Higher Logic offers two types of marketing campaigns: traditional campaigns and Smart Campaigns. Each serves different needs and offers distinct levels of complexity, customization, and automation.

This article outlines the key differences between these two campaign types so you understand which is best suited to meet your marketing goals.

NOTE: Smart Campaigns are limited to customers of Higher Logic Thrive Platform (a combination of Online Community and Thrive Marketing Professional) and customers that have added Thrive Communications to their Online Community.

These campaigns are specifically designed for organizations who want to target their Online Community members using a streamlined alternative to traditional campaigns.

Campaign type summary

Traditional campaigns

• These campaigns offer comprehensive customization, giving you full control over campaign structure, messaging, scheduling, audience criteria, and flow, making them ideal for complex or highly tailored outreach.
• In a traditional campaign, you have complete control over who is targeted, whether via an uploaded list, Compound Group, integrated Target Group, etc.

Smart Campaigns

• Smart Campaigns are pre-built, automated campaigns driven by data and behavior from your Online Community; they are focused exclusively on engaging your community members to meet common community goals, such as onboarding, profile updates, and re-engagement.
• You have no control over who is targeted: each campaign features audience criteria pre-built by Higher Logic experts to meet the campaign's intended community-focused goal(s).
• Smart Campaigns leverage AI to generate message content and feature system-defined logic; they require minimal admin setup but do not allow modification of flow.

When to use each

Choose traditional campaigns when: 

• You need to design a complex, multi-step journey with custom branching, unique timing, or advanced audience segmentation.
• Your strategy demands highly tailored content and decision points.
• You want full control over every element, including targeting, entry and success criteria, and message timing.

Choose Smart Campaigns when:

• You want to quickly activate a best-practice campaign for common Online Community-focused goals (such as re-engagement, profile updates, or onboarding) that specifically target your Online Community members.
• You prefer the speed of a pre-built solution with minimal setup and AI-generated messaging.
• The campaign goal is straightforward and does not require custom steps or logic.
• You want to encourage specific, simple community member actions that maintain engagement with minimal manual involvement.

Campaign creation & customization

Traditional Campaigns

• Created from scratch using Campaign Designer.
• You have full control over the structure, content, timing, decision steps, and overall flow of the campaign. You can either start with a blank canvas or use a pre-designed Campaign Starter Kit as a template, then customize steps such as messages, wait times, and branching logic.

Smart Campaigns

• Automated, pre-configured marketing campaigns.
• Their structure—including steps and decision logic—is pre-built by Higher Logic experts and cannot be modified. The message content is generated automatically via AI using prompts crafted around campaign goals.
• The admin’s role is minimized to reviewing and optionally editing the AI-generated message content before activating the campaign. Smart Campaigns are designed for speed and simplicity rather than granular configuration.

Use case and complexity

Traditional Campaigns

• Best for organizations that need highly customized, complex campaign flows—such as multi-branch journeys, custom logic, detailed scheduling, and unique messages for different audience segments.
• Use these when you want to fully manage each step, customize triggers and actions, or when your goals require more than simple, direct calls-to-action.

Smart Campaigns

• Designed for straightforward, action-oriented outreach. Typical Smart Campaigns are concise, featuring 1–5 steps focused on driving small, meaningful actions in your Online Community, like updating a profile, posting to a discussion, or re-engaging inactive members.
• These campaigns are especially suited for scenarios where best practices suffice, and there’s no need for extensive flow modifications.

Automation & AI features

Traditional Campaigns

• Content and flow are manually built and edited by admins.
• Emails are not automatically generated or personalized by AI, though some pre-built templates are available.

Smart Campaigns

• Use AI to automatically craft email messages based on curated prompts.
• Admins can edit a message's subject and body text if needed, but in most cases little manual effort is required.

Entry and success criteria

Traditional Campaigns

• Admins can schedule sends, configure timing between steps, and even leverage advanced scheduling options (where supported).

Smart Campaigns

• Entry and success criteria are set by Higher Logic based on the campaign’s specific goal and are not editable. This is meant to speed deployment and ensure each Smart Campaign follows Online
  Community engagement best practices.

Timing and delivery

Traditional Campaigns

Admins can schedule sends, configure timing between steps, and even leverage advanced scheduling options (where supported).

Smart Campaigns

You can configure global send time and scheduling to precisely control when Smart Campaign emails are sent across your organization.

Table summary