In addition to building ongoing and one-time mailings with the Deliver tool, you can also create automated drip marketing campaigns. This article will instruct you how to use populations, rules, and filters to efficiently configure drip marketing campaigns in Deliver. There are four broad steps to creating a drip marketing

Discover the power of drip marketing in Slate: a strategy where timed emails are auto-sent, offering tailored information at the perfect moment. Beyond crafting ongoing and one-time mailings with the Slate Deliver tool, you can also devise automated drip marketing campaigns. Whether guiding leads through a recruitment funnel, staying connected after significant events, or nurturing relationships in stages, drip marketing heightens engagement, streamlines lead nurturing, and boosts conversions. Dive into a fusion of resource efficiency and data-driven precision, all fine-tuned to amplify your outreach's impact.

This article focuses on best practices and outlines how to use populations, rules, and filters to efficiently configure drip marketing campaigns in Deliver. There are three broad steps outlined below, along with information about testing your drip marketing campaigns. Be sure to read through all steps, including information about testing, before activating any mailings or rules to be sure that everything is functioning as you intend.

Why use populations for drip marketing campaigns?

Populations are useful for drip marketing because they can be built in a "perennial" way: the population itself might not change over time, but the students in it will. Student records can be added to and removed from a population based on specific filter criteria with the rule used to set the population.

Step 1: Build a Population

To create a population and a rule to add records to that population:

1. Click Database on the navigation bar and select Population.

2. Click Insert.

3. Set the Status to "Active" and give your population a name. For the purpose of this article, create a "First Year English Majors" population.

4. Choose a Scope - generally either Person or Application. The scope must match in several places:  Population, Population Rule, Recipient List, and Recipient List filter.

5. Click Save.

Why use populations for drip marketing campaigns?

Your records must belong in a population to use them in your drip marketing campaign efforts. Populations can be built in a perennial way, where the population itself doesn't change over time, but the students within do. Student records can be added and removed from a population based on specific filter criteria within the rule used to set the population. 

Step 2: Build a Population Rule

To create a rule to add records to the population we've just created:

1. On the main navigation, click Database.

2. Under Automations, click Rules.

3. Click New Rule. A pop-up appears.

4. Configure the following settings:

   • Name: Give your rule a descriptive name, usually based on the action the rule takes.

   • Base: Configurable Joins - Person.
     
     Note: If using an Application population, the base should also be set to Applications; however, it's typically best to start with a person-scoped population when building a drip marketing campaign because a person-scoped population can include both applicants and non-applicants.

   • Type: Person Population

   • Folder: Keep rules organized by adding to an existing folder, or selecting Other to create a new folder.

   • Exclusivity Group: Leave blank

   • Status: Preview

5. Click Save. 

6. Choose the filter criteria for your rule to determine the students who should be in this population. Some filters for our sample rule could include "Student Type = First Year," "Academic Interest = English," and upcoming entry term prompts.

7. Set Action to the population created previously.

8. Click Save.

What about an exclusivity group?

An exclusivity group for Populations shouldn't be used for drip marketing campaigns because a student might meet the criteria of multiple populations at any given time. Be intentional about designing your various campaigns to ensure you avoid inundating students with emails, should they reside in multiple populations at once.

Step 3: Build a Campaign

Use the following steps to create the series of campaign messages:

1. Click Deliver on the navigation bar.

2. Select Campaigns in the top right side of the page. The Campaigns view displays all of your populations and the number of mailings associated with those populations. If this is the first population in your database, then this area will likely be blank. Refer to the Populations knowledge base article for information on creating populations. It's also possible that populations are being used for functions other than mailings (populations are also often used for permissions). All populations will appear on this page.

3. Select the population that you will use to build a campaign. This page will ultimately show all of the mailings associated with this particular population, as well as the statistics for the campaign overall. 

4. Select New Mailing.

5. Select a folder, user, method, and name the mailing.

6. Select the setting for the base type. Creating a new mailing from within a campaign will create a Person-scoped Recipient List if the checkbox is selected and a Prospect-scoped Recipient List if the Use Configurable Joins query base checkbox is cleared.

   

   (Note: If the scope of the Population and the Population rule is Applications (or another scope), create the mailing by clicking New Mailing on the main Deliver page.)
   

7. Select a Time Interval Type and enter the appropriate value for Number of Days or Start/End Date.

8. Click Save.

9. Begin building your mailing by clicking Edit Recipient Lists. When building Deliver messages, start by identifying the criteria for your recipients list: the records who will receive the message. Because of the configuration selected in the previous steps, the recipient list will be partially pre-configured with the "Population Timestamp Days" or the "Population Timestamp" filters.
   Note: If the mailing was created through the main Deliver page, the recipient list must be created with the scope that matches the population. By adding a population filter with the matching scope, the mailing will be associated with the selected population. If the population is application-scoped, use a Population (Application) filter such as "Population (Application) Timestamp Days."

10. Edit the recipient list query to include the exports needed for message merge fields. Be sure to add "Email," in addition to Preferred First Name or other desired exports. The Population Timestamp Days filter can also be modified if a different "Number of Days" interval is desired. 

11. At this point in the process, note that the number of "Estimated Rows" for the recipient list is zero. This is expected because the Population Rule has yet to be activated. 

12. When building a drip marketing campaign, it is important to schedule your mailing to run every day of the week. In the "Send Mailing" configuration, make sure that "Ongoing: Continue running mailing indefinitely" is selected and every day of the week is selected. This is crucial because if a student enters the population on a Friday and the mailing is only scheduled to send Monday through Friday, the student would never receive the Day 1 email configured above. Slate will not cache query runs and send the mailing on the next scheduled day.

    ✨ Tip

    Select at least TWO delivery windows to ensure that the mailing is delivered as intended.

13. Continue building all of the communications that are a part of this campaign. As you build each new email, your "First Year English Majors" campaign page will expand. 

14. Once you have completed building all of the communications in a campaign, all mailings should be activated via Send Mailing on each mailing. 

The complete list of population filters includes the following: 

• Population: Identifies all records in a specific population at that moment in time.

• Population Timestamp: Identifies all records that joined the population on a specified date or in a defined date range.

• Population Timestamp Days: Identifies all records that have been in the specific population for a defined number of days.

Step 4: Activate Population Rule and Run Retroactive Refresh

Only after the mailings in the Drip Marketing Campaign are running, follow the steps below to activate the population rule and place records into a population to start receiving messages:

1. Access your population rule in the Rules Editor, change the status from Preview to Active, and click Save. 

2. Click New Query from within the rule, add any exports (such as Name), and run the query. The particular exports you choose here do not matter; however, to run a query, at least one export is required. 

3. You will be presented with a preview of the records that are eligible for your new population rule.

Select "Output > Batch Management > Retroactive Refresh." Click "Export" and then "Submit."

Since the mailings are already active, their queries will pick up these records now that they have been added to the desired population. Moving forward, newly eligible records will enter the population automatically (because the rule is active) and will be picked up by the mailing campaigns as appropriate. If a record is already in a population and is retroactively refreshed, Slate does not reset how long they were in that population. 

Testing Drip Marketing Campaigns

Emails will never be sent from your test environment. While transactional communications such as form or event registration emails and one-time Deliver campaigns will post to the student timeline (as if an email had been sent), ongoing Deliver campaigns will not. Therefore, the best way to test a drip marketing campaign prior to going live is to do the following: 

1. When building your Population rule, add a filter for "Tag" and select "Test Record" as the value. Make sure at least one test record meets the population criteria. 

2. Change the Timestamp Days filter to "1" for all the emails in the associated campaign. This step allows you to receive all of the emails simultaneously instead of waiting for the entire campaign to run before going live. Conversely, you could set the days interval to any value you would like to test if you would like to wait for the specified number of days. 

3. Send the mailings, ensuring that their Status is now set to "Scheduled/Running." 

4. Activate the Population rule, and run a retroactive refresh, as in Step 3 above, to ensure that the desired test records enter the population and become eligible for the campaign mailings. 

5. Once you are satisfied with how the campaign functions after testing:

   • Change the Timestamp Days interval on the emails used for testing back to their original/desired value.

   • Remove the "Tag > Test Record" filter from the rule.

   • Run a Retroactive Refresh with the rule again to ensure all desired records are added to the newly created population.

   • Keep the mailing set to "Scheduled/Running," enabling it to pick up new records that meet the filter criteria during the next delivery window. 

Emails and texts are neither sent nor delivered to recipients when messages are "sent" in Test, Clean Slate, or Time Warp environments, but they will appear on records' Timelines as if they were delivered. However, scheduled ongoing mailings do not automatically run in these environments, so they will not appear as if they were sent. Test ongoing mailings in Production with test records to ensure that these mailings send as expected.