Smart Campaigns are automated marketing campaigns designed to enhance member engagement through targeted, AI-driven email automation. They are purpose-built for common Online Community goals—such as re-engagement, onboarding, profile completion, or driving discussion participation—by encouraging small, meaningful user actions with concise, action-oriented outreach. 

Unlike traditional campaigns, Smart Campaigns require minimal manual effort: they are pre-built, leverage best-practice flows curated by Higher Logic experts, and focus on speed and ease of deployment. Smart Campaigns are designed for organizations seeking swift, best-practice marketing automation powered by AI. Their architecture and automation are intentionally restrictive to ensure consistency and efficacy.

Before we begin...

Higher Logic offers two types of campaigns: Traditional campaigns, created from scratch using Campaign Designer, and automated Smart Campaigns.

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.

For a more in-depth look at the differences between the two, and to learn which is best-suited to your marketing goals, see Traditional Campaigns vs. Smart Campaigns.

Key features

• Streamlined Online Community targeting - For customers leveraging our Higher Logic Thrive Platform product, Smart Campaigns offer an automated and effective method of reaching their Online Community members without the more complex manual involvement required of traditional campaigns.
• Pre-built flows - Each Smart Campaign consists of 1–5 steps, with predefined actions and logic tailored to achieve a specific outcome. You cannot edit these flows; the goal is to ensure best-practice engagement with minimal effort required.
• Fixed entry & success criteria - Both are system-defined for each campaign type, ensuring that targeting and performance measurement follow consistent standards. You cannot edit these criteria but can review them before activation.
• Campaign management - On the Campaigns > Smart Campaigns > List page, you can see all available campaigns, view their active/inactive states, and manage campaign activation/deactivation.

• Timing & scheduling - You can configure global send time and scheduling to precisely control when Smart Campaign emails are sent across your organization. These settings allow you to deliver only on selected business days and at preferred hours to enhance engagement, member experience, and brand image. When the scheduler executes, it scans for new Contacts who meet the entry criteria and enrolls them in any campaigns for which they qualify. If Contacts meet the criteria after the execution, they will be enrolled the next day.

Use cases & application scenarios

Smart Campaigns are best for:

• Quick deployment of pre-built, action-oriented campaigns focusing on common Online Community goals (e.g., re-engagement of lapsed members, onboarding, driving event participation).
• Organizations seeking to reduce manual setup while following engagement best practices.
• Scenarios where full customization of flow, entry criteria, or send logic is not required, and where AI-generated messaging is preferred to reduce manual effort.

AI-driven messaging

• Automated content generation - Each campaign message is AI-generated based on prompts hand-crafted by Higher Logic experts, ensuring relevant, personalized communications that align with the campaign's specific goal.
• Editable content - While the default message content is optimized for most use cases, you're free to fully edit the subject and body text before the campaign is activated, if changes are desired.
• Message personalization - Smart Campaign messages are automatically personalized to each Contact's name ("Dear, John"), and the various call-to-action links throughout a message automatically link to applicable pages in their Online Community (e.g., linking a Contact to their profile).  

Enrollment & management

• Enrollment logic - When the scheduler runs, it checks your account data to determine which contacts qualify for enrollment. Contacts already actively enrolled or previously completed in a campaign are excluded to prevent redundancy.
• Contact review - Before activating a campaign, you can view which contacts meet the eligibility criteria—but only while the campaign is inactive. Once activated, performance can be monitored via campaign-specific reports.
• Activation & pausing - Campaigns can be started or paused at any time by toggling their activation status. When paused, no new contacts are enrolled, and no further communications are dispatched until reactivated. Performance data remains accessible.