Communications cadence

In the world of online communication, people are often swamped by the number of messages they receive through different channels such as email, SMS, printed documents, call centers etc. The risk of all this is that people don’t even read those messages anymore, missing out on valuable information that you, as a marketer, do want them to get.

Large companies often run multiple one-time campaigns at the same time, sometimes for different products. On the other hand, there are campaigns that are continuous, such as monthly newsletters or life cycle campaigns. Other campaigns can be designed for customer retention.

Communications cadence supports single-shot journeys as well as life cycle journeys (data driven).

Marketers have a huge responsibility there. First they need to determine what the maximum allowed communication cadence is they want to put on their customers or prospects. How much information is too much?

Example:
My target can be contacted only once a week, whatever the channel. Or, my target can be contacted once every five days through each channel individually.

Next, marketers should determine what actions get priority over all others. Some actions need to be executed before others and some even regardless the current communications cadence.

Typically you would still send out the newsletters if people subscribed to them. Other campaigns, for instance, that are used to promote products should not target people that are, at the same time, contacted by a retention campaign. So one should start by defining the campaigns between which communication cadence must be handled. Leave out campaigns that have to be executed anyway or put these at least in the top list of priorities.

Now, the Communications cadence functionality allows to define one or more schemes, each with its own set of rules applied to all journeys included in a scheme.

Schemes are checked independently one from the other. They could typically be used for different product lines. Another example is to separate schemes by department for instance when service communication should be separated from marketing communication.

Example:
Create a communications cadence scheme for Product A ensuring that people do not get swamped by campaigns running on that product. But create a second scheme for product B. Over-communication for product A will not impact communication for Product B.

All journeys included within these schemes are checked against all rules defined for this scheme. The time frames within which these checks are made depend entirely on the planning defined for that journey.

The communications cadence planning is not necessarily the same as the time frame within which a journey is scheduled. It is possible that a campaign runs for more than 2 months but that communications cadence planning is limited to only one week, a week in which other campaigns are run as well and communications can increase easily.

Journeys always start from an Audience list. When rules are checked the contacts within these Audience lists are verified and if duplicate records are found they are excluded from the campaign execution depending of course on the priority set on these campaigns.

NOTE: all filters and segments (static or dynamic) are taken into account

Example:
There are 2 journeys included in my scheme which contains a rule that only 1 email can be sent per week. All journeys are to be executed within the same week. Contacts included already in my priority 1 journey will not be targeted by the priority 2 journey. This results in a reduction of the contacts for the second journey.

NOTE: when including a journey in a scheme all actions in that journey will be analyzed and taken into account to measure communications cadence. However, in some cases some emails do need to be send out anyway. It is possible to exclude specific mails from the communications cadence plan.

Example: In an enrollment campaign people can subscribe, get a confirmation mail, a thank you mail etc. However if this person forgets his password you do want him to get the mail with his password. It is possible within a journey included in a communications cadence scheme to exclude specific mails from this scheme. These emails will be sent out anyway, whatever the cadence.

Communications cadence handles priorities between actions in journeys. These priorities need to be defined carefully and priority should be given to the most relevant action.

Tips:

It is recommended to use one and the same Audience list. Narrowing down your targets can be done either within the journey itself or by using segments on these Audience lists. In case different Audience lists are used for the journeys included in a scheme, make sure to define a unique field that allows detecting duplicate records in these Audience lists.
Scheduling dates for a campaign are independent from the planning dates in a communications cadence scheme. However there is not much sense in including a journey to be executed in week 20 in a scheme to be checked in week 18. The communications cadence tool does not take into account the scheduling date of a journey.

NOTE: Communications cadence is to be used in combination with the Planning tool. The user needs explicit access rights for the Communications cadence module as well as the Planning tool.