Outbound campaigns

Outbound campaigns are one-off messages to a patient segment. They complement sequences: use a sequence for a multi-step journey and a campaign for a single offer, recall or reactivation message.

Campaigns are part of SmileLine Core. Owners and managers can create and send them; analysts can see launched results but cannot see drafts or operate a campaign. Coordinators and telesales do not have campaign access. There is no approval step.

Choose the audience

Open Marketing → Campaigns and click New campaign, then choose one of these audience types:

• a saved patient view;
• the filters currently applied on the Patients page, using Message segment;
• explicitly selected patients, using Message selected. A fixed selection is limited to 500 patients.

A filtered audience is resolved once, when dispatch begins. The resulting recipient list is then fixed, so later patient-filter changes do not alter an in-flight campaign.

Shared email addresses and phone numbers are deduplicated. SmileLine sends once through an explicitly linked guarantor when the relationship is unambiguous; otherwise the shared destination is excluded for review rather than risking the wrong recipient.

If a reachable contact is reassigned to another patient after the audience is fixed but before delivery, that recipient is skipped with a contact-conflict result. SmileLine does not keep retrying a campaign message whose destination now belongs to someone else.

Compose and preview

Each campaign uses one channel: SMS, email or WhatsApp. Select an active connection and write the message or start from a template. WhatsApp campaigns require an approved marketing template.

Email campaigns are written in the same visual editor as email templates: plain paragraphs by default, / for layout blocks, and merge-tag chips under the editor. Click Image beside those chips to add a picture from your practice's image library. Picking a template that was designed in the editor brings its design across, not just its text.

The preview shows:

• the current audience, eligible and excluded counts;
• estimated paid credits for SMS segments and WhatsApp marketing-template sends;
• exclusion reasons and sample recipients;
• warnings, including patients who recently received marketing.

SMS previews include the practice identity and Reply STOP to opt out footer because the footer affects the final segment count. Email tests use synthetic patient merge values and can only go to the sender's verified SmileLine login email, so a test never exposes a real patient's details. Each sender can queue up to 20 tests per campaign per hour. SMS and WhatsApp tests stay unavailable until verified staff phone numbers are supported.

Send now or schedule

Before launch, confirm the maximum recipient count, hourly pacing and—on SMS or WhatsApp—the maximum paid-credit consumption. You can send immediately or choose a future time.

Each organization receives 500 combined paid credits per subscription billing period. One SMS segment or one WhatsApp marketing-template send uses one credit. Email does not use paid credits and is capped at 15,000 recipients per campaign.

Managers can send while the campaign remains inside the included allowance. An owner can explicitly enable metered overage at the centrally configured rate; this attaches usage billing to the Core subscription and does not unlock a separate add-on.

SmileLine pauses instead of silently exceeding a confirmed recipient, credit or included-usage limit. SMS and WhatsApp also respect the practice send window. A daily or hourly limit can spread a large campaign over time.

Operate and measure

A campaign moves through Draft, Scheduled, Dispatching, Paused, Completed, Cancelled or Failed. From its detail page, an owner or manager can pause, resume, cancel or duplicate it. Content and audience criteria cannot be edited after launch.

Choose Duplicate as draft to copy the source campaign's name, audience, channel, connection, template and content into a new editable draft. Delivery history, recipient results, schedule and launched dispatch state are not copied.

Launch freezes one immutable dispatch: its content, audience, connection, limits and billing policy cannot be changed by a stale draft edit. Daily send capacity is reserved atomically before delivery, so concurrent workers cannot push the campaign beyond its confirmed daily limit.

If subscription access ends, an in-flight campaign pauses. It stays paused after renewal until an owner or manager reviews and resumes it; missed campaign work is never released automatically.

The detail page tracks sent, delivered, read, replied, failed and opt-out results per recipient. It also attributes appointments and won-journey revenue to the most recent campaign touch in the preceding 30 days.

If an SMS or WhatsApp provider response does not prove whether a message was accepted, SmileLine records that recipient as Delivery unknown and does not automatically retry. This fail-closed result prevents an uncertain provider handoff from creating a duplicate marketing message.

See Marketing consent for the eligibility and opt-out rules applied to every recipient.