I’m messing around with my fist campaign and love the options. Here’s the question that’s haunting me:
Scenario 1: Start the campaign with a Campaign Form. When someone submits, two things happen: they’re added to a segment and sent the first in a series of emails.
Scenario 2: Have a stand alone form that adds them to the segment. Then the campaign launches off the segment.
Both will work. I’m trying to figure out why one would be better than the other. Any ideas appreciated!
I’m messing around with my fist campaign and love the options. Here’s the question that’s haunting me:
Scenario 1: Start the campaign with a Campaign Form. When someone submits, two things happen: they’re added to a segment and sent the first in a series of emails.
Scenario 2: Have a stand alone form that adds them to the segment. Then the campaign launches off the segment.
Both will work. I’m trying to figure out why one would be better than the other. Any ideas appreciated!
Thanks for the videos. I understand the difference between the forms, but I’m after logic about which method is best for launching campaigns. Should I add someone to a segment as part of the initial actions of a campaign, or should I add them to a segment via a stand alone form and launch campaigns off the segment? I’m thinking the latter, but just wanted some ideas.
@MxyzptlkFishStix - Thanks. I looked into these videos (had already watched the first) and 2 and 3 were helpful in clearing the fog. Thanks!
For anyone else reading this, you can essentially do most everything with either route. The time I can currently see using a standalone form:
- If you just want to do a few actions based on a submission and then you’re done. Example: grant access to a PDF, etc.
Otherwise, if you want to have multiple segments feeding off filters on a form select field, or simply just want to add someone to a single segment and launch them into a campaign use the campaign form, then use the campaign form. Basically, I’ll rarely ever use a stand alone form.
Old post but thank you for the followup, I was wondering exactly the same thing.
I’m not sure what I used to do, but now I rarely ever use a campaign form. I use a stand alone form which allows me to add someone to a segment. All of my new campaigns are started based off a segment. The campaign form is of no use to me now.
Yep, I was hesitating too, and don’t see quite differences. Segment seems more flexible. On top of that I have an issue with campaign trigger. I’ll be interested by the opinion of mautic creators about this forms choices.
Mine always start correctly from segments.
Mine was working too, but don’t know why it fails now. It’s too late to check this tonight.
A big difference is this: If you want someone to opt into something - or send a mail right after a form submit:
- With a campaign form your contact needs to wait until the next scheduled cron job runs. Unfortunately a campaign form doesn’t have a “send email to contact” function. Don’t know why. But generally, when people fill forms or need to opt into something its bad to let them wait.
- With a standalone form, you can send a selected mail right away to your contact. Thus they don’t have to wait. Unfortunately you now need to add them to campaigns via a segment, which is build dynamic via a filter and makes things a bit more complicated than necessary from my perspective
Yes, thank you for this discussion. I’ve been debating the same thing myself and the ability to immediately send an email to the contact is a key take-away for me. It seems to me that that the only difference in construction is that the segment will be the input to the campaign rather than the form, yes?
It’s odd – my VA, who is also new to Mautic, built a campaign with a stand-alone form as the input rather than sending the form data to a segment and then making the segment the input to the campaign. From what I understand, this is an error. I DO see that even with this faulty construction, the contact is being added to the db and is added to the segments specified as actions in the campaign. Checking this out today to see what the functional difference will be.
Thank you all for sharing your practices with it.
Clarification – my campaign form also has action tabs now. Not sure if this is part of an update? I’m running 2.12.1. The Mautic videos above must be from an earlier version since it leads off with saying that the campaign forms don’t have an action tab. So I’m wondering really what is the difference now, other than campaign forms not being available outside that campaign.
@vynmob for that you need to set up cron jobs …did you do ?
Yes, thank you, have cron all set up and working. But it is my understanding that sending an email from a stand alone form happens immediately, not dependent on cron. To be clear, she set up a stand alone form and selected it as input in campaign builder.