Messaging campaigns are a way for you to connect with prospects who interact with your Further tools using a series of specialized SMS and/or email messages. These messages give prospects the option to continue their conversations with you as they make their decision about moving into senior living, even after the office is closed.  

The benefits of working with an automated messaging campaign include: 

• Increase inquiry to tour by getting the right message to prospects at the right time.
• Automatically reach out to leads over days, weeks, and months, without having to remember to send the messages yourself.
• Engage leads with personalized messaging customized to the lead profile (eg. someone who is Just Researching vs Looking Immediately)
• Focus your sales efforts on the leads who engage and reply to the messaging.
• Create speed to lead and lead engagement without any additional effort on your part.
• Deeply integrated with your CRM, ensuring that all messages are pushed into your lead profiles and CRM updates (eg. tours, making contact, etc. ) communicate back to Further to update our outreach approach.

You can use our predefined filters to determine which prospects you want to reach out to after they visit your website. For example, you can target prospects based on the care type they selected, their timeline for making a decision, and/or any other number of predefined filters.

Note: Only Corporate users can create and modify messaging campaigns. Regional users can view the campaigns but cannot make any changes to them.

• Creating an Email/SMS Campaign
  • Set Target Audiences
  • Campaign Messages 
• Launching Campaigns
  • Prioritize Campaigns
  • Activate Campaigns
• Integrating Your Email Address for Email Campaigns
• Send Preview Message to Your Inbox

If you have not already set up email integration for your campaigns, jump to the Integrating Your Email Address for Email Campaigns section. 

Creating an Email/SMS Campaign

Open Messaging in the left menu.

The Messaging page will open. If you have not made a campaign yet, click Add Campaign under Sales Campaigns.

You will have two options: 

• One-Click Setup - This creates a standard campaign with messages already set up in the system. This is the recommended way to start a new campaign where you can just tweak the existing templates as needed. 
• Add Single Campaign - This allows you to build a campaign from scratch and is best saved for experienced campaign builders. 

If you already have a few campaigns created and would like to add more, use the Add campaign button at the bottom.

A pop-up window will open. 

Here, you can enter the name of the campaign and select the communities you would like to add to this campaign.

Now you need to select the Audience Group for a campaign and set the Message Templates that make up the content sent to prospects.

Set Target Audiences 

Click to open a campaign. The Edit Sales Campaign window will open. 

To the left you will see two tabs, click General to select the campaign behavior criteria. 

Note: If you’ve used a One-Click Setup, this will all be filled in automatically: 

• Messaging Assistant - The Further team will activate this box once we have had the opportunity to do a training call with your community team. For more information see the article Messaging Assistant. 
• Keep Sales Notified - This setting allows emailed alerts to be sent to your Further distribution list regarding which prospects are being contacted that week via Messaging.  It acts as a reminder if there are any prospects they would like to remove from receiving the outreach, should they have already connected with the prospect in another manner. Check the box to turn these notifications on. 
• Entry Criteria—In the top box, select the action that will trigger this campaign, such as creating a lead in the system. If you would like to add additional criteria, click +Add and. You can filter when this campaign will trigger based on how they answered chat workflow questions. 

A lead matching all of the criteria here will be added to the campaign.

• Exit Criteria - If there are things that will disqualify or remove a prospect from this campaign, you can add them here. For example, if a prospect has already scheduled move-in, you do not want to continue sending them campaign messages. You can add multiple criteria that will remove a lead from a campaign by clicking Add or at the bottom. 

A lead matching any of the criteria here will be removed from the campaign. 

Note: Be careful with criteria selections. Every filter you add must be met to trigger the campaign. Adding five filters means that a potential lead must fit the criteria for all five filters to receive a message from the messaging campaign. If you make your filters too specific, there may not be any leads that meet all the criteria. 

Next, click the Communities tab. 

Here you can enter which communities this campaign will apply to. To select all available communities, click the top checkbox. 

Otherwise, use the search bar to find communities. Click the communities to add them or use the checkboxes to add communities. 

Click the Show dropdown to filter communities to see which ones you’ve already selected or show only unselected ones. 

Now that you’ve set the audience and your notifications for the campaigns, it’s time to craft the actual messages. 

Campaign Messages

Click to open a campaign. The Edit Sales Campaign window will open. 

If there is an existing campaign or you used One-Click Setup to create your campaigns, click on the message you want to edit. 

Otherwise, click Add Message. There are three options: 

• SMS - Your campaign will send an SMS message. 
• Email (blank) - Your campaign will send an email you create from scratch. 
• Email (from template) - Your campaign will send an email based on one of your company's templates. If you select this option, you must choose which template to fill the campaign with.

Note: If you select an Email campaign, you must also integrate your community email address, see the Integrating Your Email Address for Email Campaigns section for more information. 

No matter which option you choose, the message editor window will open. 

If you would like to delay when the message is sent, enter the number of Days, Hours, or Minutes that you would like to wait in the Scheduling section. Leaving the fields with a value of 0 will send the message immediately. 

By default, messages will not be sent between the hours of 8 pm and 8 am or on weekends. You can adjust these hour limits with the dropdowns below the Limit delivery hours checkbox. 

If you do not want to limit the delivery hours, uncheck the box. 

To allow message delivery on weekends, check the Allow delivery on weekends box. 

When you’re done it’s time to craft the campaign message. 

Depending on whether you are setting up an email or SMS campaign, the available options to customize your message will vary.

Both options allow you to use Placeholders to customize the text. Placeholders can be found to the left and contain a collection of blocks that will auto-populate information from the Further database based on the recipient and/or community information previously collected.

For example, if you click the first name placeholder, then the message will fill in with the prospect's first name. If you select sales name, then the sales name you entered for that community when you created a campaign will populate in the message.

Placeholders are optional but can help personalize your messages.

Both options will allow you to include an attachment with your message. You can add an attachment by clicking the Attach button below the message box and selecting a file. 

In addition to the above, email campaigns offer the ability to include images, and customize your color, font, and layout, just as if you were writing a typical email.  

If you choose to include an image, please note that the image can be resized to match your needs.  You can adjust this with the Width and Height options.

For SMS messages, Subject is an internal name that allows you to recognize messages in the campaign builder. However, for both types of Email messages, the Subject will display as the email subject line. If you used the Email (from template) option, this should be autofilled from the template.

Type your message to prospects in the Message field. This is what will be sent in the text. Click Confirm to save the message.

The Message field will make up the body of the email. You can customize the text with the formatting toolbar. If you used the Email (from template) option, this should be auto-filled from the template, but you can customize the content.

When you’re done click Confirm to save your new campaign.

To delete a message, click the trashcan icon at the top of the Message window

Once you’re done selecting the audience and creating the message for a campaign, it’s time to correctly order it. 

Launching Campaigns

Once your campaigns are ready to go, you should prioritize what campaigns are sent first and then activate the campaign so that it will trigger and send.

Prioritize Campaigns

Leads will only be assigned to one sales campaign, so the first campaign that they match the criteria for is the one they will be enrolled in. Campaign criteria is checked from top to bottom in your campaign list, meaning it is more likely a lead will be enrolled in a campaign toward the top of your list.

Keep this in mind when making campaigns. Specialized campaigns that are meant to target a very specific type of lead should be higher on your list to ensure the lead receives the appropriate message. More general campaigns for many types of leads should be lower on the list.

To reorder a campaign, click on it and drag and drop it to the desired spot. 

Activate Campaigns

Campaigns do not start until they are activated. By default, campaigns are paused when you first create them. You can see the status of a campaign on the list, to the left. A pause symbol means that no messages are being sent, even if there are leads that match the audience criteria. 

To activate a campaign, click on the campaign name. In the top left click the Status dropdown. And select Activate to turn the campaign on. 

To turn the campaign off, simply open the campaign again and click Inactive button in the dropdown. 

Your campaigns are now ready for use!  As your view your leads under All Conversations, you can see which campaigns a prospect is enrolled in.

Integrating Your Email Address for Email Campaigns

You can set up an email address for email campaigns in Further. This email address is what prospects will see as the sender when they receive campaign messages. Below, we’ll go over how to add a new email address and assign it to communities.

Add a New Email Address

Click Settings in the left menu. 

Under the Further Products section, click Marketing Email.

The Marketing Email page will open. You can see any email addresses already set up to send campaign messages. You can filter email addresses using the Status dropdown in the top right or the search bar.  

To add a new one, click Add in the top left.

The Add Email Address window will open. Select the desired domain address and click Next. 

Note: Currently, Further can only integrate with Microsoft addresses. In the future, you can use the New Domain option to enter additional domains.

On the next screen enter your email address. To add multiple emails, click Add another address below. Click Save when you’re done. 

Note: This email address will show to leads as the source of campaign messages. To avoid confusion, this should be an email with a generic address for a community, not a specific user. 

Your new email address will show as Inactive until the address is confirmed. Open the email account and click Authenticate Microsoft Email Address. 

A confirmation message will appear and your new email address will show as Active. 

Now you need to set up which communities the email address is used for.

Assign Communities

There are two ways to assign communities. One is to click on an email address on the Marketing Email page.

In the new window, click Community Assignment. 

Alternatively, click the Community Assignment tab at the top of the page. 

Use the status dropdown and search bar to find the desired communities. 

Click the checklist icon to select multiple communities at once with checkboxes.

Click Edit Multiple at the top. 

Use the Email Address dropdown to select the desired email and click Save. 

All campaign emails from the selected communities will now come from the selected email address. Below is an example of how emails will look in your Conversations. 

Send Preview Message to Your Inbox

If you would like to see a preview of your email, you can do so right in the editor.  

In the lower right-hand corner click Send preview message.  A pop-up woll open.

Ih the pop-up, select the community you would like to create the preview for and add the email address you would like to send the preview to.

Click Send.

Check your inbox for the message!