Campaigns and Message Authoring
Campaigns in AJO handle scheduled, one-off, or API-triggered sends to a defined audience or segment. The candidate should understand the campaign types: scheduled (send at a date/time), API-triggered (send when an external system calls the API), and orchestrated campaigns (multi-step, but not real-time event-driven like journeys). Campaign properties include the audience, schedule, frequency rules, and channel configuration.
Message authoring uses the message designer (email) and channel-specific editors (SMS, push, in-app). Key concepts: content templates, fragments (reusable content blocks), personalization with the expression editor and Handlebars-style syntax for profile attributes and event context, and dynamic content (variants by condition). Channel configurations define the sending infrastructure (e.g., email subdomain, SMS provider, push credentials). Frequency capping and send-time optimization are governed by journey/campaign settings and business rules.
The traps: (1) confusing fragments (reusable content) with templates (full message scaffolding); (2) assuming dynamic content requires separate messages - it does not, variants live inside one message; (3) forgetting to validate and proof a message before publishing; (4) misunderstanding that a campaign cannot react to real-time behavior; (5) mixing up API-triggered campaigns with event-triggered journeys. Also remember that channel configurations must be set up and validated before a message can send.
Worked example
A flash sale that must go out at 9:00 AM to a segment of loyalty members is a scheduled campaign with an audience (loyalty segment), a schedule (9:00 AM), and an email message using a fragment for the footer and dynamic content for the hero image by loyalty tier. Proof it, validate it, then publish.
Rule of thumb
Campaign = audience + schedule + message. If any of the three is missing or the trigger is a real-time behavior, reconsider whether it should be a journey.