campaign is for.

Press Make the campaign. If the slug is already used by another campaign of the brand, the page says "That address is taken. Choose another."

The slug cannot be changed afterwards, because a link you have already shared may carry it. The page has no way to edit a campaign once it is made, so check the name and dates before you press the button.

Put things in a campaign

A campaign does nothing until something is given to it.

• Posts. In the composer, the Campaign menu on a post lists the brand's campaigns; the first choice is No campaign. When the post goes out, each network it reached is put on the brand's numbers chart as an event, and that event carries the campaign. Tracked links inside the post also carry the campaign's slug, as long as the campaign is not archived. See Posts.
• Tracked links. The link builder on Links has a Campaign menu. It offers only campaigns that are not archived. A link cannot name a campaign that does not exist for the brand: the page says "That is not one of the brand's running campaigns."
• Ad campaigns. An ad campaign made on Ads has to belong to one of the brand's campaigns, so make the campaign first. A campaign made in a network's own tools and taken on later has an optional Brand campaign (optional) menu. See Ads.

Read the results together

Open Numbers. In the part called Across a campaign, choose the campaign under Campaign. Pick a figure above it first, and the page adds up how that figure moved after each of the campaign's events.

You get one of three verdicts: Above what was expected, Below what was expected, or Within the usual ups and downs, with a likely range. If the events are close together, the page says some days count towards more than one of them. If no event has enough figures around it yet, it says so.

Treat the answer as a hint. The page itself says it shows correlation, not cause: anything else that happened in those days moves the numbers too. The figures also need a few days of history before an event to compare against.

Archive a campaign

Press Archive on a campaign that is over. It stays on everything it was given to, and it is no longer offered for anything new. Use the switch Show archived campaigns to see archived ones in the list; they carry an Archived badge. There is no button to bring one back, so make a new campaign if you need the name again with a different slug.

If something does not work

• The Campaign menu is empty. Make a campaign first, or check that it is not archived.
• There is no New campaign form. Your role on the brand is Viewer or Commenter. Ask an Admin to change it.