While the ability to publish campaigns in Creator Studio is limited to certain roles, other factors, like the campaign creator, assigned topics, and assigned audiences, can also impact the publishing workflow.

Before You Start

This article covers permissions related to campaign publishing. Refer to Defining Roles and Permissions and Custom Roles to learn more about user restrictions and permissions.

This article assumes you are signed in to Creator Studio.

Who Can Publish?

• With no topic or audience restrictions, Brand Super Admins can edit and publish all campaigns.
• Community Admins and Content Publishers with access to all audiences and/or topics included in a campaign can edit and publish the campaign.
• When a Content Creator creates a campaign, the Publish button will be disabled on the Review page. This role can only save campaigns as a draft.
• If a restricted user is assigned only some of the topics or audiences targeted in a campaign, they will have view-only access. They will not be able to edit or publish the campaign.

Who Are Campaigns Published To?

• Campaigns will be published to all topics and audiences selected for them. The topics and audiences available for selection depend on those assigned to the user.
• For Direct Delivery campaigns (Email and Notification Center), targeted users are further filtered by the campaign creator's audience restrictions to ensure that they do not reach more users than intended.
   
  • The platform will display an accurate recipient count before you publish, giving you a final opportunity to review your audience. You will also see an alert reminding you of the default settings before you publish.
    
    
  • This only further scopes your targeted user count if your community has restricted users, such as Community Admins, creating audiences for use in campaigns.
  • This only applies to Direct Delivery campaigns (Email and Notification Center) and does not apply to topic publishing.
    
    Note: If Focused Content is enabled, then campaign creator restrictions will still be applied.
     
  • If only Brand Super Admins (or other unrestricted custom roles) create audiences in your community, this setting will not affect your campaign recipients. In that case, you can disregard the tooltip/alert and the best practices outlined below.

Publishing Guidelines

These best practices only apply if your community has Community Admins or similar custom admins creating audiences for use in email campaigns. Please review these guidelines and make sure your campaigns are being published to your intended audience/s. If only Brand Super Admins or similar unrestricted roles in your community can create audiences, these best practices do not apply, and you can skip the section below.

Note: This only applies to email campaigns and does not apply to topic publishing.

Best Practices

Where possible, we recommend having the same user create both the campaign and its audience(s). 

If your campaigns are more highly collaborative— for example, different users create the audience, create the campaign, and publish it — please follow the guidelines below:

1. Brand Super Admin Override: If a campaign is created by a restricted user, or uses audiences created by restricted users, a Brand Super Admin can purposely override their restrictions by duplicating the campaign and publishing the duplicated version:
    
   • For campaigns created by restricted users: By duplicating the campaign, the Brand Super Admin can now publish the duplicated campaign to all audiences, not just the audiences the restricted user is limited to. As the creator of the duplicated campaign, the campaign now adheres to the Brand Super Admin’s permissions and is therefore no longer restricted.
   • For audiences created by restricted users: After duplicating the campaign, the Brand Super Admin’s unrestricted access now overrides the audience creator’s restrictions, which may expand the reach of that audience. As the creator of the duplicated campaign, the audience’s restrictions now adhere to the Brand Super Admin’s permissions.
     
     These best practices also generally apply if a campaign is being published by any user who is less restricted than the campaign creator.
      
2. Campaign Creator differs from Audience Creator: For campaigns using audiences created by restricted users, please keep in mind that campaign restrictions are based on the campaign creator, not the audience creator.
   
   If the campaign creator and audience creator are different users, the targeted user count may differ. This will be reflected on the Review page - please pay close attention before publishing:
    
   • Brand Super Admin-created campaigns: For Brand Super Admin-created campaigns, any audiences created by Community Admins or similar custom roles will adhere to the Brand Super Admin’s unrestricted audience permissions—no restrictions will be applied on publish.  may therefore reach more users than the Community Admin could send to.
   • Restricted user-created campaigns: For campaigns created by users in restricted roles, audiences created or added by a different restricted user will adhere to the campaign creator’s permissions - the campaign creator’s audience restrictions will be applied on publish.
      
3. Covering for a colleague on leave: If another user needs to take over a campaign, for example, to cover for a colleague on leave, they need to be assigned all audiences used in the campaign, and have a role that grants them campaign editing and/or publishing permissions (such as Content Creator or Campaign Publisher), to edit or publish the campaign.
   
   If the user wants the campaign’s audiences to follow their own audience restrictions instead, the colleague covering can simply duplicate the campaign and work from the copy—no role changes needed.
    
4. Direct Delivery campaigns: For Direct Delivery campaigns, make sure your communicators are assigned the audiences they’re responsible for creating and editing content for. This ensures they can select those audiences when sending Direct Delivery campaigns, and it also limits them to editing only the campaigns that use those same audiences.
   
   For example, if a campaign creator has no audiences assigned, and another user (such as a Brand Super Admin) sends a Direct Delivery campaign, you may see the total user count drop to 0. This happens because the campaign creator’s audience assignments filter the campaign recipients.
   
   To keep your delivery workflow running smoothly, assign each campaign creator the audiences their campaigns should target. The campaign creator’s restrictions will then correctly limit the campaign to the intended audience.