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Future Campaign overview

In short

A Future Campaign is a one-time manual push. Pick an audience, pick a fire time (now or any moment ahead), pick the actions — it fires once. Same thing as the One-time action button under Filter members. For recurring sends use Scheduled; for event-triggered use Rule.

You pick a target audience, pick a fire time (which can be right now or any moment in the future), pick what actions should run, and the campaign executes once against that audience at that time. It does not repeat, and it does not react to member events — it's the campaign kind you reach for when you want to push something to a chosen population, once.

info

Future Campaign = One-time action. The same concept is exposed under two names in different parts of the product. From Smart campaigns → Create campaign, it's labelled Future Campaign. From Filter members → One-time action, it's the same thing — the button takes you into the same wizard with the audience you just defined pre-filled. If you've used one, you've used the other.

What makes something a Future Campaign​

  • One-shot, manual. The campaign fires exactly once, when you tell it to. It does not re-fire, and it is not automated — you explicitly pick who it touches and when.
  • Time-driven, not event-driven. The when is a wall-clock moment (now, or any time in the future). There's no trigger and no cadence. If you want event-driven automation, use a Rule; if you want a recurring schedule, use a Scheduled campaign.
  • Uses the same 9-action set as Rule. Communication, assets, membership — see the Actions catalog. Future Campaign cannot apply a register-side discount; use a Deal or POS Deal for that.

When to reach for Future Campaign​

Pick a Future Campaign when the job is "do this one thing, to this specific group of members, once." Some common shapes:

  • "Send an SMS right now to every member who bought from us in the last 90 days, thanking them and inviting them to a preview event."
  • "On Dec 24 at 9am, push a holiday notification to every member with marketing consent."
  • "Grant a single-use coupon today to every member tagged VIP to celebrate the new collection launch."
  • "Tag the members who filled in last month's survey with survey-respondent so we can target them later."

Compare:

  • If the push should repeat on a cadence, use Scheduled.
  • If the push should react to something a member does, use a Rule.
  • If you want a silent automatic discount at the register rather than a one-shot message or asset grant, use a Deal (identified members) or POS Deal (any shopper).
tip

Two routes into the same wizard. If you already know who you want to target and just need to act on them, the Filter members → One-time action route is faster: build the audience in Filter members, click One-time action, and the Future Campaign wizard opens with the audience pre-filled. If you're starting from what you want to do and haven't yet scoped the audience, Smart campaigns → Create → Future Campaign is the natural path, and you pick the audience inside the wizard.

Anatomy of a Future Campaign​

Every Future Campaign has the same three-part shape:

  • An audience — the population the campaign runs against when it fires. Same Apply to members picker used by Scheduled. Arriving via the Filter members shortcut pre-populates this from your filter; arriving via Smart campaigns leaves it to you to define in the wizard.
  • A fire time — when the campaign should execute. Today, or a future date/time.
  • One or more actions — from the 9-action set. Actions can be stacked or split into cases.

The Future Campaign wizard​

Four steps, same shape as every other kind.

Step 1 — Campaign details​

Name, kind (Future Campaign), description, initial state. Use the description field to record the occasion — "April campaign launch, one-off SMS to last-90-day shoppers" — since the configuration itself won't tell you why the push happened six months from now.

Step 2 — For members (audience + fire time)​

The wizard's step 2 header is For members rather than When, because the audience is the main decision on a one-time campaign; the fire time is just the moment the push goes out. You'll configure:

  • Audience — Apply to members picker. All registered members or Specific members narrowed by attributes. Already populated if you came via Filter members.
  • Fire time — a date and time. Setting it to the current moment effectively means "fire as soon as I save and activate."

Step 3 — Actions​

Identical to Rule's step 3: pick one or more actions from the 9-action menu; stack actions or split into cases. See the Actions catalog and Split into cases.

Step 4 — Preview​

Read-only summary. Save commits the campaign. If the state on step 1 was Draft, the campaign is saved but won't fire — you have to flip it to Active from the list view (before, or at, the intended fire time) for the push to happen.

Lifecycle​

Active before / after fire time, Draft, Paused — and what happens at the moment

Future Campaign uses the same three states as Rule and Scheduled, but they behave slightly differently because the campaign is dated and one-shot:

  • Active (before fire time) — scheduled to fire at its configured moment. Editable; changes apply at fire time.
  • Active (after fire time) — already fired. Stays in the list as a historical record, but won't re-run.
  • Draft — saved but not scheduled. If the fire time passes while the campaign is still in Draft, it does not fire.
  • Paused — scheduled but currently not firing.

Future Campaign vs Scheduled​

The two non-event kinds differ on a single axis: recurrence.

  • Future Campaign — one shot. Fires once, at a specific moment (now or later), then retires.
  • Scheduled — recurring. Fires on a cadence (today: every day) indefinitely until you pause or delete it.

If you catch yourself cloning a Future Campaign to cover five weekly sends, that was a Scheduled campaign in disguise — or, if the cadence you need isn't currently supported by Scheduled, a case worth raising with the team before you build the fifth clone.

Gotchas​

4 things that commonly trip people up
  • No recurrence. A Future Campaign does not repeat. If you need "every year on Dec 24", that's a Scheduled campaign (when the cadence is supported) — or, pragmatically, a new Future Campaign each year.
  • Draft past the fire time is inert. A Future Campaign left in Draft when its fire time arrives simply does not fire. There's no retry and no "oh, you meant to activate this" prompt — set the state to Active before the fire time for the push to go out.
  • Audience narrows who, not when. Audience filters don't delay the fire — they decide who gets the push at the configured time. Per-member timing (e.g. local-time sends) isn't something a single Future Campaign can handle.

Terminology note​

Why this kind has two names — Future Campaign and One-time action

Internally and under Filter members, this campaign kind is called a One-time action (the API identifier is oneTimeAction). Under Smart campaigns it's surfaced as Future Campaign. Both names refer to the same object and the same wizard, so when the doc, an in-product label, or a teammate uses one of these names, you can treat them as interchangeable.