Creating a campaign: SMS, WhatsApp and app notifications

The Campaigns module in the left menu is for bulk messaging to your customers over three channels: SMS, WhatsApp and app notifications. The module has four sections: Campaigns, Segments, Templates and Customer Lists. You start a new campaign with the New Campaign button on the Campaigns page. Send Campaign in a list's menu under Customer Lists also opens the wizard; the list comes preselected as a Saved List in the Target Audience step.

Creating a campaign (4 steps)

1. 1

   Channel

   Choose SMS, WhatsApp or App Notification. WhatsApp is only selectable when you have a connected number; otherwise the card shows a “WhatsApp is not connected” notice. If your number is connected in coexistence with the WhatsApp Business app you can still send campaigns; Meta only caps throughput at 20 messages per second, and your quality rating reflects both the app and the API conversations.

2. 2

   Target Audience

   Decide who the campaign goes to in one of four ways (see below). The marketing-consent switch also lives in this step. With Preview Audience for a segment rule, or Show Current Count for a saved segment, you see how many customers you will reach and how many were left out for lacking consent or a phone number.

3. 3

   Select Template

   Pick one of the templates of the chosen channel; if there is none yet you can create one with New Template without leaving the wizard. For SMS and app notifications, select a customer in the Live Preview section and click Render Et to see how the message will look for that person.

4. 4

   Review

   Write the Campaign Title (required). To send right away, click Send Now. To send at a later date, turn on the Send at a later date switch and pick the date and time; the button becomes Schedule & Save, the campaign is sent automatically at that time and the recipients are recalculated at send time. If you don't want to send it yet, keep it with Save as Draft and send the draft later with Send on the campaign detail; if you picked a date before saving the draft, Send schedules the campaign for that time, or sends it right away if that time has passed. Every option opens a confirmation window showing the title, the channel, the consent choice, the template and the target mode.

• The confirmation window doesn't show how many people the campaign will reach; with Manual Selection it only shows how many people you selected. Check the number with the preview in the Target Audience step before sending. When you send right away the screen shows how many customers were targeted, and once sending has started the Total Targeted card on the campaign detail shows it too.

• The number shown for a Saved List or a Manual Selection is the number of people you selected. Consent, phone and ban checks happen at send time, so fewer messages may go out. If no eligible recipient is left when you send right away, “The target customer list is empty. Check the segment conditions.” appears and the campaign stays a draft.

• Campaigns have no test send, and sending is real for businesses on a Piyzi trial too: the messages go to the selected customers and SMS and WhatsApp are charged. To see the message on your own phone first, add yourself as a customer and select only yourself with Manual Selection; since that record has no marketing consent, turn off the consent switch for that send.

• Once saved or sent, a campaign can't be edited or deleted. You stop a draft, scheduled or sending campaign with Cancel on its detail page; a cancelled campaign stays in the list as Cancelled. If the audience, the channel or the time needs changing, cancel the campaign and create a new one. If only the message of a draft or scheduled campaign needs changing, you can edit the template it uses on the Templates page: the campaign uses the template's current version when it goes out. Changing a template also affects the other draft and scheduled campaigns that use it.

• Seeing the Campaigns menu needs permission to view campaigns, creating a campaign needs permission to create campaigns, sending or scheduling it needs permission to send campaigns, and cancelling it needs permission to edit campaigns; adding, editing and deleting templates and segments also needs permission to manage templates and segments. Without permission to send, the campaign you prepare in the wizard is saved as a draft.

Channels

• SMS: goes through your business's own Verimor SMS integration and reaches customers with a phone number. Without an SMS integration, sending shows “An active SMS integration is required to send an SMS campaign”. Campaigns send SMS only through Verimor: if your business's SMS provider is another company (NAC Telekom, Vatan SMS), the campaign shows Completed but the messages are not delivered; the lines in the Delivery Logs show Failed. Use a Verimor integration for SMS campaigns.

• WhatsApp: sent only with a template approved on Meta; there is no free text. You map the template variables (name, remaining lessons, business name). Deliveries appear in your inbox and customer replies land in the conversation. Templates in the marketing category are billed by Meta. The Meta template is not listed in the wizard directly: first save it as a campaign template with “New Template” by picking the Meta template and mapping its variables. If the template header has an image, video or PDF, upload the file or paste its link in the “Header media” field of the same dialog; the template cannot be saved without the media. You can pick a Meta template that is still awaiting approval, but the campaign isn't sent until the template is approved.

• App Notification: written to the notification centre (the bell at the top right) of customers who sign in to the Piyzi app with Customer Login; customers who allowed push also get a phone notification. A customer with push off still reads the message when they open the app. No phone number is needed; customers who never sign in to the app don't see the message. The Push sent count on the campaign detail shows the customers who also received a phone notification.

Marketing consent

The Exclude customers without marketing consent switch in the Target Audience step is on by default. While it is on, the campaign goes only to customers with marketing consent; the preview, the send result and the campaign detail show how many people were excluded for lacking consent. A customer counts as consented when:

• The customer gave consent themselves: they ticked the box about receiving SMS / email on campaigns, promotions and announcements under My Account → Profile Information on your online booking page (the page shows these in Turkish: Hesabım → Profil Bilgileri), or turned on the “I want to receive SMS / email about campaigns, promotions and announcements.” switch on the Profile Information screen of the Piyzi app. When booking online, the box about receiving SMS for appointment reminders (“Randevu hatırlatmaları için SMS almak istiyorum.”) in the step where they enter their details also turns this consent on once the customer then verifies with the SMS code; if the box is left empty, the consent is turned off.

• They have a signed document in the Explicit Consent category of Consent Forms. Every signed document in this category counts as consent (for example a photo and video usage permission too); the form's tick boxes are not looked at.

• The customer was added through the Piyzi API with consent information sent along with the record.

The short note under the switch mentions “marketing consent ticked on the customer card”: that is the consent the customer gives themselves in the ways above. In the panel (web or mobile) marketing consent can't be ticked on the customer card, when adding a customer or when importing from Excel. So customers you add from the panel have no consent until the customer gives it themselves or signs an Explicit Consent form, and while the switch is on campaigns don't reach them. To collect consent you can use the “Ticari İleti Açık Rıza Beyanı” (commercial message consent) template under Consent Forms → Ready-made Templates.

Audience options

• Segment Rule: you build a rule from conditions such as gender, birth month, tags, enrolment duration, active package, remaining class count, days until package expiry, days since the last visit, visit status (based on the customer's own rhythm: e.g. At risk, Lost), total appointment count and class enrolment. You can require all conditions (AND) or any one of them (OR). The last visit and the visit status look not only at appointments but also at class attendance, event attendance and turnstile and facility entries.

• Saved Segment: uses a rule set you named and saved with New Segment on the Segments page.

• Saved List: targets the fixed customer list you created with "Save List" on the Customers page.

• Manual Selection: you search customers by name or phone (at least 2 characters) and select them one by one.

Template variables

You create templates on Campaigns → Templates or with New Template in the wizard. SMS and app-notification templates can use five variables: {{firstName}} (customer first name), {{lastName}} (last name), {{fullName}} (full name), {{remainingLessons}} (the total remaining classes/sessions in the customer's active packages) and {{companyTitle}} (business name). Variables are filled in for each customer at send time. A template's channel cannot be changed after it is created; you can edit its content.

Delivery tracking and cancelling

The campaign detail shows the total targeted, sent, failed and pending counts along with the delivery progress; where relevant it also shows the cancelled count and the number excluded for lacking consent, and a notification campaign shows how many people received a phone notification. In the Delivery Logs section you can follow who was reached one by one. Campaign statuses: Draft, Scheduled, Sending, Completed, Failed and Cancelled.

You can cancel a draft, scheduled or sending campaign with Cancel on its detail page and optionally enter a reason. If you cancel while it is sending, recipients not yet reached will not get the message, while messages already sent cannot be recalled. If no eligible recipient is left at the time a scheduled campaign goes out, or the channel isn't ready (for example the SMS integration was removed), the campaign becomes Failed and the reason is shown on the Cancellation Reason line of the campaign detail.

In a WhatsApp campaign the “Accepted by Meta” count shows the messages Meta accepted; whether they actually arrived is shown in the “WhatsApp delivery status” section: sent / pending, delivered, read and not delivered. In the Delivery Logs table each WhatsApp line shows its delivery status and, if it wasn't delivered, the reason and what to do. For a recipient whose phone is off, delivery information may be delayed.