A campaign lifecycle connects planning, data, content, governance, activation, monitoring, and improvement. Elaine supports one-time and continuously running automations as well as single-channel and multi-channel campaign designs, so the exact path depends on the campaign type and configured operating model.
Lifecycle phases
| Phase | Typical work in Elaine |
|---|---|
| Plan | Define the objective, accountable owner, audience, channels, timing, constraints, success criteria, and stop conditions. |
| Prepare | Connect contact data, select channel-specific templates, create content, configure personalization and campaign logic, and define exclusions. In a multi-channel campaign, also define how actions and responses coordinate across channels. |
| Test and approve | Preview representative variants, test data integration and channel output, resolve findings, and complete the required approval workflow. |
| Activate | Schedule, manually release, event-trigger, or continuously operate the campaign according to its design. |
| Monitor | Observe processing, delivery, interaction, errors, and business outcomes while applying controlled operational actions. |
| Optimize or retire | Use results to improve audiences, content, timing, channels, or logic, or end the campaign through a governed process. |
Approval workflows
Approval is more than a final checkbox. Configured workflows can involve several roles, review stages, comments, rework, and documented decisions. Elaine's optional External Approval capability can also include designated people outside the standard Elaine user group. External approvers can participate through a dedicated interface, allowing organizations to model more complex approval workflows with internal and external stakeholders.
Governance and operations
- Assign one accountable owner and make approval responsibilities explicit.
- Define stop conditions, fallbacks, and escalation paths before activation.
- Avoid changing live logic without understanding how contacts already in the campaign will be affected.
- Keep the campaign objective and measurement model stable enough to compare results across iterations.
Note
Exact UI labels, availability, and behavior can depend on the Elaine.io release, licensed capabilities, permissions, and project configuration. External Approval is an optional capability.