Campaigns are the foundation for all of Ellipsend's powerful Social CRM features, helping your team to close more deals and better segment the leads in the Ellipsend Inbox. Campaigns are also necessary for enabling you to finally track KPIs and revenue from each post + story on your organic social media.

Pipelines are a collection of Stages that allow you to see exactly where each lead is in their journey throughout a Campaign.

Each Campaign can only have one Pipeline, though one Pipeline can belong to multiple Campaigns. Leads can be in multiple Pipelines at once, which allows them to be in multiple Campaigns at once.

Activities are exactly what they sound like: the different activities that leads perform throughout a campaign. Activities are always attached to pipeline stages, so that as leads perform Activities during a Campaign, they're pushed through the different stages of a Campaign's Pipeline.

These Activities also allow you to track very specific data for your team to access in the Inbox using Custom Fields on the Activity. Some examples of Custom Fields on an Activity are...

Activities and their custom field data can then be added to contacts manually by your team in the Inbox, or automatically through our integrations with platforms like Zapier and GoHighLevel.

Activities are an essential component of Campaigns that unlock the ability for you to track metrics such as revenue, bookings, qualified or disqualified leads, attendance on webinars/digital events, and more from each post or story!

The final piece of Ellipsend campaigns is Automations, sometimes called DM Automations, which can be triggered whenever leads comment on your posts or your Lives, reply to your story, send you a DM, or click a "click to message" ad.

This allows you to send automated DMs to your leads in order to send lead magnets, opt in links, or even just to position the conversation for your DM team to manage in the inbox.

Automations must be added to Campaigns if you want to track KPIs from the Automation and posts where they are attached. The best way to do this is typically to create the Automation using the Campaign Wizard, though you can also add Automations to existing Campaign in the Automation Builder itself.

If an Automation is added to a Campaign, you can also create Actions in the Automation Builder which will automatically add leads to Pipeline Stages as they progress through the Automation.

Now that you understand the different components of an Ellipsend Campaign, it's time to set up your Campaign using Ellipsend's built-in Wizard.

The first step is to name your Campaign and describe the Campaign Goal. Be sure to choose something that will allow your team to easily understand now and in the future.

Once you've completed these two fields, click Continue.

This next step is where you'll choose whether to use an existing pipeline that can either be from a previous campaign or maybe you built it in the pipelines tab of the settings section or a new pipeline.

Please note: if you do choose an existing pipeline and you make changes on the following steps of the builder, that will impact other campaigns. So be very careful when adding, deleting, or editing stages on existing pipelines when creating new campaigns.

Once you've chosen whether to "Choose Existing" or "Create a New" Pipeline, you can click Continue.

If you're using an existing Pipeline, you can skip to Step 4: Setting Up Your Activities.

Next, it's time to create the different lead stages of your pipeline. This can be as complex or as simple as your business needs it to be.

There are three different Stage types: Active, Won, and Lost.

These can be chosen by selecting from the dropdown before clicking the purple "+" button or pressing Enter to create the Pipeline Stage.

We recommend always starting with a "New Lead" stage, which is always going to be an "Active" Stage type.

Once you've created all of your Pipeline Stages, click Continue.

The next step is to create the activities of this campaign. Once again, you may be able to reuse activities from previous campaigns or ones that you created in the activities tab in the settings section. The best practice is to reuse activities wherever you can so that they can be tracked across campaigns.

Please note: Just as with choosing an existing Pipeline, any changes you make to existing Activities will be reflected across any other campaigns where they are used.

In order to create a new Activity, type your desirec Activity name in the field, and click the purple "+" button or press Enter. This will open up another window where you can then choose from a variety of Custom Field types.

For any Activities where you are tracking revenue, you must include at least one Money field, which have two new toggle options: Received and Expected.

Let's imagine that you create an Activity called "Lead Won" in a Campaign where you will allow $1,000 upfront payments as part of a $10,000 deal size. You'd create a Money field called "Cash Collected" that has the Received toggle on, and another Money field called "Contracted Revenue".

Once you've created all of your Activities and their Custom Fields, click Continue.

Your leads will move through the Pipeline Stages whenever they perform Activities by mapping each Activity to a Pipeline Stage.

For example, if a lead books a call through Calendly and your Zapier integration sends this activity to Ellipsend, they can automatically move from a "Lead Qualified" Stage to a "Call Booked" Stage. Not all Pipeline Stages need an Activity (for example those where leads are added in Automations), but all Activities should be added to a Pipeline Stage.

Please note: Each activity can only be mapped to one pipeline stage, but each pipeline stage can have multiple activities options, in case there are multiple activities that could bring them to that one Pipeline Stage.

You'll want to ensure that each Activity is mapped to its corresponding Pipeline Stage before clicking Continue.

In this step, you can create new Automations to add to your Campaign. Check out these guides to learn more about building and managing DM Automations in Ellipsend!

Once you've completed all of your desired Automations, click Continue.

On this final step, you'll choose which Pipeline Stage is the primary goal stage for this Campaign. This is usually a "Lead Won" or "Purchased" stage.

Choosing a Campaign Goal will allow you to easily track your most important metrics in the Campaigns and Reports sections of Ellipsend.

Once completed, Click Save and then "Save as Active" (if the Campaign is ready) or "Save as Draft" (if the Campaign still needs work).

Please Note: Campaigns will be hidden from the Automation Builder and in the Inbox unless they are either Active or Paused.