Introduction

Provides an overview of EngageOne™ Communicate.

EngageOne™ Communicate is a tool that lets you create and send communications to targeted groups of recipients. The types of communication (known as "channels") include email, SMS, documents or videos.

A further function allows you to create chatbots for user interaction.

The main features are as follows:

  • Create and send emails.
  • Create and send Short Message Service (SMS) texts.
  • Create documents to be sent as a hardcopy or as a PDF attachment to an email.
  • Create chatbots for user interaction.
  • Create videos, the URL for which can be sent to customers using email or SMS.

Each of these features, except for a chatbot, is referred to as a communication.

Communicate enables you generate analytics reports to understand how your customers are interacting with your digital communications.

You can sign up for Communicate using one of four possible account types; see User and team administration for a detailed description of these account types. If you have a Trial account, sample projects are provided with Communicate to help you get started. If you open the Projects screen, you will see the sample projects.

Campaigns

A campaign is used to send communications to a targeted group of recipients.

A communication can be sent in a single campaign or you can use it to send multiple campaigns, with revisions in between. Campaign data is combined for each communication.

Where you create a communication and whether you create a new communication or edit an existing one determines how campaign data is combined.

Projects

To use EngageOne™ Communicate, you must first create a project as a place for your communications to reside. A project is a set of one or more communications (which can be email, SMS, video, document or chatbot) that comprises a logical entity, for example, a specific campaign. Every communication must be included in a project.

You can use projects as a way of organizing communications and reporting on campaigns. For example, if you want to drill down into the campaign data for sales events, you could create a project for each sales event. However, if you want analytics for individual sales consultants, each person could create their own project.

Roles

Communicate supports users with different roles, and a role is allocated to a user when the user is created. Different parts of this guide will be of interest to different user roles, as described below:

  • Adminstrator. The admistrator is responsible for managing users, accounts and teams. The most useful section of this guide is Administration. The creation of client crdentials for API usage is also a task for an administrator; see API Usage.
  • Campaign Creator (Marketing specialist). The Campaign Creator's role is to design a communication campaign at a high level, possibly creating templates, and the Designer can then create the communications to follow that design. The most useful sections are Introduction, Campaigns and Templates.
  • Designer. The primary role of the designer is to create new communications, including projects and template creation. The most useful sections are Communications, Data Sources, Templates and Asset Library.
  • Developer. The role of developer is to write code that programmatically interfaces with Communicate. The most relevant section for a developer is API Usage.
  • Reporter (Analyst). The Analyst or Reporter is primarily interested in statistical details of campaigns. The most relevant sections are Reporting and Audience Analysis.

Analytics

Communicate provides tools to allow you to perform audience analysis. You can also request reports on various statistics, such as the number of bounced emails.

Planning your communications

As an initial step, it is a good idea to create a storyboard for your communication showing all the possible interactions that a recipient could potentially have. See the video called Storyboarding your communication journey under Help videos: Best practices.

Where you create a communication and whether you create a new communication or edit an existing one determines how campaign data is combined. For this reason, consider:

  • Which project to use; your campaigns will be combined with those for the other communications in the project.
  • Whether to edit an existing communication; your campaigns will be combined with earlier campaigns for this communication.
  • Whether it is better to duplicate an existing communication rather than edit it; your campaigns will be tracked separately.

Best practices for organising teams, accounts and projects

Before you start using Communicate, you should determine the best structure for your accounts, teams, projects and communications.

The hierarchy is as follows:

  • The account is at the highest level, and could typically be used for your company. You can also create sub-accounts.
  • The team is the second level, and could typically be used for a business unit within your company.
  • The project is below the team level, and typically you create a project for each use case.
  • The individual communications come below the project level; each communication must be part of a project.

One key factor when deciding on your structure is to get meaninful reports. The highest level of reporting is at the team level, with a breakdown by project and communication.

A user can be included in multiple teams and accounts.

Other useful information

If you need to contact Support, see Support.

Documentation feedback

If you have any feedback on this online help, or any other EngageOne™ Communicate documentation, please send an email to engageoneinformationdevelopers@precisely.com.