Campaigns

Campaigns serve to organize your site's marketing efforts. Campaigns are typically created by a Marketing Manager using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator. They are often associated with a certain set of objectives, which typically match or support any marketing campaigns taking place using traditional means.

Within WebSphere Commerce, campaigns are the high-level marketing element that organizes any number of campaign activities, which each define a condition. When the condition is evaluated as true, campaign activities generate targeted content for the customers. Activities are capable of handling three types of marketing content, all of which are displayed on your pages using e-Marketing Spots as placeholders. When customers browse your site, the e-Marketing Spot communicates with the rule server to process the rule-based code associated with the spot. e-Marketing Spots are supported by special data beans that are used in conjunction with JSP page technology, to generate Web page content using WebSphere Commerce's rule processing system.

Placement and creation of e-Marketing Spots must be determined collaboratively between the merchant responsible for the content, the page designer responsible for creating JavaServer Pages, and the media designer assigned to create any graphics or text, known as content, displayed in the spot. This ensures that the spots are implemented in a way that provides adequate space and retains the site design's aesthetics. e-Marketing Spots should be descriptively named so as to include their location, such as HomePageAd, or CheckOutPageRecommendation. This helps to reduce confusion about where it will appear, and what content it should contain. If necessary, numbers can be added to the name to differentiate between two e-Marketing Spots appearing on the same page. e-Marketing Spot names must be valid Java identifiers.

The page designer is responsible for providing the appropriate e-Marketing Spots on the required pages and in the specified locations. The e-Marketing Spots are defined using a generic WebSphere Commerce bean; the EMarketingSpot bean. The name property of this bean must be specified for each required e-Marketing Spot. This ensures that each e-Marketing Spot is unique. This bean can be found in the WebSphere Commerce development environment.

Campaigns generate statistics about their use, which may require some database configuration before use.

Related concepts

WebSphere Commerce Accelerator

Related tasks

Create a campaign