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Email campaigns: automatic emails after a credential is sent, accepted, or expires

A campaign is an email that POK Proof of Knowledge sends by itself after something happens to one of your credentials, so your relationship with the recipient does not have to end the moment you issue it. You set the rule once: warn someone before their credential expires, ask them to share it, or nudge them to accept it, and POK keeps sending that email to every credential that matches, without anyone on your team sending it by hand.

Campaigns is a premium feature, enabled per organization. To turn it on, talk to your account executive or write to contact@pok.tech.

Even once it is enabled, turning a campaign on needs one more thing: a linked SMTP integration. You can create, edit, preview and send yourself a test copy of a campaign without one. The tab explains this with a banner, "How to activate your custom campaigns": "To activate your custom campaigns and have more control over your deliveries, link your email provider. Once linked, you must manually activate your campaigns." In other words, linking a provider does not switch on any campaign for you: it only unlocks the option.

Open Campaigns in the Email manager​

  1. In the left sidebar, click Branding.
  2. On the "Emails" card, click "Customize" to open Email Settings.
  3. Click the "Campaigns" tab, after "Sending details", "Email branding", "Templates" and "Report".

What you see when you open Campaigns​

The tab always shows one built-in campaign at the top: "Credential acceptance reminder," tagged "Acceptance" and always "Active". You cannot open, edit or turn off this one: it runs automatically for every organization.

Below it, "Custom campaigns" lists the ones your organization created, with columns "Name", "Tag" (its objective), "Last modified" and "Status" ("Active" or "Inactive"). If there are none yet, POK shows "You don't have any custom campaigns to display yet" with a "Create campaign" button.

Anyone who can open this tab can see the list and open a campaign's detail page. Only the Administrator role can create, edit, duplicate, activate or deactivate a campaign; Operator and Reader can look but not touch.

Create a campaign​

Click "Create campaign" (only visible to Administrators) and fill in the dialog:

  1. "Name", a unique name for your organization. POK ignores capitalization when checking uniqueness, so "Reminder" and "reminder" count as the same name.
  2. "Objective", chosen from a list: "Acceptance" (paired with your approval-request templates), "Send" (paired with your credential-issuance templates), or any other objective you already created while building a custom template.
  3. An optional "Description" of up to 120 characters.

Confirming opens the campaign editor with three steps. All three have to be completed before you can save, whether or not you plan to activate the campaign right away:

Step 1: Template​

Click the template field to open "Pick a template for your campaign". It only lists your own custom templates that share the objective you picked, each with its name and type. If none exist yet, POK shows "You don't have any templates with this objective yet" and offers "Go to Custom Templates" so you can create one first, in the Templates tab of the Email manager.

Step 2: Trigger​

Choose "Event", the moment the countdown starts. Which events you can pick from depends on the objective you chose:

  • An "Acceptance" campaign only offers "Credential is sent".
  • A "Send" campaign only offers "Credential is accepted".
  • Any other objective offers all three: "Credential is sent", "Credential is accepted", and "Credential expires".

Then choose "When", and the options depend on the event:

  • "Credential is sent": "Immediate", or "After" a value in Hours, Days, or Weeks.
  • "Credential is accepted": "Immediate", or "After" a value in Days or Weeks.
  • "Credential expires": "Immediate", "Before", or "After" a value in Days, Weeks, or Months.

"Immediate" sends the email the moment the event happens, with nothing else to fill in. "Before" or "After" additionally ask for a "Value" (a whole number) and a "Unit" from the list above.

When "When" is "After", you can also turn on "Repeat": send the same email again every certain number of days, for up to 12 additional times on top of the first send.

Changing the trigger of a campaign you already saved asks you to confirm first: "Change the campaign trigger?": "Changing the trigger will cancel the emails already scheduled for this campaign."

Step 3: Audience​

Choose "Audience": "All credentials" sends to every credential that reaches the trigger, "Pick a filter" narrows it down. With a filter, add one or more conditions; today you can filter on:

  • "Credential type": "Certificate" or "Badge".
  • "Credential interaction": "Shared on LinkedIn" or "Not shared on LinkedIn" (see How to share my credential).
  • "Credential state": only offered as "Not accepted" when the trigger event is "Credential is sent", or as "Revoked" when the trigger event is "Credential is accepted". It is not offered at all when the trigger event is "Credential expires". (See the credential states in Credential Awards.)

Each condition can be added only once. If you add more than one, a credential has to match all of them to receive the email.

Once step 3 is valid, click "Save campaign".

Preview a campaign and send a test​

Click "Preview" as soon as you have picked a template in step 1: you do not need to finish the trigger or audience first, or even save the campaign. It renders the exact header, body and footer of the chosen template, using your organization's base language and the brand assigned to that template (see Email translations and Email logo and banner).

From the same screen, click "Send test email" to receive a copy of it and confirm it looks the way you expect.

A campaign's detail page and its reporting​

Open the icon at the end of a campaign's row to see its detail page:

  • The template thumbnail, the campaign's name, its objective tag, and its status (Administrators with a linked email provider can switch it from here).
  • When it was last modified, the template it uses with a "View preview" link, and its description if it has one.
  • A "Trigger" card repeating the event, when, value, unit and repeat rule you configured.
  • An "Audience" card listing "All credentials" or every condition and value you set.
  • A metrics card: choose a window, "Last 7 days," "Last 30 days" (the default), or "Last 365 days," and see "Emails sent" for that window. This count adds successful and failed send attempts together; it is not only the ones that were delivered. This is separate from the organization-wide "Report" tab, which lists every email POK sent regardless of campaign.

Edit, duplicate, or deactivate a campaign​

All of the following require the Administrator role.

Edit a campaign from its row menu or its detail page to change its name, description, template, trigger or audience. The objective you picked when creating it cannot be changed here. Create a new campaign if you need a different one.

Duplicate creates an inactive copy of a campaign with the same template, trigger and audience, named after the original with "(1)" appended (or the next free number, if that one is already taken too). Rename and adjust it from there.

Deactivate asks you to confirm: "Deactivate [campaign name]?": "If you deactivate it, the scheduled emails in the campaign will be removed. You can reactivate it whenever you want; note it does not apply to events that occurred before its creation." Reactivating it later needs your Administrator role and a linked email provider, same as turning one on for the first time.

There is no way to delete a campaign, from the list or from its detail page. Deactivating is the only way to stop one for good.

I can't activate a campaign​

Two separate things gate activation, and both must be true:

  1. Campaigns has to be enabled for your organization. It is a premium feature, enabled per organization; talk to your account executive or write to contact@pok.tech to turn it on.
  2. You need a working SMTP integration linked. Until then, "Activate" stays disabled everywhere the option appears, and the banner in this tab points you to link one.

Only the Administrator role can activate a campaign at all; Operator and Reader never see the option.

The trigger event I need is not in the list​

The objective you chose limits which events are available: "Acceptance" only offers "Credential is sent", and "Send" only offers "Credential is accepted". Pick, or first create in Custom Templates, a different objective to unlock all three events, including "Credential expires" with its "Before" option.

POK says a campaign with this name already exists​

Campaign names have to be unique within your organization, and POK ignores capitalization when it checks, so "Reminder" and "reminder" collide. The message reads "A campaign with this name already exists. Choose a different name." Rename it and save again.

The audience condition I need is missing or has fewer options than expected​

  • Each condition kind can only be added once, so you will not find "Credential type" offered twice.
  • "Credential state" is context-dependent: it only offers "Not accepted" when the trigger event is "Credential is sent", only "Revoked" when it is "Credential is accepted", and it is hidden entirely when the trigger event is "Credential expires".

There is no template to pick in step 1​

A campaign's message is always one of your custom templates, scoped to the objective you chose. If you have not created one for that objective yet, "Pick a template for your campaign" shows "You don't have any templates with this objective yet"; use "Go to Custom Templates" to create one before coming back to finish the campaign.