When you build a campaign in Campaign Designer, you use a variety of steps to design and construct a series of events (such as start, wait, and notify). Each event is a distinct step and has to be configured with information about, for example:

• which email message is sent to a contact,
• when an email message should be sent, and
• when to check whether the contact has taken the appropriate actions to advance to the next step.

Before creating a campaign, consider its objective (i.e., its "goal") and its audience. Then create an organized, methodical, and clearly understood campaign that will give you the best chance of achieving the campaign's goal.

This article provides an overview of Campaign Designer; a description of the campaign steps; and information on how to connect and disconnect campaign steps.

Campaign Designer - Design tab

The Design tab of Campaign Designer is where you create (and edit) a campaign by adding, configuring, and arranging its steps.

• The left side of the Designer has the "palette" of steps (described in the next section).
• The right side is the design grid (the "canvas").
• Drag and drop steps from the palette onto the canvas.

Campaign steps

The following table lists and describes the functions of the campaign steps.

• After you add a step to the campaign canvas, you can click it to configure its properties.
• The Stop step does not have properties; it simply stops the campaign.

Step	Use this step to...
	Insert a message to send (and resend) to contacts at various stages of the campaign. You can choose from existing messages or create new messages. Messages that are added to a campaign display on the Designer > Mailings tab. If a message is deleted from a campaign, it no longer displays on the Mailings tab.
	Include an email notification when a contact reaches a certain step. This accepts a single email address, which can be to an individual or a distribution list. The notification message is customizable plain text.
	Automatically add or remove a contact to an Interest based on their behavior in the campaign. This improves your targeting capabilities.
	Establish a cadence for the campaign. A Wait step must precede all Decide steps, but one can also follow any step to add an interval in the campaign flow. There are several options in the Wait step and they can be linked: Fixed Amount of Time - Set a period of time for the campaign to wait. Then set parameters for it to resume (date, time, "not before" date, and time zone). Until Day of Week - Select a day of the week, time of day, and time zone. Until Day of Month - Select a day of the month, time of day, and time zone. If the date selected is invalid (e.g., February 31st), the step defaults to the last day of the selected month. Until an Action Occurs - Select an action (open a message, click a link) and the maximum amount of time to wait. This step requires the campaign to have a message; if there is no message, the campaign reports an error.
	Check whether a contact has performed an open or a click, or whether they belong to a selected Target Group before advancing the contact to the next step. These actions indicate some kind of conversion aligned with the campaign's goals.
	Select another campaign to flow your contacts into when they reach a certain step in this campaign. The contact will remain in this campaign. This is a great way to make campaigns reusable.
	Embed internal information in the campaign. This is a good way to include the rationale for a step, who's responsible, what can be changed, design guidance, and what metric to watch for. The liberal use of Comments is considered a best practice.
	Branch a campaign based on a calendar date. This is useful for fixed-date campaigns and events that can add late contacts. Select a fixed date. If it is before the fixed date, the campaign will follow one path; if it is after the fixed date, the campaign will follow a different path. Typically, the fixed date should be in the future so that the campaign flow can change when the date arrives.
	Indicate the conclusion point of the campaign. You can add multiple Stop steps to a campaign. Note that while you will see additional Stop steps in the flow, these will all end up at the final Stop step.

Add and remove step Connectors

You create the flow of a campaign by connecting the steps on the canvas.

TIP: Use the Zoom slider (in the upper right of the canvas) to zoom in and simplify working with connectors.
You can also press the wheel of your mouse to change it from the scroll function to the zoom function. Press the wheel again to return to the scroll function.

1. Click the round connector of one step and drag it to the connector of another step.

2. Repeat this for all your steps until they all are connected, creating the flow that you want for the campaign.

NOTE: Decide steps require more than one connection so that the flow of the campaign continues. In the example below, users who opened Mailing 1 are sent Mailing 2, whereas users who did not open Mailing 1 are sent Mailing 1 w/Diff Subject Line.

Remove a connector

You can remove a connection between two steps.

If you remove a connection, then — in order to activate the campaign — make sure that:

• the connection is established elsewhere and
• a disconnected step is either deleted or connected to a different step.

NOTE: Any "orphaned" steps or connectors will cause the campaign to have errors that have to be addressed prior to activation. See Campaign Errors.

To remove a connection:

1. Click a connector to highlight it.
2. Press the Delete key on your keyboard OR...
   Right click the connector and select Cut from the menu.