Let's say you are running a Campaign and notice that no visitors are assigned to it. You're puzzled and you want to figure out why. Let's take a look at some of the most common reasons for this:
- Campaign Thresholds Exceeded
- Concurrent Assignment Ceiling
- Counting Setup
- Audience Setup
- Report Processing
Campaign Thresholds Exceeded
If the Campaign has been live for a while, it is possible that the number of visits to the Campaign has triggered one of the Campaign thresholds–either Campaign Frequency or Assignment Expiration–and SiteSpect has stopped assigning visitors to it. Let's take a look at both.
Campaign Frequency
SiteSpect’s Campaign Frequency feature allows you to adjust the amount of traffic available to each Campaign, assuming visitors fit the criteria specified by any of the defined Audiences. More specifically, it allows you to control the individual frequency that an eligible visitor is assigned to a Campaign. Assignment Frequency does not specify a percentage of traffic to be assigned to a specific Campaign; it specifies only the probability, between 0 and 100, that an eligible visitor is assigned to a Campaign.
Campaign Frequency is applied in the following way:
- An unassigned visitor lands on your site.
- SiteSpect assigns the visitor a random number between 1 and 100.
- SiteSpect considers the Campaigns whose Frequency is greater than the random number assigned to the visitor.
- SiteSpect randomly assigns the visitor to a Campaign from step 3.
Assignment Expires After — Visits
Visitors assigned to this Campaign, remain in the Campaign for subsequent visits, up to the number of visits specified by this value. For example, a value of 1 means that visitors are assigned to the Campaign for a single visit. On the second visit, the visitor expires from the Campaign and becomes eligible for a new Campaign.
Assignment Expires After — Duration
Visitors assigned to this Campaign, remain in the Campaign on subsequent visits as long as the length of time since they were assigned does not exceed this value. SiteSpect allows you to specify a value of Hours, Days, Months, or Years.
Assignment Expires After — Previous Visit Gap
Visitors assigned to this Campaign, remain in the Campaign on subsequent visits as long as the length of time since their last visit is not greater than this amount. SiteSpect allows you to specify a value of Hours, Days, Months, or Years.
Concurrent Assignment Ceiling
Concurrent Assignment Ceiling is the maximum number of Campaigns that a visitor can be assigned to at one time. This includes all types of Campaigns (Experiments, Origin Experiments, Personalization, Mobile API, Custom, and more) in any active state (Running, Paused, No New Assignments, and Disabled). This feature is an admin setting; we recommend you contact helpdesk@sitespect.com to understand the current settings and request changes.
Counting Setup
When you create a Campaign, one of the elements you want to consider is when the Campaign counts visitors. This is usually determined by a field in the Advanced Settings area for the Factor called Count User When Triggered, whose default is Yes. In some cases, you can use a Metric to count visitors instead. On the Metric page, the setting is on the Advanced Settings dialog and it's called Count users who trigger this Metric; its default is No.
Audience Setup
When you create or copy a Campaign, you may find that you have one or multiple audience includes or excludes that will manage whether a user is assigned to an experiment or not. For instance, if you are an internal user your IP could be excluded with an IP Audience.
Report Processing
When you first put an experiment live you may notice early on that the reports do not have any data in them and worry that the campaign is not accepting user assignments. It is helpful to remember that SiteSpect processes report data at the end of a users session (30 mins inactivity). As such, you should expect to see data in your SiteSpect reports between 30-45 minutes after activation.