Campaign configuration management overview

When planning a social housing communications campaign there are several key aspects to consider: objectives, audience, research, messaging, communication channels, implementation and evaluation. Objectives can be considered in terms of what needs to change, such as attitudes, behaviours or general awareness, and so it is important to define the objectives clearly, as well as to identify how the campaign's effectiveness against these objectives will be measured. Prior research creates benchmarks against which the success of a campaign can be judged and helps to identify the most effective means of communicating with the intended audience. It may be beneficial to firstly test the reactions to a communications campaign using a small target group, checking any assumptions about its effectiveness before extending the distribution to a wider audience. Messages should be clear, succinct and - most importantly - few in number. Ideally, campaigns should convey one key message, with one or two supporting messages used to reinforce the central point. Messages should be presented in a carefully controlled way and reviewed regularly to take account of mitigating external factors. Evaluation is often overlooked but is an important factor in any communications campaign; for example, checking that the target number of responses was achieved, or that the positive outcome conversion rate was at or above the expected level. Indeed, monitoring the success of any campaign ensures that the value of the gathered data is maximised, as well as seeing positive take up for events such as upcoming training programmes, social inclusion workshops, and the like.

The most common problem experienced through campaign management is low response rates, which can render the feedback effectively meaningless. Each campaign therefore needs to be carefully constructed, target the right audience and, above all, acted upon; recipients will then see the benefit of their involvement and be much more likely to contribute in the future.

Civica Cx Housing supports the implementation of an effective campaign programme in a variety of ways:

Bringing together the right target groups through the use of audience segmentation
The ability to focus on individual contacts or contact group memberships
Linking together multiple segments into one campaign, and combined through the use of logical operators and precedence rules
The creation of any number of customised communication messages to support each campaign cycle.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of campaign configuration management, including: