There are a number of steps you need to go through when you set up a campaign to ensure it targets the players you want at the right time and presents them with the correct actions. You can also configure sequences of actions, a conversion event and even looping campaigns.

The steps required to set up a campaign are:

  • Give the campaign a Name and Description
  • Choose a Decision Point where you will make the Engage request from your game.
  • Define the Target Player Segment that will be eligible for this campaign
  • Specify a Timescale for the campaign to run.
  • Determine if this is a regular Campaign or A/B Test
  • Add at least one Campaign Action
  • Configure your Campaign Settings
  • Setup your Campaign Actions
  • Configure a Conversion Event
  • Save, Confirm & Start your test.

Creating a decision point campaign

To create a new campaign:

  1. In the Campaign Management page, select Create Campaign.
  2. Choose the type of campaign you want to create.

Follow the steps in the sections below to set up your decision point campaign.

Campaign name and description

Give your campaign a name and description.

Campaign priority

The priority value determines which campaign a user is entered into when they’re eligible for multiple campaigns. A higher value here means a higher priority; if a player is eligible for multiple campaigns they’re entered into the campaign with the highest priority value.

Decision point

A decision point is a mark in your game where you make a request to the deltaDNA Engage system to determine if you can take any actions for the player. There’ll be a finite number of feasible decision points in your game , and you’ll need to plan what points are most relevant to your game. Examples of decision points might be firstRun, gameOver, storeEntered, bigLoss. You can define the decision points for your game and specify any parameters to send with them in the Decision Point Management tool.

Choose which decision point to use when making requests from your game to check this campaign.

Select Add Criteria to specify the values of any parameters sent in your Engage request that should be used as qualification conditions.

For example, to make an Engage request when players fail a mission, pass a missionID or missionName parameter with the request, so you could apply different actions specific missions.

Target player segment

Specify which players are eligible for your campaign.

Specify which players are eligible for your campaign.

Your campaign can be restricted to “New Players” that start playing on or after the day that the campaign starts. Or you can specify one or more segments that the player must be a member of, which have been previously defined. Or you can combine both of these options.

Note: For decision point campaigns, when users exit a segment they are still eligible for the campaign and continue to experience the content.

Campaign timescale

Set the start date and end date if you want your campaign to run at a particular time. By default, the campaign starts immediately and runs until you pause or delete it.

Important: Campaign timescale dates and times run in UTC, but the date time selectors in this interface will reflect your local time. Remember to offset any time settings if needed.

The player progress reset control lets players become eligible for the campaign again in future, even if they have already converted on this campaign.

A/B testing

Your campaign can run as an A/B test, with multiple player cohorts each receiving their own actions, or as a campaign where everybody receives the same actions.

Adding campaign actions

Assign actions to your campaign. If the campaign is set up as an A/B test, you can assign different actions to each player variant. You can assign multiple actions to each variant and set up sequential chains of actions.

Click Add (+) on the next available empty action to specify a new action.

Settings

The campaign settings panel is displayed when you add your first action. You can define if your campaign is set to repeat or not. Repeating campaigns will continue to respond to a player matching the selection criteria until the campaign expires, is disabled, or the player records a conversion event. A non-repeating campaign only ever responds with a message to a qualifying player once.

Note: When the action is set to send a parameter, the parameter is returned each time the player hits the decision point and qualifies for that action within the campaign.

You can also define a cool down period between repeats.

If your campaign is configured as an A/B test, the campaign settings panel displays additional tabs to create and name the player variant cohorts. An A/B test contains at least two, equally-sized player variants. You can add as many variants as you want and the platform distributes players evenly between them. Variant A is always a control group. Give each player variant a descriptive name. Click Add (+) to add the variants.

Campaign actions

Define what action to take in the campaign. You can define separate actions for each player variant. To switch between the actions for each variant, select the player variant tabs in the Campaign Settings panel.

Variant A, the control group, will take no action.

Variant B, the Red Group, will be presented an action called “Red Pill”.

Variant C, the Blue Group, will be presented with an action called “Blue Pill”.

You can continue to add additional actions; the player will work through them in sequence each time they meet the campaign conditions. The final state switch lets you end a campaign for a particular user even if they haven’t sent a conversion event. This would let them proceed to the next campaign in your list if there are multiple prioritized campaigns.

Conversion event

A conversion event to measure the relative success of your player variants can be based on any event that you send and can have parameter values added as additional criteria.


When a player has converted, they’re no longer targeted by the campaign. The campaign is considered a success and the player will move on, possibly to a new campaign.

Save, confirm and start

When you’ve configured your campaign, save it and finally start it.

At the bottom of the details page of the wizard, click Next . This will navigate you to the confirmation page where you’ll be able to publish your campaign from.

 

Tip: You can save a campaign and return to it later to make changes. This is useful if you need to confirm some of the settings or if multiple people are working on the configuration. However, the campaign will not run until you select start.

If multiple people are working on the configuration you can see any changes made in the campaign audit log.

Campaign cloning

You can clone decision point campaigns from a game’s DEV to LIVE environment, individually or several at a time.

Important: This feature is only available via the legacy Decision Point Campaign page and is not available for event-triggered campaigns. This is available at the URL: /[account]/[application]/[environment]/engagements

In the Decision Point Campaign Management page, select the decision point campaigns you want to clone and select Clone.

You can edit various parts of each campaign with the cloning wizard. This ensures there are no incompatibilities in any of the newly cloned components.

The cloning process creates new actions in the Live environment when required, or you can choose an existing action if you prefer.

To confirm your choices and clone the campaigns, select Clone in the confirmation screen. If you’re cloning a lot of campaigns, a progress bar is displayed to show your progress.

After cloning, your new campaigns are displayed in the LIVE environment, where you can still edit them before launching them.