Setting Up Your First Campaign

A campaign in Randio is the final step, not the first. Before you can schedule one, you need to build three pieces: a strategy (what products and discounts), a customer group (who receives them), and templates (how the email and catalog page look). Once those exist, creating campaigns from them is fast — but the building comes first.

Piece 1: Create a strategy

A strategy tells Randio which products to include and how to discount them. For your first strategy, choose a collection-based approach. Point it at a Shopify collection with enough variety — preferably a few dozen products — so each customer gets a genuinely different catalog. It still works with fewer; you just get less variety between catalogs.

For the discount range, a good rule of thumb is to set it a little below and a little above your usual discount — say, 15-25% if you normally run around 20%. The spread keeps each catalog feeling individual while staying anchored to what your customers already expect from you. Leave max products at 6 — it fills the email and storefront block without overwhelming the customer.

Piece 2: Create a customer group

Customer groups define who receives personalized catalogs. For your first campaign, start with your warmest audience — customers who purchased recently (say, within the last 2-3 months) or who have been opening your emails. They already know your brand and are the most likely to act, so they convert better and teach you more. Once you see what works, spread outward to less-recent and less-engaged segments.

Start warm, then widen. Your first campaign is a learning exercise — begin with the customers most likely to respond, watch what happens, and expand from there.

Piece 3: Set up your templates

Templates control what the campaign email and catalog page look like. Randio provides defaults that work out of the box — for your first campaign, the defaults are fine. If you want to customize, preview the email template and send yourself a test before going live.

Templates are reusable. Once you set them up, every future campaign can use the same ones.

Putting it together: create the campaign

With your strategy, customer group, and templates ready, creating the actual campaign is straightforward. Give it a name, assign the pieces, and set a duration.

Name it well

Campaign names are internal — your customers never see them. Make them descriptive enough that when you have ten campaigns in your dashboard, you can tell them apart at a glance.

Set duration

If you have run sales before, a length your customers already recognize is a good place to start — they are conditioned to that rhythm. If you have no reference point, 48 hours is a sensible default: long enough for emails to land and for customers to act, short enough that you see results quickly. Either way, the campaign duration guide goes deeper on timing.

Review and activate

Before you hit activate, double-check three things:

• Customer group — start with your warmest audience, the people most likely to buy (recent or repeat customers), then expand outward as you get comfortable. A warm group converts better and teaches you more. (Each member uses one catalog, so starting warm also spends your allowance where it counts.)
• Discount range — make sure the floor and ceiling make sense for your margins.
• Email template — preview the email. If you customized it, send yourself a test first.

Once you activate, Randio generates a unique catalog for every customer in the group. Each person gets a different combination of products at different discount levels within your range. Emails go out, and the storefront theme block starts showing personalized deals to logged-in customers who visit your store.

What happens next

After activation, you do not need to do anything. Randio handles catalog generation, email delivery, and storefront rendering automatically. Reminder emails go out on schedule. When the campaign ends, it deactivates cleanly.

Watch your dashboard for opens, clicks, and conversions. After 48 hours, you will have real data on how your customers respond to personalized catalogs — and a foundation to build on for campaign number two.

Expanding after your first campaign

Your first campaign targets a small, high-engagement group. The ROI on that campaign will likely be your best because you cherry-picked the customers most likely to convert. That is the point — it validates the concept.

After that, start widening the net. Target a larger customer group, or include segments that are less engaged. Your conversion rate will probably dip — a broader audience always converts at a lower percentage than your best customers. But the total revenue goes up because you are reaching more people. A 3% conversion rate on 1,000 customers generates more profit than an 8% rate on 100.

The pattern for most merchants looks like this:

• Campaign 1: Small group, best customers, learn the flow.
• Campaign 2-3: Same strategy, larger group. See how a wider audience responds.
• Campaign 4+: Start experimenting — different discount ranges, different segments, different product pools.

Each expansion trades per-customer ROI for total profit. That is the right trade to make as long as the campaigns remain profitable — and with personalized discounts on specific products (not blanket store-wide sales), they usually are.

Pro tips for your first campaign

• Target customers who will actually respond. Start with your most engaged segment — recent buyers, repeat customers, an active group. A well-matched audience tells you far more than a big, indifferent one.
• Keep the discount sane. Bracket your usual discount rather than reaching for an extreme — enough to feel special, not so deep it eats your margin.
• Do check your email template first. A quick preview avoids surprises.
• Do pick a descriptive name. Future-you will thank present-you.

Your first campaign is a proof of concept. Keep it tight, learn from the results, and expand from there.