Overview

Whether your campaign is a one-time batch message, recurring automation, or a series of Podium orchestrations, you can schedule a retargeting campaign for contacts who don't engage with your main campaign after a specified period of time.

There are several ways to create a retargeting campaign in Cordial. This example will demonstrate how to do so at the same time, or before, the main campaign is sent.

Set up the main campaign

1. In Cordial, start by creating the initial campaign message as you normally would: Messages > Create New Message. Give your message a name and a meaningful tag to use when segmenting the audience. This example will use 'summersale' as the message tag.

We're creating a batch message in this example, but the process is repeatable with automated messages. You can also use an existing recurring campaign and skip ahead to set up the retargeting message section.

2. Select Edit in the Schedule Sending pane and choose Send immediately. To make things simple, this example will assume the message was sent immediately to a specified audience.

Set up the retargeting message

Creating a separate retargeting message, instead of resending the main campaign, is an opportunity to change things up—mainly the subject line and even message content. A fresh subject line, and, in the message body, a friendly call to engage, could capture your contacts' interest and decrease the likelihood of them considering your messages unwelcome.

1. Create a new message, but do not reuse the same message tag as in the main campaign. That tag is reserved for filtering the "have not opened" audience.

• This example adds Resend Unopened to the follow-up message title with a new tag to keep messages organized. Tagging here is optional: omitting the tag will not affect the audience.

2. Select Edit in the Schedule Sending pane and choose Schedule for future date. The retargeting message should be delayed at least 24 hours after the main campaign send date, giving your contacts an adequate window of time to open the main campaign message before seeing another message with similar content.

• Assuming the main campaign is going out on November 15, 2023, the retargeting message here is scheduled for November 16, 2023.

3. Click Save.

Create the “Have not opened” audience segment

1. Access the Audience Builder by clicking Edit within the Audience pane.

2. The audience will be filtered using two rules: the first based on System Events > Sent, and the second based on System Events > Open. Select these rules and drag them into your audience.

• System Events: Sent is used to include all contacts who have been sent (or will be sent) an email by message name: Celebrate the Summer Event
• System Events: Open is used to segment out only those contacts who have not opened the Celebrate the Summer Event message.

Instead of message names, tags can be used to achieve the same result. Simply filter by have been sent, email, sent message, and then filter messages by tag instead of message name.

If filtering by message name, ensure that the main campaign has already been sent. Messages that have yet to be sent due to being in a draft state or scheduled for a future send date will not be available for filtering by name.

3. The number of contacts matching your rules will be populated in real-time and can be seen in the top header of the Audience Builder under Current Result.

4. The audience segment will continue to update in real-time between the time you save the audience rules and the scheduled send date. Any contacts who open the main campaign within this timeframe will automatically be excluded from receiving the follow-up message.

Schedule for sending

The message is labeled as a draft and sending methods will be disabled until required message headers and content are provided (as indicated in the left sidebar). Once set up, the Send Message button will become available.