Rotate several banners

A rotation shares several campaign banners out across the same email. Each email carries one banner from the rotation, and the rotation decides which. Use it to run several products, offers or messages at once on the same signatures.

Each banner in a rotation stays a campaign of its own, with its own design, link, clicks and report. The rotation adds the sharing, and a report of how the email was shared.

Create a rotation

1. Create the campaigns whose banners you want to rotate, if you have not already. See Create a banner campaign.
2. Go to Signatures > Campaigns (open it) and select New rotation.
3. Fill in the details:
   • Rotation name, for example "Autumn offers".
   • Target rules: the signature rules whose email the rotation shares out. With none ticked the list reads None and the rotation takes part in no signature, so tick at least one.
   • Split: how the banners are shared between emails. See below.
   • Start and End, the dates the rotation runs, in your own time zone. Leave the end blank for no end date.
   • Status: Draft to set it up first, or Scheduled to start on its start date.
   • When other campaigns also apply: Show alongside them, the default, or Show alone to keep any other banner off an email carrying one of the rotation's. Its banners take this setting rather than their own. See Run several campaigns on one email.
4. Under Banners, tick the campaigns whose banners the rotation shares out. Each starts with a weight of 1. Only campaigns that can join a rotation are listed.
5. Select Create rotation. To add a banner later, choose a campaign under Banners and select Add.
6. Set the status to Active, or let a scheduled rotation start on its own, and select Save.

A campaign running an A/B test cannot be added to a rotation, and a campaign in a rotation cannot start one. A rotation already shares email between banners, and weighting one banner of a test against the other would make the test's result meaningless. To test two versions of a banner, see A/B test two banners.

A rotation shares banners under the signature, so a campaign placed above the message cannot be added to one either, and a campaign in a rotation stays under the signature. Each campaign in a rotation keeps its own Which messages choice: on a reply, the rotation shares only the banners set to go on one. See "Where it goes" in Create a banner campaign.

How the banners are shared

By default every banner gets an equal share. To give one more, raise its Weight: weights are whole numbers from 1 to 10, so a banner with a weight of 2 beside two banners with a weight of 1 goes out in half the email. Select Save after changing a weight. Share now shows each banner's share with the current weights.

The Split decides who sees which banner. It can be chosen until the rotation first goes live, and is then fixed.

A banner that is paused, ended, or locked because its link is listed as unsafe drops out of the share, and the others share the email between them until it is fixed. A paused banner rejoins when you resume it.

Let people choose their own banner

You can let the people a rotation reaches pick one of its banners as their own, for example a sales team choosing the product they talk about most. The banners they may choose are the rotation's allowed set.

1. Open the rotation and, under Banners, tick Allowed in the People may choose column for each banner people may choose.
2. Select Save. The Banners heading then shows People choose from and the number of banners ticked.

People choose in the Footer365 pane in Outlook. Under their signatures, a My banner box shows the image and campaign name of each banner they may choose, from every active rotation aimed at one of the signature rules that give them a signature. Use this banner makes one theirs, a star marks My banner, and Let my organisation choose clears their choice. See Deploy the Outlook add-in.

How a person's choice is used:

• On every email of theirs the rotation reaches, the rotation puts on their banner instead of picking one by weight. This holds in the Outlook add-in, on mail signed as it leaves Microsoft 365, and in Test a rule, which names the banner as chosen by the person.
• Only while the banner is still ticked and sharing now. If it is paused, ended, locked, taken out of the allowed set or out of the rotation, or the rotation stops reaching the person, the rotation picks by weight again, so their email always carries a banner. The pane tells them their banner is no longer one they can choose.
• Everyone who has not chosen, and every banner that is not ticked, is shared by weight as before. With no banner ticked, nobody chooses and nothing changes.
• The People may choose column shows how many people chose each banner. Choosing, changing and clearing a banner are each recorded in the audit log, naming the person and the campaign, and so is a change to which banners are allowed.

A person's choice is kept with their default signatures, so it is part of your organisation's data export, deleted with your account, and deleted when they leave your directory. Clear my defaults in the pane clears their default signatures but not their banner.

Dates and rules while a campaign is in a rotation

While a campaign is in a rotation, the rotation's target rules and dates decide when and to whom its banner goes out. The campaign's own target rules and dates are not used, and nor are its own recipients, exceptions and schedule. On the Campaigns list, such a campaign shows a rotation icon, named In rotation when you hover over it, and its target rules read Set by the rotation. Its own page names its rotations, and its Target rules, Start and End cannot be changed there until it leaves every rotation, as its A/B test cannot.

A campaign can be in more than one rotation, with its own weight in each. A campaign in any rotation never goes out on its own. When it is removed from its last rotation, it goes out on its own target rules and dates again.

Turn a rotation on, pause it or end it

Each row of the Rotations list on the Campaigns page works as a campaign's row does: a button for the change its status calls for, and a ... menu for the rest:

• Activate turns a draft or scheduled rotation on now, whatever its start date. Resume turns a paused one back on.
• Pause stops an active rotation's banners for now. None of them goes out through it, or on its own, until it is resumed.
• End, in the ... menu, ends an active or paused rotation, after you confirm in the End Rotation dialog. See below.
• Duplicate, in the ... menu, makes a draft copy, named in the Duplicate Rotation dialog under Name of the copy. The copy has the same target rules, split, end date and banners with their weights. A banner that has ended or is running an A/B test is left out, and the message after the copy is made names any that were. The copy opens for you to check before you turn it on.
• Delete, in the ... menu, removes the rotation after you confirm in the Delete Rotation dialog. Its campaigns, their clicks and their reports are kept. A campaign that is in no other rotation goes out on its own target rules and dates again, so pause or end any you do not want sent on their own first.

Each item in the ... menu says what it does under its name. You can also change the status on the rotation's own page.

End a rotation

Select End on the Campaigns list, or set the status to Ended and select Save, or let the rotation reach its end date. Its banners stop going out with the rotation's email, and every campaign in it that is in no other active or scheduled rotation is ended with it, so it does not start going out on its own. A campaign still in another rotation keeps going out through that one. Each campaign keeps its clicks and its report, and the campaigns ended are named in the audit log entry for the rotation.

Which wins: a rotation or a single campaign

When more than one rotation or campaign reaches the same email:

• Only a rotation or campaign aimed at the email's signature rule takes part. One with no rule ticked takes part in none.
• They are taken in the Running order on the Campaigns page, where a rotation takes one place. Drag a row to change it. A new rotation joins the top of the order.
• An email carries as many banners as Banners per message allows, one by default.

If a rotation has no banner sharing at that moment, because every one is paused or locked, the next in the order is used instead. When two rotations that share a banner are both on one email, the second picks among the banners the first does not share, so an email never carries the same banner twice. See Run several campaigns on one email.

Remove a banner

Select Remove beside the banner and confirm with Remove in the Remove from rotation dialog. Its banner stops going out with the rotation's email. The campaign itself, its clicks and its report are kept.

Banner size

Every banner in a rotation goes out on its own, so every banner has to fit on its own. The Size column under Banners shows how many characters each banner adds to a signature written by the Outlook add-in, the same figure as the banner part of the campaign editor's size meter, and below it the whole signature against Outlook's 30,000 characters in the template it comes out longest in. It is amber when the banner cannot be sent as designed. A banner has no limit of its own: only the whole signature has to fit. How these banners will be sent names any banner that cannot be sent as designed in a signature written by the Outlook add-in, and says what happens to it instead: it is sent as a single image, or linked to if even that does not fit, exactly as a campaign on its own would be. It measures each banner exactly as the campaign editor's size meter does: built into every published template the rotation reaches, by the add-in's own code, for the longest details in your directory. It names the banner whose signature comes out longest, the template it is longest in, and how many of Outlook's 30,000 characters it takes. When no published template the rotation reaches has a Campaign element, each banner is measured on its own, in a signature holding nothing else, and the Size column says "on its own": every template the banners are later placed in adds its own length to that. Mail signed as it leaves your organisation always carries each banner as designed. See How the campaign banner is sent.

How the mail was shared

How the mail was shared shows, for each banner, the messages the rotation chose it for, its clicks and its click-through rate, with the totals above.

• Planned share is the share with today's weights, among the banners sharing now.
• Actual share covers the whole period, so a banner paused part way through shows less than planned.

These figures count only email this rotation chose. The totals also include email that carried a banner since removed from the rotation, and the page says how much. Each banner's own report, behind Report, still counts all of its email, including any sent through another rotation or on its own. Messages are counted from the record of each send, which is kept for your account's retention period. Clicks by link scanners at the recipient's organisation are left out.

Good to know

• Creating a rotation, changing it, turning it on, pausing, ending, copying or deleting it, and adding or removing a banner are each recorded in the audit log.
• The Outlook add-in picks the banner while the email is being written, and the template editor's preview shows one of the rotation's banners and says so. Its Campaign list in Preview shows each of the others in turn, and the campaign editor's Banner list in Preview shows the other banners in the rotation beside the one you are editing, each with the Outlook Add-In size measured again.
• Viewing a rotation needs the View signatures permission. Changing one needs Manage signatures.

Related

• Schedule and target a campaign
• A/B test two banners
• Read the campaign report