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Marketing Campaigns

Run targeted SMS and WhatsApp campaigns to drive sales, re-engagement, and awareness — while staying compliant with consent and quiet-hour rules across African markets. This guide walks through a full promotional campaign with segmentation, personalization, opt-out handling, and analytics.

Scenario: Weekend Flash Sale​

A fashion retailer operating in Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana wants to send a personalized flash-sale offer to 50,000 opted-in customers, segmented by country, with full opt-out compliance and post-campaign reporting.

Step 1: Build a Consented Audience​

Only message contacts who opted in. AfriRoute enforces this at send time, but you should segment up front:

segment.py
def build_audience(contacts):
    """Keep only marketing-consented contacts, grouped by country."""
    audience = {}
    for c in contacts:
        if not c.get('marketing_consent'):
            continue
        audience.setdefault(c['country'], []).append(c)
    return audience

Step 2: Launch a Campaign​

Use the campaigns endpoint to send personalized, throttled, country-aware traffic in one call:

curl -X POST https://api.afriroute.ai/api/v1/campaigns \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRIROUTE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Weekend Flash Sale",
    "from": "StyleHub",
    "category": "promotional",
    "respect_quiet_hours": true,
    "message_template": "Hi {{name}}, weekend flash sale! {{discount}}% off everything. Shop: {{link}} Reply STOP to opt out.",
    "recipients": [
      { "to": "+254712345678", "vars": { "name": "Amina", "discount": "30", "link": "stylehub.co/ke" } },
      { "to": "+2348012345678", "vars": { "name": "Chidi",  "discount": "25", "link": "stylehub.co/ng" } }
    ]
  }'
{ "campaign_id": "camp_abc123", "total_recipients": 2, "status": "scheduled", "estimated_cost": 0.0218, "currency": "USD" }

Step 3: Respect Quiet Hours and Opt-Outs​

With respect_quiet_hours: true, promotional messages submitted during a country's restricted window are held and released at the next permitted hour (see Country Requirements). The Reply STOP to opt out footer is mandatory for promotional traffic — AfriRoute auto-suppresses anyone who replies STOP:

curl https://api.afriroute.ai/api/v1/contacts/suppressions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRIROUTE_API_KEY"

Step 4: Measure Results​

Pull campaign analytics once delivery completes:

curl https://api.afriroute.ai/api/v1/campaigns/camp_abc123/analytics \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRIROUTE_API_KEY"
{
  "sent": 50000,
  "delivered": 48650,
  "failed": 1350,
  "delivery_rate": 0.973,
  "opt_outs": 142,
  "link_clicks": 9120,
  "total_cost": 543.20,
  "currency": "USD"
}

Compliance Checklist​

  • ✅ Marketing opt-in consent recorded for every recipient — see Data Protection
  • ✅ EU recipients handled under GDPR
  • ✅ Mandatory STOP opt-out in every message
  • ✅ Quiet hours respected per country
  • ✅ Registered promotional sender ID per market

Best Practices​

  1. Personalize with name and locale-relevant offers — lifts conversion materially.
  2. Segment by country so links, currency, and language match.
  3. A/B test subject hooks on a small sample before full send.
  4. Estimate cost before launch using SMS Pricing.
  5. Throttle large sends; AfriRoute campaigns handle rate limiting for you.

Last Updated: May 2026