Recurring Campaigns allow organizations to automate outreach to evolving patient populations, supporting a “set it and forget it” message delivery workflow to patient cohorts. Examples of common use cases for Recurring Campaigns include:

• Sending a scheduling flow to patients who are newly due for a particular type of screening

• Sending instructions to patients who received a colorectal screening kit

• Sending follow-up instructions and education to patients who have been discharged from the Emergency Department in the last 24 hours. 

What is Required to Support Recurring Campaigns?

Patients to be contacted (identified by patient IDs or MRNs) are queried in your EMR or your organization’s population health tool vendor, exported into a .CSV file, and dropped into a shared SFTP folder for patient outreach. At a set cadence, Artera automatically checks the file path for new patient lists and sends the Recurring Campaign to those patients. To use Recurring Campaigns, your Enterprise must have an SFTP integrated with Artera. 

For information on how to configure a shared SFTP folder, please connect with your Artera Representative.

How Recurring Campaigns Work

Enterprise Users will create a Recurring Campaign in Artera. Once a name is entered for the Recurring Campaign, an External ID will auto-generate. This External ID must be used as the name of the subfolder within the SFTP site. 
NOTE: It is essential that the subfolder name exactly matches the External ID as any Patient List .CSV files placed in subfolders with incorrect names will not be processed by Artera.

Once the Recurring Campaign is created in Artera, the EMR or vendor will send patient list .CSV files directly to the shared SFTP site subfolder. Artera polls the SFTP site at a pre-determined cadence. If a new .CSV file is detected, a Campaign is created and messages are sent to patients included in the patient list.

How to Configure Recurring Campaigns

Once your SFTP folder(s) have been configured by Artera, create a Recurring Campaign:

1. In the Navigation Bar, select Campaigns > Recurring Campaigns
2. Select Create Recurring Campaign in the upper-right corner of the screen
3. Enter the Recurring Campaign Details:
   1. Recurring Campaign Name: This name is not patient-facing and serves as the Recurring Campaign’s title.
   2. Practice: Select the Practice associated with this Recurring Campaign.
   3. Line: Select the line to associate with this Recurring Campaign. The line chosen in this step is where inbound patient responses to the campaign will be routed to.
   4. Category: Select a Recurring Campaign category that best matches the Recurring Campaign’s purpose. Click here for a detailed description of each category.
4. The Audience section is auto-completed by Artera. It indicates the “Audience Source” for the Recurring Campaign (where the Recurring Campaign will pull your patient lists from) and includes the Recurring Campaign’s External ID.
   
5. Create your Campaign Message for each of the desired delivery options (text, call, email). To increase deliverability, we recommend building messages for text and call. You can choose to craft a message or use a Quick Response.
   
6. Optional:
   1. Include a Satisfaction Form with your Recurring Campaign by selecting the Form from the Attach Form drop-down menu. Click here to learn about creating an Artera Form.
      
   2. Include an attachment with your Recurring Campaign by dragging and dropping a file into the “Attach File” box or selecting Choose File. Click here to learn about attachment requirements.
      
7. Next, determine when the Recurring Campaign should be sent. NOTE: Recurring Campaigns will begin sending automatically when an audience file (patient list) is added to your SFTP folder, so long as the Recurring Campaign is on and the Recurring Campaign’s scheduling criteria is met.
   
   1. Send only between the hours of: Depending on the volume and cadence of messages you are looking to send, a Campaign may send over several days. Use these delivery time slots to indicate which hours of the day to send the Campaign message. For Campaigns where you want patients to engage with you (e.g. text or call to schedule a visit), ensure the volume of responses is manageable for your team. For example, if you have a staggered start and your full staff is only on shift from 10:00 AM-3:00 PM, consider setting delivery times based on staff availability. 
      NOTE: Campaigns respect TCPA Hours, and therefore, can only be set to send between 8:00 AM - 9:00 PM in the Practice's timezone. If the Recurring Campaign's daily start and end times fall outside TCPA mandated hours, the following error message will appear:
   2. Send on business days only: Use this checkbox to indicate whether this Recurring Campaign should only be sent on Business Days. Business Days are determined by the Practice’s Practice and Line hours. Any day that the Practice/Line is open for any duration of time counts as a Business Day in Artera. 
      NOTE: If a Recurring Campaign’s message asks that the patient engage back with staff, we recommend enabling this setting. This ensures that someone will be available to respond to the patient quickly.
   3. Messages to send per hour: Set how many messages should be sent to patients per hour. This rate can be set using increments of 12 messages per hour, with a maximum rate of 2,496 messages per hour. Click and drag the slider to change the speed of message delivery; you will notice the text below the slider will update with the chosen rate.
      NOTE: For Recurring Campaigns where you anticipate a large number of inbound patient responses, consider reducing the Send Rate. This ensures there is enough staff to engage with the inbound patient messages.
8. Once all the required information has been entered, select Create Recurring Campaign in the upper-right corner of the screen:
   

Recurring Campaigns Details Page

Once the Recurring Campaign is created, review the details of the Recurring Campaign.This provides users with the opportunity to modify a Recurring Campaign prior to turning it on.

The following information is available on the Recurring Campaign Details page:

1. Recurring Campaign Name and Status: In the top-left corner of the page is the name of the Campaign along with its current status, which is either “on” or “off.”

2. Message: This displays a preview of the message that will be delivered to patients when the campaign runs. This also indicates whether the campaign is set up to go out as a text, call, and/or email to patients, along with which languages the campaign will be translated.

3. Audience: This provides the details of the audience (patients) who will be sent this message. 

4. Method: This displays whether or not the Recurring Campaign will be sent as a Secure or Unsecure message. This will also display the Form attached to the Recurring Campaign, if applicable. Otherwise, the Form Attached header will display as “None.” Any attachments included in the Recurring Campaign will display in this section as well.

5. Sending History: This will show the last five campaigns that were created and sent through this Recurring Campaign.

6. Schedule: This displays the information pertaining to the start date and time of the Recurring Campaign, which will always be the date and time that an audience file is added to the Recurring Campaign’s SFTP folder. It also includes the Recurring Campaign’s daily start and end times, Business Days only selection, and how many messages will be sent per hour. 

7. Details: This displays the line selected to route inbound patient responses, the category associated with the Recurring Campaign, and the Practice for which the Recurring Campaign was created.

From the Recurring Campaign's detail page, you can choose to start the Recurring Campaign, if it is currently off, by selecting Start Campaign. You can also use the Actions (...) menu to edit the Recurring Campaign.

Recurring Campaigns Status

If a Recurring Campaign’s status is set to on, the Recurring Campaign will create a campaign when a new patient list .CSV file is added to the SFTP. This will send the message automatically to patients, so long as the Recurring Campaign’s “Send Hours” are met. If it is outside of the Recurring Campaign’s scheduled “Send Hours”, the campaign will be placed in a queued status and sent as soon as the “Send Hours” of the Recurring Campaign are met.  

If a Recurring Campaign’s status is set to off, the Recurring Campaign will create a campaign when a new patient list .CSV file is added to the SFTP, but the campaign will be in a pending status. This status is helpful for testing or troubleshooting. Artera will not send the message to patients until an Enterprise User updates the Recurring Campaign’s status to on. 

FAQs

Which User Types can create Recurring Campaigns?

Only Enterprise Users can create Recurring Campaigns. 

Is there reporting available on Recurring Campaigns?

The Campaigns Effectiveness Dashboard, available to Artera Analytics Plus customers, includes your Recurring Campaigns data.

Is there a Recurring Campaigns File Extract template?

Similar to Campaigns, you will need to provide a .CSV file with the list of patient MRNs in a single column with no headers or additional text. This file will need to be sent to the SFTP site subfolder that corresponds with the Recurring Campaign’s External ID. See an example of a sample file below: