Cloze Campaigns Best Practices

The Cloze Campaigns feature is included as part of the Cloze Business Platinum Plan.

Below you will find tips on how to create, test, and start your campaigns. We also include some best practices for staying out of trouble.

Creating a New Campaign

You can create a new Campaign in the Cloze Library.

If you are part of a team, Campaigns can be created by your team leader or an administrator and then published when ready. Individual team members can also create their own Campaigns and save them in their own Library.

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to create a new Campaign with Cloze.

Triggering a Campaign to start

Campaigns can be triggered to start in several ways.

The campaign is linked to a Next Step:

When a contact enters the Next Step the campaign automatically starts (e.g. Contact is put in the “Not ready to buy yet – Nurture” step)

The campaign is linked to an anniversary date field:

When the anniversary reminder triggers the campaign begins (e.g. Reminder is set for 3 months before “Contract Signed” anniversary)

The campaign is linked to a lead source:

When a lead arrives from that lead source the campaign begins (e.g. lead arrives from Zillow)

Here are additional details on how Campaigns start and instructions on how to link a Campaign to each of the above items.

Testing campaigns

Creating Test Data

The easiest path is to create a Gmail account you can run tests against as a “fake” client. Do not use existing contacts (people you know like friends and family) or your own email accounts.

With a test Gmail account (e.g. mynametest@gmail.com), you can then create multiple test contacts:

sallysmithtester+test1@gmail.com
sallysmithtester+test2@gmail.com

With Gmail, everything after the plus is ignored – but each one can be treated as a unique contact in Cloze – so you can have multiple fake client contacts with which you can test.

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to manually create a new contact in Cloze.

For testing purposes, each contact should have a unique email address. For example:

Sally Test 1 - sallysmithtester+test1@gmail.com
Sally Test 2 - sallysmithtester+test2@gmail.com
Dave Test 3 - davesmithtester+test3@gmail.com
Dave Test 4 - davesmithtester+test4@gmail.com

Once these contacts have been created in Cloze you can then use them for testing your Campaign.

Manually Triggering Campaigns

In the Template Library, you can manually start any campaign using the gears icon. Use this option to test your campaign.

Tap on the gears icon.
Search to add a person.
Tap on the Start button.

Accelerating Campaigns

You can accelerate campaigns from Active Campaigns by choosing “Resume”, “Run”, or “Skip” (depending on the situation).

Tap on Active Campaigns to expand the section.
Tap on the campaign.
Tap on Start Now.

Tap to see a menu of Campaign options:

Resume Campaign
Pause Campaign
Stop Campaign
Skip Current Step
View Campaign

Tap on Resume Campaign to accelerate the Campaign if it is waiting.

Staying out of trouble

As with any form of automation, there is a lot of value, but also lots of ways to get into trouble (e.g. sending too often).

Sending too often

Campaigns will never repeat the same step more than once a day (unless you manually override) – so you don’t spam your clients.

BUT, if you have multiple sends in a row in a campaign, you can still spam them.

Always pause between sends.

IMPORTANT: Make sure to have a way for clients to opt-out of your automated campaigns

Pro Tip: Take advantage of the built-in Do Not Contact custom field, and Smart Links.

Running Campaigns unexpectedly for Next Steps

Campaigns tied to Next Steps are a double-edged sword

Good: They automatically start when a contact gets set to that Next Step
Bad: They automatically start when a contact gets set to that Next Step

Pro Tip: The first Next Step for a Stage & Segment is the default Next Step

If you want a campaign to always be triggered for that Stage & Segment, attach it to the first Next Step and enable process mode.
If you don’t, attach it to a Next Step that needs to be manually selected.

Stop a Campaign that started by accident

Campaigns have a built-in time delay before they start which gives you a chance to stop the Campaign before it does anything.

Or you can change the Stage, Segment, or Next Step if appropriate and this will also stop the Campaign.

Pro Tip: You can turn off the delay – but you shouldn’t. Set it to 1 minute to give at least a bit of recovery time.

Surprising other team members

If someone else created it, the first time a campaign tries to send on your behalf Cloze will prompt you to approve.

You’ll never be surprised by a campaign written by someone else on your team.

Pro Tip: You can turn this off – but you shouldn’t unless you have explicit approval from your everyone that it’s OK.