Campaign Performance Alerts

Building a great campaign is only half of the equation — making sure your users actually receive it and engage with it is just as important! With alerts, you can set up performance thresholds that notify you when a campaign isn't performing as expected. If a campaign exceeds one of your alert thresholds, you'll receive a notification outside of Iterable prompting you to sign in and troubleshoot the issue.

# In this article

# Required permissions

To create and manage alerts for your project, you'll need the Manage Project Settings permission.

To turn alerts on/off for a campaign, you'll need the Draft Campaigns permission.

# Setting up alerts for your project

To set up your project's alerts, click the gear icon and select Alerts in the Settings menu.

This opens the Alerts page, where you can create and edit your project's alerts.

You can create alerts for all messaging channels (Email, Push, SMS, In-App, and Web Push) for both blast and triggered campaigns. Alerts can notify you when a campaign has a high bounce rate or unsubscribe rate, a low click rate or clicks, a low open rate or opens, or low sends. (To learn more about how these metrics are calculated, see Metric Definitions.)

# Create an alert

To create an alert, check the box next to the performance metric you want to monitor. Then, enter a value and time frame.

# Choose a destination

Next, set up a webhook to connect Iterable to your alert destination. On the Alerts page, scroll down to the Alert Destination section and click Add Webhook.

Right now, we support Slack as an alert destination, and we'll be adding support for additional destinations in the future.

Give your webhook a name (for example, "Slack Webhook") and choose an authentication option if desired. Leave the Endpoint URL blank for now (you'll fill this in later after you generate a web request URL in Slack).

# Create a Slack workflow

You can set up a Slack workflow to receive performance alert notifications about your campaigns without having to sign in to Iterable. Here's how:

1. Open Slack and click More > Automations.

   

2. Click Create a Workflow.

   

3. Select Start from Scratch > From a Webhook.

   

4. Click Set Up Variables, and add variables for all the information you want to see in the notifications you receive about underperforming campaigns. For example, you might want to know the campaign name, ID, medium, type, and state; the template ID; the metric that triggered the alert; and the link to the campaign's analytics page.

   

   For each variable you set up, add a key and a data type. The key is the name of your variable, and the data type is the kind of data that Slack will populate for the variable in each notification you receive. You can choose from the following variables:

   • Key: campaignName, Data Type: text
   • Key: campaignId, Data Type: text
   • Key: campaignMedium, Data Type: text
   • Key: campaignType, Data Type: text
   • Key: campaignState, Data Type: text
   • Key: templateId, Data Type: text
   • Key: metricAlertName, Data Type: text
   • Key: campaignAnalyticsLink, Data Type: text
   • Key: metricAlertText, Data Type: text

   

   When you're finished setting up your desired variables, click Continue.

5. Under Steps, click Messages > Send a Message to a Channel.

   

6. Select the Slack channel where you want to receive messages about campaign alerts.

7. Add the text of the message you want to receive in Slack when a campaign alert is triggered in Iterable. You can type text and emojis and insert the variables you set up earlier — at send time, Slack will replace each variable with the relevant information for the affected campaign. Your alert message might look something like this:

   

8. Scroll down to the Preview section to see what your alert message will look like in Slack. When you're happy with your message, click Save.

9. When you're finished setting up the workflow, click Publish.

10. Open your published workflow, and click the pencil icon next to Starts with a Webhook. Scroll down to the Web Request URL section and click Copy Link.

    

11. In Iterable, go to Settings > Alerts, and scroll down to the Alert Destination section.

12. Click the three dots next to your Slack webhook, and click Edit.

13. Under Endpoint URL, paste the web request URL you copied in Slack, and click Save Changes.

    

14. The next time an alert is triggered for one of your campaigns, you should receive a message in your selected Slack channel.

    

To learn more about setting up workflows in Slack, see Slack's support article Create More Advanced Workflows Using Webhooks.

# Enabling and disabling alerts for a campaign

After you set up alerts for your project, any new campaigns you and your team members create automatically have alerts enabled. But you can turn alerts on or off for individual campaigns during the campaign setup process.

# Stand-alone campaigns

To enable or disable alerts for a stand-alone campaign, go to the Campaigns page and create or edit a campaign. In the Delivery section, switch the Alerts toggle on or off as needed. Save your changes, and schedule or send the campaign when you're ready.

You can also disable alerts for a campaign from the Campaigns page. Click the three dots, and select Disable alerts.

# Journey campaigns

To enable or disable alerts for a campaign that's part of a journey, open the journey in Studio and add or edit the message tile for the campaign you're interested in. In the Delivery section of the tile settings menu, check or uncheck the Alerts box as needed. Click Save Campaign or Update Campaign to apply your changes. When you're ready, save and publish the journey to activate the campaign and start sending it to users who pass through the tile.

# Viewing campaign alerts

You can check which campaigns have alerts enabled at a glance on the Campaigns page. Campaigns that have alerts enabled are indicated with a bell icon.

When a campaign has had an alert within the last 24 hours, a purple alert icon appears in the Status column.

To see a list of recent alerts for a campaign, click the three dots and select View alerts.

# Editing your project's alerts

You can make changes to your project's alerts settings at any time. Turn an alert on or off, or adjust the value or time frame, then click Save.

When you edit an alert for triggered campaigns, Iterable uses the new alert settings for all campaigns that haven't been sent yet. For example, if you create an alert that notifies you of a <10% click rate after 24 hours and then change the click rate percentage to <5% before Campaign 1 has been sent, you'll only be notified if Campaign 1's click rate is less than 5% 24 hours after it was sent. If you edit the alert after Campaign 1 has started sending, you'll be notified if its click rate is less than 10% after 24 hours.

# How alerts work

Alerts work slightly differently for blast campaigns and triggered campaigns. It's important to understand how Iterable evaluates your configured performance thresholds for blast and triggered campaigns so you know when and how often you can expect to receive performance alert notifications.

# Blast campaigns

After you send a blast campaign, your specified performance thresholds are evaluated once according to the time frame you've set up for each alert. Once a blast campaign has been sent and you've received notifications for any alerts that occurred, you won't receive any more performance alerts for that campaign.

# Example

Configured alert: Open rate < 10% one hour after send time

Date	Time	Campaign Performance Status	Alert Notifications
June 15	9:00 AM	Campaign sent	None
June 15	10:00 AM	Open rate = 7%	1 notification

# Triggered campaigns

With triggered campaigns, your specified performance thresholds are continuously monitored for as long as the campaign is activated. Performance alert thresholds for triggered campaigns are evaluated within a 24-hour window, according to the cadence determined by the time frame you've specified for each alert. This means you could receive more than one notification for the same alert if it occurs more than once during a 24-hour period.

# Example

Configured alert: Open rate < 80% within the last 12 hours

Date	Time	Campaign Performance Status	Alert Notifications
June 15	9:00 AM	Campaign activated	No notification
June 15	9:00 PM	Open rate = 90%	No notification
June 16	9:00 AM	Open rate = 75%	1 notification
June 16	9:00 PM	Open rate = 60%	2 notifications (1 new, 1 existing alert from 9:00 AM)
June 17	9:00 AM	Open rate = 75%	1 notification
June 17	9:00 PM	Open rate = 70%	2 notifications (1 new, 1 existing alert from 9:00 AM)
June 18	9:00 AM	Open rate = 70%	1 notification
June 18	9:00 PM	Open rate = 90%	1 notification (existing alert from 9:00 AM, no new alert)

# Current feature limitations

• You can only turn alerts on for a campaign if project alerts are set up for that message type/channel.
• Project alerts apply to all campaigns for which alerts are enabled — you can't apply specific alerts to a specific campaign.
• You can only receive alert notifications via webhooks, not via email or Iterable's notification center.
• Campaign performance alerts only show specific alert values, not performance trends (a percentage up or down).

# Frequently asked questions

# Do I need to configure a project-level alert before I can enable it for my campaign?

Yes. Right now, any alerts you wish to apply to a campaign must be set up on your project's Alerts page.

# Are alerts automatically enabled for campaigns I've already created?

No, only newly created campaigns. However, you can open any campaigns you created prior to when this feature was released and manually turn on alerts in the Delivery section.

# Will I be able to receive alert notifications by email in the future?

Yes, future versions of this feature will support email notifications.

# Can I set up alerts for conversions or events?

Not at this time.

# Want to learn more?

For more information about some of the topics in this article, check out this Iterable Academy course. Iterable Academy is open to everyone — you don't need to be an Iterable customer!

• Product Bite: Campaign Performance Alerts