Expand my Community achievements bar.

Running Larger Marketing Campaigns in Workfront-- HELP!!!

Avatar

Level 2
Hi all! I am having a bit of a struggle setting up large campaigns in Workfront. We are an agency within helping our retailers promote new products, store openings, ecommerce, etc. We've just landed a couple of larger contracts and I am struggling on how I should set up these campaigns. One is for a store rebrand and the other is a new product release. In the product release campaign, we are using all marketing channels: traditional & digital. For campaigns this large (using print, radio, tv, website, email, large print production) how do you all set up your templates? Do you set up separate templates (one for TV, one for radio, one for email blast)? Or do you create a large campaign with all components? Would love some insight here or even screen shots of how you all set them up. I was thinking about making them all separate templates/request forms and grouping then together by campaign. Thank you! Amanda Peralta Alex Lee, Inc. Amanda.Peralta@merchantsdistributors.com
15 Replies

Avatar

Level 2
I would create a Program for the campaign and then have each item as a separate projects (Email, Signage, digital ads) - they will all have different timelines/deadlines/tasks and resources so it's best to keep them separate I find. That way you can keep review them together under the Program and see what is tracking on time or what needs help to get it on track. It's also more confusing to the team members to see their tasks and find what they're looking for if everything is within within one project/campaign. Best of luck, Wendy Millard Director of Design Services Empire Life Wendy Millard Empire Life Insurance Company

Avatar

Level 2
Thank you so much Wendy! This was something I thought about doing. We are rather new to Workfront. Our parent company has had the system for sometime now but we, as an agency, are new to it. :-) Amanda Peralta Alex Lee, Inc.

Avatar

Level 1
Hi Amanda, We set up a program for the campaign and then specific projects to support the campaign. But each project could have more than one template item in it - so we could have an event, an email and social media all within one project. For larger campaigns that span several months or even a year, this allows for several strategic projects to run concurrently and not exist as a laundry list of tactics. It does make reporting at an asset level challenging though. Janelle ---- Janelle Nash Sr Manager, Marketing Tech & Demand Gen | Green Dot Agency Deloitte Jannelle Nash Deloitte

Avatar

Level 2
Thank you so much! I believe it would be best to set this up as a program. It seems like this is the way to go! Amanda Peralta Alex Lee, Inc.

Avatar

Level 2
Do you have a request form attached to this each large programs? Amanda Peralta Alex Lee, Inc.

Avatar

Level 1
We do have a request form for each campaign (program object). We also have custom forms for each project. This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message and any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, by you is strictly prohibited. v.E.1

Avatar

Level 2
Thank you so much for taking the time to walk me through this. It has been a lot of help! Amanda Peralta Alex Lee, Inc.

Avatar

Level 2
Hi Jannelle! I am interested in setting up campaign but we only grouped department sub-group by program currently. Curious about the intake form, if a user submit a request for a big event which could have different tactics. We could only convert the issue once, so how could you break them into several projects. For example: If a user submit a request for an events which requires a video, a print collatoral, and photography. That's three tactics and three projects. I could lump them into one program for this event. How do you handle the conversion as we could only convert the issue once to a project. Or do you convert to a project and use issue to convert to video project, photo project and print project? Trying to wrap my head around multi discipline requests like this. Thank you! Maggie Talierco Olympus Corporation of The Americas

Avatar

Level 2
Hi Maggie, We insist on having people submit the request for assets separately so that we can apply the proper project template to the work and have the right request form with the right questions asked/answered. If they don't then we'll sometimes either ask them to resubmit or convert it to a project and then duplicate it say three times, one for video, one for a photo and one for print and apply the right project template to each and then you can always add the right form and then walk through the questions with them to get the right info before assigning the work and putting it in progress. Wendy Millard Empire Life Wendy Millard Empire Life Insurance Company

Avatar

Community Advisor
We also require the different assets be submitted on separate requests. We have a Campaign request that is submitted first and converted to a project. Then we have the separate tactics submitted and through request queues directly routed to that new project. From there the separate issues are converted to their own projects. We also have a custom field for campaign number so that each project that is part of that campaign receives the same campaign number and can be easily pulled for reporting.

Avatar

Level 2

@Heather_Kulbacki Does the project that is the campaign get assigned a random campaign number distinct from the reference number and you use THAT as the custom field value? OR do you have a custom field for a video project, in example, that is a dropdown showing the value of all reference numbers that belong to campaign-specific projects?

Avatar

Community Advisor

@KatharineSu Since all our campaigns have a particular custom form, we can pull a report of all campaign projects - we use that report to manually assign the next campaign number. We use a 3-digit campaign number, so whatever that next 3-digit number is gets assigned to a campaign needing a number. We include a column on the report for that number, so it can be filled in right there on the report, then also added to the project name.

ALL of our projects also have a form which contains fields for Year (2-digit), Campaign Number (3-digit), and Project Number (4-digit) - those 3 pieces make up the first part of all our project names.

If it happens to be a one-off project that is not part of a campaign, the campaign field is left blank and nothing is added to the name for that piece.

 

When we first started using Workfront we tried using reference numbers in our project names, but reference numbers quickly grew from 4-digits to 5, now we're up to 7-digits. Users revolted at the 5-digit number for the project name so we had to come up with something that didn't involve reference numbers, knowing those weren't going to get any shorter.

Avatar

Level 3

Heather, I'm curious about your 4-digit project number. We have a similar naming convention as you did previously and use the reference ID as part of the project name/number. We're currently around 550000 and we've only been in Workfront a little over 2 years. I'm also worried about going to 7 digits. How do you ensure that your 4-digit number is sequential? I have 4 project managers so I'd think it would be difficult to know what 4-digit number is up next when you have multiple people creating and naming projects. Also, were there any issues with projects having the same number when you started using a 4-digit project number?

Avatar

Community Advisor

@TammyWe  for the 4-digit number, we used the same process that we use for campaign number for a long time...

we created a report of all non-campaign projects - then used that report to manually assign the next campaign number. With the project number column sorted descending, with the highest number (and those with no number) at the top, it was easy to assign the next number right in the report. we'd add it to that field and to the project name right from the report.

We did have 1 traffic person assigning those numbers and also making task assignments at the same time because we had 6-7 project managers creating projects. With multiple people you'd especially want them to add the number to their project right from the report and refresh between each project if they are numbering a few at once.

 

We've now moved on to having Fusion create/add that 4-digit number when the project is put into a particular status.

Avatar

Level 2

This is super helpful. Thank you for your quick and thorough response. We're moving down this field quite rapidly and it's great to hear best practices from others. Our campaign dropdown may be a multi select, which seems to give us a comma delimited list. I may need to poke around community for how to avoid this since no one likes a comma. Looking for pipe delimited or something more friendly.