Build your first campaign, step by step

This guide walks you through the campaign editor, from naming your campaign to launching it. You can save it as a draft at any point and come back to it later.

Before you start

• Your LinkedIn account is connected to Swimlane. Every campaign action is performed from it.
• The people you want to reach are in a list. A list is optional: without one, the campaign targets all your contacts.
• Recommended: set your office hours (see Set your virtual office hours) and check your ceilings (see Daily limits and Safe Mode).
• Optional: prepare message templates you want to reuse (see Create and use message templates).

Steps

1. Open the campaign editor

1. Click Campaigns in the left navigation.
2. Click New Campaign, then Outbound Campaign. If you don't have any campaign yet, click + Create Outbound Campaign instead.

The editor opens as its own page. Its left column lists four screens, Campaign, Audience, Flow Builder and Review. On a large screen it also shows a Pipeline Preview of the columns your campaign board will have. The header shows the campaign's name, its status and the Save draft button.

2. Campaign

1. Type a Name. Next stays greyed out until you do.
2. Add a Description if you want to note the goal.
3. Leave Only new arrivals off to enroll everyone already in your list, or turn it on to enroll only the contacts added to the list from now on.
4. Click Next.

3. Audience

1. Under List, click Select a list... and choose your list. Leave it empty to target all contacts.
2. Optional: turn on ICP match, describe your Ideal customer profile and pick a Match strength.
3. Optional: turn on Tags (all required) and click the tags a contact must carry, or turn on Headline keyword and type a word.
4. Once a list or a filter is set, a count of matching contacts appears at the bottom. Click Next.

See Choose and filter your campaign's audience for the details of each filter.

4. Flow Builder

1. The Start your sequence panel opens by itself. Pick your first step under Conditions, LinkedIn actions or App actions.
2. The step's settings open on the right (at the bottom on a phone). Set Delay before this step, in days, and fill in its fields, for example the Connection Note and Wait for acceptance of a Connection Request, or the Message of a Send Message step.
3. To add the next step, click the small + on the line under a card, then choose a step in the Add step panel. A condition has two outlets, Yes and No, and a connection request has Accepted and Not accepted: use the + under each outlet to build each branch.
4. Click any card to edit it. To remove a step, click the bin icon at the top of its settings. Every step below it on that branch is removed too.
5. Use the buttons at the bottom left of the canvas to zoom in, zoom out or fit the whole flow on screen.
6. Click Next. It becomes available once the flow has at least one step.

5. Review and launch

1. Check Campaign Details (name, description and list, which reads All contacts if you didn't pick one), the Pipeline View Preview and the Flow Summary.
2. Click Launch Campaign.

You return to the Campaigns page. Your campaign shows Enrolling… while Swimlane adds the first contacts, then Active.

Save a draft and come back later

• Click Save draft at the top right, on any screen. The campaign is saved with its audience and its steps, and its status reads Draft. A campaign without a name yet is saved as Untitled campaign.
• Under the name, Unsaved changes means something changed since the last save, and All changes saved means nothing is waiting.
• If you leave the editor with unsaved changes, Swimlane asks you to confirm first.
• A draft enrolls nobody and sends nothing. To pick it up again, open Campaigns and click Continue setup on its card, or Edit in its menu.

Good to know

• Back returns to the previous screen without losing what you entered, and you can jump to any available screen from the left column.
• When you insert a step on a line in the middle of the flow, it goes between the two cards. If that step is a condition or a connection request, the steps that followed move onto its Yes or Accepted branch, and the other branch starts empty.
• Under every message field, the Variables buttons insert {{firstName}}, {{lastName}}, {{fullName}}, {{company}}, {{title}}, {{headline}} and {{location}} where your cursor is.
• Steps are locked after launch. You can still change the name, description, Only new arrivals and audience from Edit, then Save changes, but not the steps. If you may want to reword a message later, choose a saved template in Template (optional) and don't edit the text below it: the campaign uses the template's current text each time it sends.
• With ICP match on, nobody is enrolled until every contact of the source has been rated against your description. The Enrolling… badge stays on meanwhile.
• Once launched, follow the campaign from its card and its board: see Read your campaign results.

Troubleshooting

• Next is greyed out. On Campaign, type a name. On Flow Builder, add at least one step.
• The panel on the right won't close on an empty flow. That's expected: pick a first step, and the panel closes.
• The campaign shows Draft. It was saved but not launched. Click Continue setup on its card, go to Review and click Launch Campaign.