Campaigns
What the Campaigns domain tests
Iterable Foundations treats a campaign as a single outbound message-email, SMS, push, in-app, or another channel-sent to a defined recipient set. The exam checks whether you can choose the right campaign type, control who receives it and when, and measure lift without contaminating results.
Core rules
- Campaign types: Standard sends on a schedule; Triggered sends from an API event; Recurring repeats on a cadence. Pick Triggered only when an external system supplies the event and recipient.
- Recipients: a static List or a dynamic Audience. Audiences recalculate from profile and event criteria, so they suit “recent purchasers” or “lapsed users.” Lists suit fixed, reviewed sets.
- Send controls: suppression lists, frequency capping, quiet hours, throttling, and holdout percentage. A holdout is a random slice withheld from the send so you can measure incremental effect.
- Testing: A/B tests can vary subject line, content, or send time. Change one variable per test; otherwise attribution is ambiguous. Send Time Optimization chooses per-user send times from engagement history.
Worked example
A retailer wants to promote a new fall line to users who bought in the last 30 days but not in the last 7. It schedules a Standard email with a 5% holdout, quiet hours from 21:00–08:00, and an A/B subject-line test. Reasoning: the recency criteria are dynamic, so an Audience is correct; the holdout measures lift against non-recipients; quiet hours protect deliverability and experience; one test variable keeps the result readable.
Traps
Using a static List for recency criteria makes the campaign stale. Forgetting suppression or frequency capping can oversend. Reading opens as revenue ignores the conversion window. Reusing a campaign without rechecking audience membership and exclusions causes duplicate or missed sends.