Campaign alerts

You can create alerts to get notified if an important event occurs or if something breaks. You can set alerts based on core metrics like sends, opens, and clicks, or on custom goals for monitoring campaign performance. For example, you can receive alerts if campaigns do not execute or perform as expected.

The alerts are color coded and the color code of an alert specifies its status. Here's the meaning of each color:

• Red: Indicates that our platform triggered the alert during the last run of the campaign monitoring activity. This can vary based on the alert's setting. For example, you can specify that our platform can monitor campaigns every day, week, or month. Thus, if the campaign monitoring is set to run every month, then red indicates that the alert was triggered in the latest monthly run. 
• Green: Indicates that the alert was not triggered in the last run. We only consider the latest run to indicate the alert's current status on whether it was triggered or not. It's possible that the alert was triggered in one of the previous runs, however we do not consider it to show the alert's status. 
• Grey: Indicates that the alert is disabled. 

Consider the following guidelines when you set up campaign alerts:

• Set the trigger criteria in such a way that alerts are generally in the Green state so that any triggered alerts (Red state) are easy to spot and you are not overwhelmed with alert emails.
• Keep the alert criteria updated so that alerts (Red state) are not triggered for expected reasons. For example, if a low send volume alert is triggered for a campaign that is no longer running. Alert criteria should be updated to remove such a campaign from being monitored.

View alerts

To view alerts, go to Journeys > Alerts in the left navigation.

When you click on an alert, you see the alert, an option to edit it and the number of times it was triggered.

Create an alert

You can create or edit an alert from the index screen. When you create an alert, you must specify the campaign metric that you want to monitor. For example, the period of time, the condition that triggers an alert, and the email addresses to which a notification should be sent.

You can edit an alert to add filters. However the alert must either be in paused or in draft state. You can't edit a running alert.

To create an alert that notifies you if a specific event occurs, complete the following steps:

1. In the Blueshift app, go to Journeys > Alerts in the left navigation.
2. On the Alerts page, click + Alert.
3. On the page that appears, specify the Alert title that is displayed on the index page that lists all the alerts.

   
   

4. Specify the Trigger criteria.

   For example: Generate alert if sends(Metric) are less than(Condition) 10(Value) on a daily(Time Period) basis.

   Metric	Select either a core metric or a custom goal. The following core metrics can be selected for the alert: Sends: Number of messages sent.  Open rate: The ratio of messages that are opened vs sent.  Clicks: Number of messages that targeted users clicked on. Click rate: The ratio of messages that are clicked on vs sent. Bounces: Number of messages that bounced and failed to reach the targeted user. Soft bounces: Emails that bounced because of some problem on the recipient's side. Bounce rate: The ratio of messages that bounced and failed to reach the targeted user vs sent.  Unsubscribe rate: The ratio at which users unsubscribe from a campaign that was run using Blueshift vs . Spam reports: The number of messages that were marked as spam. Spam rate: The rate at which messages were marked as spam vs sent.   Impressions: Number of messages that had an impression from the targeted users.  Drops: Messages to a specific email address that an ESP drops in order to protect your sender reputation.
   Time Period	The duration of time in which a metric occurred. For example, daily sends greater than 15. This changes based on what you select. If you select a rate, such as open rate or click rate in the metric, your options are daily, weekly, and monthly. If you want to create an alert for clicks that drop more than 5% month over month, you can create a trigger like this:
   Condition	The condition that is satisfied to trigger the alert. For example, you create an alert if message sends drop below 10 per day, the trigger looks like:  Here, Less than is the condition.
   Value	Value: The value that the condition uses to trigger the alert. In the above example, 10 is the value. If number of sends drop below 10 per day, an alert is triggered. This changes based on the metric. The value is provided in percentage if the following criteria is met: If you select a rate as the metric. If you select a time period like month over month for a metric like sends. Otherwise, this field takes an absolute value.

5. Specify the email addresses of the people who should get the alert email in the Email alerts to field.
6. For Campaign selection, select the campaigns on which you want to apply the trigger for the alert. If the alert is triggered on any of the campaigns you select, an email is sent to the people whose email addresses you specified.
   • All Campaigns (default) - If you select this option, each and every campaign is individually monitored.
   • Selected campaigns - Selected campaigns are individually monitored.
   • All campaigns except the selected campaigns - All campaigns except the selected campaigns are individually monitored.

   All selected campaigns are individually monitored. For example, if the alert is set for a 10% decrease in clicks, any campaign which sees a 10% decrease in clicks will trigger the alert.

7. Select filters to further narrow down on the campaigns for which you want our platform to monitor and trigger an alert. You can add the following filters:
   • Adapter: Select an adapter so that our platform monitors campaigns that use it. For example, you have added a SendGrid adapter for emails. You can select that adapter so that our platform triggers an alert only for campaigns that use it and satisfy the alert criteria. 
   • Campaign Type: Select the type of campaign that you want our platform to monitor. For example, you can select Event Triggered campaigns so that our platform triggers an alert only for event triggered campaigns that satisfy the trigger criteria. 
   • Channel: Select the channel that you. want our platform to monitor. For example, you can select emails so that our platform triggers alerts only for email campaigns that satisfy the trigger criteria. 
8. Add Notes or a description for the campaign alert. The notes are included in the email notification that is sent when the alert is triggered. Use the notes to provide more context so that other users in your organization have a better understanding about what the alert is for.
9. Click Save.

Things to know

• Alert criteria are evaluated only for event triggered, segment triggered, and recurring campaigns in the launched state.
• The cadence in which alert criteria are evaluated depends on the time period. If time period = ‘daily’ or ‘day over day’, alerts are processed daily. If time period = ‘weekly’ or ‘week over week’, alerts are processed weekly. If time period = ‘monthly’ or ‘month over month’, alerts are processed monthly.
  • A day starts and ends at 12AM (in your account time zone)
  • A week starts and ends at 12 AM on Sunday (in your account time zone)
  • A month starts and ends at 12 AM on the first day of the month (in your account time zone)
• If time period = ‘daily’, ‘weekly’ or ‘monthly’, a full time period of data needs to be available for the alert criteria to be processed.
  • For example, if you are monitoring weekly ‘spam rate’, and you start the alert monitoring on Friday November 1, no alert gets generated on Sunday, November 3 since a full week hasn’t elapsed since the time the alert monitoring began. The earliest time the alert is eligible for evaluation is 12 AM on Sunday November 10.
• If time period = ’day over day, ‘week over week’ or ‘month over month’, 2 full time periods of data must be available for the alert criteria to be processed.
  • For example, if you are monitoring ‘sends’ on a month over month basis, and you start the alert monitoring on March 3, no alert gets generated on March 31st or April 30th because 2 full months worth of data is not available for comparison yet. The earliest date when this alert would be eligible for evaluation would be May 31st. At 12 AM on May 31st, the sends for the month of May (May 1-31) would be compared against the sends for the month of April (Apr 1- 30).