Understanding plans

A plan includes all of the information that is required to use the contacts identified in a segment as, for example, the target audience for newsletters and other marketing activities.

Plan components

As a minimum, plans include the following information:

  • The target date, time and time zone to carry out the plan.
  • The target segment to be used (contacts).
  • The consumer.
    The platform, external to Contactplan, which is to receive the list of contacts.

The following can also be defined in a plan:

  • Whether it is a single-shot or a recurring plan.
  • The Do Not Disturb (DND) policy.
    To manage the volume of messages sent to contacts.
  • The number of contacts that should be included in the contact list.
  • What action to take if the required number of contacts is not available in the appropriate segment.

Target audience

The target audience of a plan is defined by:

  • The contacts selected by the segment.
  • Any DND policy that is applied.
    All contacts that have already reached the maximum number of communications allowed by the policy are removed.
  • The number of contacts selected in the Set contacts number field of the Advanced options section.
    Defines whether to use All the contacts in the segment, an Exact number, or a Range between two limits that you specify.

Plan processing

The resulting list of contacts is passed to the selected consumer for the plan to be run. The following consumers are available as standard:

  • Create Filter in Send.
    Used to create a test and actual filter in Send.
  • Create Mail Delivery in Send.
    Used to create an email delivery in Send.
  • Create SMS Delivery in Send.
    Used to create an SMS delivery in Send.
  • Send Contacts to an Automation.
    Used to create a contact list and send it to the appropriate Flow automation.
  • SFTP Consumer.
    Saves the list of contacts to an external storage space, from where it can be retrieved manually, or automatically by another system.

The Plan architecture has been designed so that a new consumer can be added, without a loss of service.

 

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