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The CRM Marketer Evolution Curve’s Guide
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Why it matters:
As customer journeys grow more complex, marketers must define priorities that help AI choose the best message at any given moment. This blog explains how campaign orchestration works in Optimove and highlights best practices for setting priorities, configuring campaigns, and choosing the right campaign duration to support coordinated and effective customer journeys.
Key takeaways:
In CRM marketing, selecting the right message at the right moment is essential for delivering relevant and valuable customer experiences. However, when customers qualify for multiple campaigns at the same time, teams must decide which campaign should take priority, which campaigns can overlap, and how long each campaign should remain active.
Below, read how optimal campaign orchestration works in Optimove.
Customers expect brands to provide personalized journeys. Unfortunately, for many, this means sending customers every message that is triggered based on their behavior. The result is what we call cross-firing journeys. A problem that is too common, leading to customers receiving overlapping and often conflicting messages from a brand. This usually happens when campaigns are not properly prioritized or aligned.
Campaign orchestration solves this by determining which message a customer should receive at the right moment from all eligible campaigns. In Optimove, marketers define the rules, objectives, and priorities for their campaigns. The Self-Optimizing Journeys AI Agent then evaluates these settings to select the most relevant campaign for each customer.
Campaign duration adds another important layer. It defines how long a campaign continues to influence what a customer receives next, shaping both movement across touchpoints and the lookback window for performance measurement.
Before choosing the right duration, it is helpful to understand what factors to consider when setting up your orchestration rules.
When planning your campaigns and journeys, you should take into account these two elements:
The first question to ask yourself is whether the campaign you are creating should be exclusive or whether it can overlap with others.
In Optimove, we call this campaign inclusion settings:
• Exclude All: the customer will not receive additional campaigns for the duration of this campaign. This is useful for campaigns such as a personalized, timely offer where you want to ensure direct attribution to your marketing message.
• Include All: the customer can receive other eligible campaigns at the same time. This typically applies to informative messages, such as service alerts.
The second question is how important a campaign is relative to others. In Optimove, we call this “campaign priority,” and we allow marketers to use to settings:
• Automatic Priority: The Self-Optimizing Journeys AI Agent assigns the priority. This is used for most campaigns created by marketers.
• Manual Priority: the marketer sets the exact priority level. This is typically reserved for brand promises, such as birthday messages, and key lifecycle moments, including onboarding journeys.
Below are best practice recommendations for the most common campaign types:
These settings help campaigns coexist cleanly and provide the orchestration engine with clear direction when selecting the next best message.
The campaign duration determines how long a customer remains “locked in” for a specific campaign. For example, a 24-hour flash sale may call for a one-day duration, while a new game announcement might stay active longer to give customers more time to explore it.
This influences both:
Shorter durations increase the variety of messages.
Longer durations increase measurement confidence.
A five-day bonus offer can run as a standalone campaign for the full five days. This keeps the offer clear and focused but prevents the customer from receiving other campaigns during that time.
Shortening the duration to two days allows the customer to receive additional campaigns sooner, improving variety and, potentially, responsiveness. However, when multiple campaigns overlap within the original offer window, it becomes increasingly complex to determine which message ultimately influenced the final conversion.
This creates the duration dilemma:
See the five steps below:
1. Decide which campaigns can run together
Start by identifying which campaigns genuinely require the customer’s full attention and which can run safely alongside others. In many cases, multiple campaigns can target the same customer simultaneously. Optimove’s multi-touch attribution supports this by measuring performance even when campaigns overlap and using incremental uplift to understand the attributable impact of each one.
2. Set priorities with intention
Ensure that priority levels align with business importance. High-stakes or journey-critical campaigns should sit at the top, while lighter or optional messages can leverage AI agents to make decisions.
3. Use campaign duration to determine measurement windows and shape movement
Duration determines how quickly customers transition between campaigns. Shorter durations keep journeys dynamic, and since 85% of responses occur within the first two days, they often provide all the insight needed.
4. Measure performance beyond the duration
Shorter durations do not mean incomplete measurement. For example, in Optimove, you can expand the analysis window after the fact to cover longer periods, ensuring the full impact of a campaign is captured even when customers move on quickly.
5. Revisit durations regularly
Customer behavior evolves. Reviewing patterns over time ensures duration settings stay aligned with actual engagement.
When priorities, settings, and campaign durations work together, orchestration becomes more precise and effective. Customers move through journeys smoothly, receive only the messages that truly matter, and avoid overload. At the same time, measurement stays reliable because analytics capture the full story, even beyond the duration window.
The outcome is a CRM program that is flexible, data-driven, and aligned with both customer needs and business strategy. Every message becomes more coordinated, more relevant, and more valuable.
For more insights, contact us to request a demo.
Research by: Yeela Salkin and Noa Gutman
Become a CRM Marketing powerhouse
Sophie is a product marketing manager with a communications and marketing background. She specializes in go-to-market strategy, product messaging, and digital engagement for SaaS and B2B companies. She combines creative storytelling with a data-driven mindset to clarify product value and build stronger connections with target audiences. Sophie holds a degree in Communications and Marketing from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya).
