Campaign Automation – Periodic Campaign. How does it work properly?

Question

Hey guys,
I would like to start a period campaign (once per week over 52 weeks). Depending on the survey answers I get back from business partners, I would like to create weekly new target groups (where I want to collect the business partners in 3 groups: partners who answered yes, partners who answered no and partners who did not react to the survey), a new telephone list (with communication channel u201CFile Exportu201D  for partner who answered no) and u201CThank-youu201D (for partner who answered yes)-as well as u201CReminderu201D(for partner who did not react at all)-emails. 
Unfortunately the realization does not work as I hoped. After my second period started only the survey email will be send out again, but the target groups are not getting updated anymore and the jobs (after the business partners send back their answers) do not get triggered so no new target groups, telephone lists or emails are getting generated after the first period.
Here my questions:
u2022     Why does, after my second period started (automatically), only the send out of the survey email works but no connection jobs get triggered after the answer are coming into the system, as sending out the u201EThank-Youu201C Mail, update of target groups or generation of the telephone list? Which of my setting could be wrong? How does the set-up of the campaign automation need to look like so that this will work?
u2022     To my knowledge, generated target groups from the first period need to be emptied again automatically (or at least be set back to the old condition) before the second (third, fourth, fifth etc.) period starts, so that this one can be executed correctly (e.g. partners who answered yes in the second period can be collected correctly this time without getting mixed up with partners who said yes in the first period). How can this be accomplished? Is there a Badi for this? Anything else?
u2022     In case there is really a way, that I can set target groups to the u201Coldu201D condition, where can I see e.g. the generated telephone lists or target groups from previous periods? Where does information like this get saved? In the campaign automation itself only the last information can be found and old information probably get overridden with the next periods information so where do I find the information from previous periods? Because I am pretty sure that you would like to be able to control who e.g. did not react to the campaign six periods before or which business partners said yes 10 periods before.
It would be awesome if anyone could give me some answers or information where I might get answers to that problem or how I need to set up my campaign so that my requirements can get implemented.
Thank you very much in advance!
Janine
Edited by: Janine P. on Nov 24, 2011 11:05 AM

Answer 1

Hi Sapan,
this is what SAP answered me:
"As per my understanding, this requirement could work, but this might
cause Human errors, thus creating issues for your functionality.
Ideally, the Periodic campaigns are meant for multiwaves itself, but
the Target Group is the same in all the waves. However, if you wish to
change the Target Group during the Campaign Period, then this could
cause manual errors, thus leading to disruption of the normal flow and
thus the Campaign itself.
Also, since the process would anyway involve manual intervention for
changing the Target Group, you could also Copy the already existing
Periodic Campaign and create a new one having the newly created Target
Group.It would take hardly 5 min extra and the naming conventions would
help you in maintainence or reporting at a later stage as well.
For Example:
1st week : Periodic_Campaign_1 and Target_Group_1
2nd week : Periodic_Campaign_2 and Target_Group_2
52nd week : Periodic_Campaign_52 and Target_Group_52
Therefore, I would suggest you to go ahead with this approach.
However, if you still wish to try out the single Campaign for the full
year(52 weeks), I would suggest you to try out an example campaign with
the below inputs:
1. Create the Marketing Attribute questions and assign them to the BP's.
2. Create a Profile which holds these Marketing Attributes.
3. In the Periodic Campaign, use the Workflow 'Create TG and Channel
Transfer'. This would create the Target Group using this profile and
also send mails to this Target Group.
4. Make changes to the Profile parameters during the campaign sleep
period(after the 1st execution is over and before the 2nd execution,
and so on)
You can test for Period type 'hours'/'days' using such a campaign and
test if it works correctly as per your requirement. "
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Janine