A campaign is four pieces put together: a strategy, templates, an audience and a schedule. Randio walks you through them in an order that works, and it refuses to start a run that cannot. This is that order, with the screens named as you will see them.
Before anything: Settings → Sync
Randio needs three things from your Shopify store, and the Sync page shows the status of each.
- Data sync. Products, collections, customers and orders are copied in when you install and kept current from then on. The page shows each set's last activity. Nothing to do unless it says otherwise.
- Theme. Add Randio Block places the storefront block; the App Embed section explains how to turn on the cart embed in the theme editor's App embeds panel. The embed is what makes discounts apply at checkout, so it matters even for email campaigns.
- Checkout Discount. If it reads "Not registered", click Register now. Without it shoppers see full prices at checkout during a live campaign.
1. A strategy
Strategies → New Strategy. The quickest start is a ready-made strategy filled from your store: Standard, Sales Velocity Focus, Clearance Focus, New Arrival Focus or Balanced. Each builds its pools from your collections and sales data and sets a discount from your recent discounted orders when there are enough to read.
Building from scratch means choosing pools (a collection or a product each), a type for each pool (Guaranteed, Chance or Limited), a discount for each (fixed or a range), and the catalog size. The editor tells you when the pools hold too few distinct products for catalogs to stay unique. The reasoning behind those choices is in Designing a discount strategy.
2. Templates
Templates holds one editor with three views: the catalog page, the email, and the storefront block. A new store starts with defaults you can use as they are. Set your logo and display name in Settings → Branding once and every template picks them up.
Two things worth doing before the first run: open the store preview to see the page with real products from your strategy, and send yourself a test email from the email view.
3. A customer group
For an email campaign you need a group. Customers → Groups → Create New Group. Either pick customers by hand or write rules; the editor counts matches as you go and shows how many can be emailed, which is the number that matters. A storefront campaign needs no group.
For a first run, a group of 50 to 200 engaged customers, recent buyers for instance. Large enough to read, small enough to learn from.
4. The campaign
Campaigns → New campaign. Two questions:
- Who is it for? "Email a customer group" is an Outreach campaign; pick the group. "On-site deals for visitors" is a Storefront campaign; pick Logged In or Guest mode.
- How should it run? "A single run for a specific window you choose" is a manual run, which is the right first run. "Runs automatically on a schedule you set" creates a standing rule that keeps producing runs; add that once a manual run has told you what works.
Then the strategy and templates, the window, and Save & start now or Schedule only. The schedule card shows roughly how many people the run will email.
What stops a run
Randio will not start a run that would do nothing, and it says why on the campaign page:
- "Every catalog would be empty": the strategy's pools hold no active products. Add or activate products in Shopify.
- "Nothing to send": nobody in the group can be emailed before the run would end. Check consent and deliverability in the group.
- "Turn on your app embed to go live": the cart embed is off, so discounts would not apply.
- "Pick a complete strategy and a template to schedule": one of the pieces is missing.
After it starts
The campaign page shows the run moving from Preparing to Sending to Live, with sent and waiting counts. Orders appear on the Orders page as they are paid. When the run ends, its record stays in History, and the next run can start from what this one showed.
What the first month costs, and how to size the runs that follow, is in Budgeting a month of Randio.
