Campaign and tactic dashboards
See how many reached users completed your objective, and how many dropped off.
Table of Contents
Every campaign and every tactic has a Dashboard tab holding a ready-made set of cards built from its objective. The top row answers one question: of the users this campaign or tactic reached, how many went on to complete the objective's Key Moment? The cards below show how that moves over time and whether reached users do better than everyone else.
Prerequisites
- For a campaign dashboard: an objective on the campaign.
- For a tactic dashboard: an objective on the tactic itself. The tactic's top row uses its own objective's Key Moment, not the campaign's.
Without an objective, most cards show a placeholder instead of a number. See Write briefs and set objectives.
What these dashboards are
Appcues generates them per campaign and per tactic. They are read-only, so you can't add, edit, remove, or rearrange cards, and you can't resize them. You also can't copy one of these cards onto a dashboard of your own.
Filters are the one thing you can change. They sit above the cards and behave like the filters on a dashboard you build yourself, except that your selections are stored in the page URL rather than saved onto the dashboard. Bookmark or share the URL and the filtered view travels with it. Nobody else's view changes.
The date range starts on the campaign's or tactic's earliest publish date and runs to today. When nothing has published yet, it starts on the date the campaign or tactic was created.
To build your own product analytics cards instead, see Analytics dashboards overview and Add cards to a dashboard.
Open a dashboard
- Click Campaigns in the left nav, then click a campaign to open it.
- Click the Dashboard tab. The campaign's cards load.
- For a tactic, click the Tactics tab, then click the tactic. A live or previously published tactic opens on its own Dashboard tab. A tactic that has never been published has no dashboard yet.
To have the numbers read back to you, open the ⋮ menu on any card and click Explain this chart. Appcues AI looks up that card's data and explains it in the chat panel. Cards showing a placeholder instead of a number don't offer it.
The top row: reach to objective
An objective is how a Key Moment is measured: the measure, target, and period around it. Most cards here count the Key Moment alone and ignore the measure and target. Only the trend named after the objective and Objective completion by tactic use the objective's full measure. The card names say "objective" for all of them.
Both dashboards open with the same five cards. On a campaign they count the campaign objective's Key Moment. On a tactic they count the tactic objective's Key Moment. All five count only users the campaign or tactic reached, meaning users who saw at least one of its experiences.
| Card | What it counts | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign reach → objective or Tactic reach → objective | Two bars. The first is users who saw any experience in the campaign or tactic during the date range. The second is how many of those users then completed the objective's Key Moment within the funnel window. | The pale part of the second bar is users who saw the content and didn't complete the Key Moment in time. See Read the funnel. |
| Objective completions | Users who both saw your content and completed the objective’s Key Moment during the date range, in either order. One number for the whole range. | A user who completed the Key Moment first and saw your content later still counts here. The funnel only counts completions after the view, so this number can be higher than the funnel’s second bar. |
| Campaign reach or Tactic reach | Unique users who saw at least one experience in the campaign or tactic. One number for the whole range. | Needs no objective, so it always shows a number. |
| Drop-off | Reached users who didn't complete the Key Moment. It's reach minus Objective completions. | A count of users, and every one of them saw your content. |
| Conversion rate | The share of reached users who completed the Key Moment. It's Objective completions divided by reach. | Always divides by reach. If the objective is a conversion rate against another Key Moment, this card ignores that second Key Moment, so its number won’t match the objective’s own figure. |
Read the funnel
Each bar is split into reached and missed. On the second bar, missed is the drop-off: users who saw the content but didn't complete the Key Moment in time.
The funnel only counts a completion that happens after the user first saw the content, within a set number of days. That window comes from the objective's period, and the card's subtitle states it, for example "Conversion through 2 steps within 30 days."
| Objective period | Funnel window |
|---|---|
| Daily | 1 day |
| Weekly | 7 days |
| Monthly | 30 days |
| No period (conversion rate or events per session objectives) | 7 days |
Drop-off counts people who saw your content
Drop-off is the number of users who saw at least one experience in the campaign or tactic during the date range and didn’t complete the objective’s Key Moment in that range. It’s reach minus Objective completions.
The funnel’s missed bar is usually higher, because it also counts users who completed the Key Moment before they saw your content or after the funnel window closed.
Conversion rate always uses the Key Moment
Conversion rate and Objective completions measure the Key Moment alone, whatever kind of objective you set. If your objective is a conversion rate against another Key Moment, these cards ignore that second Key Moment and divide by reach instead. That keeps the top row meaning the same thing on every campaign, but it can differ from the objective's own figure.
The campaign dashboard
The campaign header carries its own Reach figure beside the tabs, described as "Number of users who have been exposed to one or more tactics in this campaign." It appears on the Tactics and Settings tabs.
That figure always covers the last 30 days on a fixed window. It ignores the dashboard's filters and date range, so it won't match the Campaign reach card. Below it, a line compares the count against the previous 30 days, reading as a percentage change, "0 in previous 30d" when that period was empty, or "No data in previous 30d" when there is no prior period.
The dashboard holds nine cards in four rows. The first row is the five cards documented above. The rest:
| Card | What it counts | Users included |
|---|---|---|
| Named after the campaign's objective | The objective's own measure over time (users, events, a conversion rate, or events per session), with the target as a dashed line. | Everyone in your account, whether or not the campaign reached them. |
| Objective success: exposed vs. unexposed | Two lines over time, each a percentage. Exposed: of the users the campaign reached, the share who completed the Key Moment. Not exposed: of the users it didn’t reach, the share who completed the Key Moment. | Exposed: users the campaign reached. Not exposed: every other user in your account, including users outside the audience the campaign targets. To compare against that audience only, add a filter for it. The target line sits on Exposed only. |
| Reach and conversion | Two user counts over time. Reach is users who saw the campaign's content. Converted is users who completed the objective's Key Moment. | Reach counts reached users only. Converted counts everyone who completed the Key Moment, including users the campaign never reached. |
| Objective completion by tactic | The campaign objective's measure, one bar per tactic. | The users each tactic reached. A user reached by two tactics counts in both bars. |
The objective trend and the Converted line aren't narrowed to reached users. The objective trend reports progress toward the objective whether or not anyone saw your content, so the exposed-vs-unexposed card beside it has something to compare against.
Objective completion by tactic shows every draft and live tactic in the campaign rather than a top few. Archived tactics are left out. It uses the campaign objective's own measure, so when that objective is a conversion rate, each bar is that tactic's rate rather than a count of completions.
Tactic objectives don't appear on the campaign dashboard and never add up into the campaign's figure. The by-tactic bars don't add up to it either, because a user reached by more than one tactic counts once per tactic.
Reach and conversion plots two user counts rather than the objective's own measure. Its target line appears only when the objective is itself measured in users.
The tactic dashboard
A tactic answers to two objectives: its own and its campaign's. The dashboard holds seven cards in three rows.
| Row | Card | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The five top-row cards | The tactic objective's Key Moment, for users this tactic reached. See definitions for each here. |
| 2 | Campaign objective: exposed vs. unexposed | The share of users who completed the campaign objective's Key Moment, for users this tactic reached against users it didn't. This is the only card on a tactic dashboard that uses the campaign's objective. |
| 3 | Tactic objective: exposed vs. unexposed | The same split on the tactic's own Key Moment. |
Every card counts only this tactic's reach. A user reached by another tactic in the same campaign, and not by this one, is left out.
Each objective drives its own cards. If the campaign has an objective but the tactic doesn't, the campaign comparison in row 2 fills in, and the funnel and the three objective number cards in row 1 show a placeholder. Tactic reach always shows a number.
How exposed vs. unexposed is measured
Each comparison card draws two lines, one per group of users:
- Exposed: everyone who saw the campaign’s or tactic’s content.
- Not exposed: every other user in your account, including users outside the audience the campaign targets. On a tactic dashboard, that includes users other tactics in the campaign reached.
Each line is a percentage: of the users in that group, the share who completed the Key Moment. If 1,000 users saw your content and 100 of them completed the Key Moment, the Exposed line reads 10%.
Percentages make groups of different sizes comparable. Not exposed is usually far larger than Exposed, so comparing counts would only show which group is bigger. If your objective is a conversion rate against another Key Moment, both lines divide by that Key Moment instead of by everyone in the group.
To compare against your intended audience only, add a Segment filter for that audience. A Campaign or Tactic filter won't do this, because these cards already split users by whether your campaign or tactic reached them. The objective’s target line sits on Exposed only.
What the comparison can't tell you
The gap between the two lines isn't the effect of your campaign or tactic. The two groups were already different before anyone saw your content:
- Targeting decides who sees it, usually users already in the right place at the right moment. They were more likely to complete the Key Moment anyway.
- Not exposed includes users your campaign never targeted. A filter for your audience narrows that group, but it doesn't remove the difference targeting creates.
Read the lines as "users who saw it completed at X%, against Y% for users who didn't." See What a comparison doesn't tell you.
If a card is empty
Empty cards name their own reason, and the grid keeps its shape rather than dropping them.
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| "Add an objective to this campaign to track its performance." | Add an objective on the campaign's Settings tab, or ask Appcues AI to set one. See Write briefs and set objectives. |
| "Add an objective to this tactic to track its own goal." | The tactic has no objective of its own, so its top row has nothing to measure. This shows even when the campaign has an objective. Add one on the tactic's Settings tab. |
| "Add an objective to this tactic's campaign to track its contribution." | The tactic's campaign has no objective, so Campaign objective: exposed vs. unexposed is empty. Add one on the campaign. |
| "Finish setting up this measurement to see results." | The objective exists but isn't finished. Open it and set what's missing, usually the Key Moment or the direction. Tactics created by Appcues AI can carry an empty objective, so you can see this message on a tactic that looks like it has none. |
| "This objective's key moment is unavailable." | The objective's Key Moment no longer resolves to an event Appcues can count. Open the objective and choose an enabled Key Moment. Changing it recalculates the objective's past results. See Create a Key Moment. |
| "Add tactics to this campaign to compare their contribution." | Objective completion by tactic has no draft or live tactic to break down. Add one, or unarchive an existing one. |
If the numbers look wrong
- Objective completions is higher than the funnel's second bar. The number card counts every user who both saw your content and completed the Key Moment in the date range, in either order. The funnel only counts completions after the first view and inside the window. The four number cards agree with each other: completions divided by reach is the conversion rate, and reach minus completions is the drop-off.
- The funnel's first bar doesn't match the reach card. The first bar counts users who saw the content during the date range. The reach card counts users active in the date range who had been reached by its end.
- Drop-off looks too high. Check the funnel's subtitle for the window. A Key Moment that usually takes longer than the window will read as drop-off.
- Conversion rate doesn't match the objective's own figure. The top row measures the Key Moment alone. See Conversion rate always uses the Key Moment.
- The tactic's top row is empty but the campaign has an objective. The top row uses the tactic's own objective, not the campaign's. Add one to the tactic. If the cards say "Finish setting up this measurement to see results," the tactic has an unfinished objective. Open it from the tactic brief and complete it.
- The by-tactic bars add up to more than the campaign's figure. Each bar counts the users that tactic reached, and a user reached by two tactics counts in both. Tactic objectives aren't part of this card.
- Converted is higher than Reach. Converted counts everyone who completed the Key Moment, including users the campaign never reached.
- Reach is lower than you expect. Reach counts from the first publish date, so anything that happened while the campaign or tactic was in draft isn't included.
- The header Reach doesn't match the Campaign reach card. The header figure is a fixed last-30-days count that ignores your filters. The card follows the dashboard's date range and filters.
- A comparison card is flat at zero for one series. Nobody in that group completed the Key Moment in this date range. Widen the date range before drawing a conclusion.
For the filters, date range, and granularity that apply to any dashboard, see Analytics dashboards overview.