What is a campaign?

I've been writing about campaigns for years and haven't made something clear.

Campaigns aren't just email marketing campaigns.

I might write about them in that sense a lot, but that's because email marketing is where my expertise lies.

Campaigns can also be advertising campaigns.

Or social media campaigns.

Or letter campaigns.

Or something that mixes up and uses all of those marketing methods.

For me, a campaign is a marketing asset that has a specific goal.

An abandoned cart campaign's goal is to get browsing customers to come back and buy.

A win-back campaign's goal is to get past customers to return to your store and buy again.

Good campaigns reach their goals. Great campaigns reach their goals and can be reused over and over again. This reuse is a big part of campaigns and what makes them an asset.

Some marketing methods will perform better in a specific campaign. They could be better overall for your audience or they could mesh with the campaign goals better which boosts their performance.

For example, email and SMS can work well in abandoned cart campaigns but public social media posts would perform poorly (and be creepy) and catalogs would be a waste of resources. In a campaign targeting local customers though, a catalog mailing might out-perform anything else.

It all depends which is why trying a bunch of things and measuring them is important.

So in any of my writing or in the advice from Repeat Customer Insights, campaigns mean a marketing asset with a specific goal.

Eric Davis