Overview
As a campaign evolves through its natural lifecycle, the Eloqua application uses different statuses to help marketers understand the current state of a campaign e.g. draft, scheduled or active. With the upcoming Summer '13 release, we're introducing a new status, "Completed" to help you more clearly identify campaigns that have naturally reached their end date. Additionally we've updated the activation dialog and simplified how you specify the start and end date of campaigns for reporting. These changes also have the benefit of providing overall performance improvements to the campaign canvas.
Campaign Reporting & Start/End Dates
Don't be alarmed if you no longer see the "Campaign Reporting Runs From" date selectors in the gray bar of the campaign canvas - they are still available under campaign "Settings", accessible via the gear menu in the top right. Before you go off to check this out, read on because you may not need them quite yet. One of the primary reasons we made this change was to help simplify the process for creating, activating and reporting on campaigns.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Historically, the date range has been used to specify the timeframe that will be used to pull corresponding reporting data for campaigns in Eloqua Insight e.g. Campaign Analysis. What may not have been apparent, is that responses on a specific campaign (as defined unders Setup --> Response Rules e.g. a form submit), continue to be captured and associated with the campaign for 12 months after the end date. In most situations, the reporting date range is not particularly relevant until a campaign has been activated.
So to help simplify things, with the Summer '13 Release we've updated the activation dialog as follows:
1. More flexibility to control when you want the campaign to start i.e. be put in an "Active" status and end i.e. be deactivated and put in a "Completed" status.
2. Clearly indicating the timeframe that will be used for campaign reporting. The start date for campaign reporting will be the date the campaign starts, i.e. when it is activated either "now" or at a "later" scheduled date. The end date for campaign reporting will always be 12 months after the campaign ends i.e. when it is deactivated and completed.
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Clik here to view.
"Completed" Campaigns & Performance Improvements
When an active campaign reaches its end date, the campaign will automatically be deactivated and its status will be updated to “Completed”. This will also remove any contacts that are currently members of any campaign steps and exit them from the campaign. For example, this may happen in an email step where specific contacts that entered the step weren't successfully sent an email because of a bounceback or unsubscribe, etc. As a result, these contacts end up staying in the step and therefore in the campaign indefinitely which leads to performance issues. With the Summer '13 Release, once a campaign is "Completed", these contacts will be removed from all steps and exit the campaign.
Users will still have the ability to view the campaign exit history for 3 months after the end date of a campaign through "Operational Reports -> Exit History" under the gear menu. Additionally, “Completed” campaigns will now be read-only i.e. you will not be able to add contacts to them or re-activate it again. If you wish to repurpose the workflow of a “Completed” campaign, you can simply make a copy.