Programs & Campaigns Overview
Programs and Campaigns are the core structure of your Ambassador setup. Everything in Ambassador — your advocates, rewards, automations, referral tracking, and content — is organized under this hierarchy. Understanding how Programs and Campaigns relate to each other is the foundation of running Ambassador effectively. 🗂️
How Programs and Campaigns Are Related
Think of it this way:
- A Program groups one or more campaigns with the same type of audience or initiative — Affiliate/Influencer, Partner/B2B, Customer, Employee, or Custom.
- Each Campaign is either Evergreen (running continuously without needed frequent updates) or Targeted (time-bound or audience-specific for a/b testing or limited-time promotions for a specific audience).
For example, with a standard customer referral program, you will likely have a single Program and a single (evergreen) Campaign. However, if you are running an Affiliate and Customer program, then you will have two Programs and atleast one evergreen campaign within each.
What a Program Contains
A Program in Ambassador is the top-level container. It holds:
- Its general settings (name, description, status)
- Its associated Campaigns
What a Campaign Contains
A Campaign is where the operational details live. Each Campaign has:
| Component | What it defines |
|---|---|
|
Campaign Basics |
Type, Description, Start/End Date, Tracking cookie duration |
|
Target Audience |
One or more segments containing the contacts eligible to participate as advocates in this campaign. |
| Rewards & Vaults | Reward Rules, Reward Calculations, and Payment Vaults |
| Advocate Experience | Program landing page (for enrollment and info), advocate widgets, advocate portal settings |
| Customer Experience | Customer landing page, Setting to generate share links for advocate, and customer widgets |
| Emails | Surfaces existing email templates to determine if any additional email templates need to be made. |
| Automations | Review global automations and enable campaign specific automations to configure. |
Campaign Statuses
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Live | The campaign is live — advocates can share, referred contacts can be attributed, automations run |
| Draft | The campaign is being configured but is not yet live |
| Ended | The campaign is closed — historical data is preserved but the campaign is no longer active |
How to Create a Campaign
- Go to Programs & Campaigns in your Ambassador admin.
- Open an existing Program or create a new one.
- Click + Add Campaign.
- Give the campaign a name and optional description.
- Configure all required objects for the campaign.
- Review Automations and test.
- Set the campaign's status to Live when you're ready to launch.
Good to Know
- A contact can be an advocate in multiple campaigns, but each Campaign tracks their performance and rewards separately.
- Reward Rules and Reward Calculations are configured per Campaign, but can be cloned to assign to multiple campaigns.
- Payment Vaults can be shared amongst Campaigns, but it does go towards the same payment vault budget if so.
- Automations can be global (run for all campaigns) or assigned to a specific campaign.
- Related articles: Journeys Overview, Automations Overview, Referral Attribution Overview, Reward Rules Overview