An omnichannel campaign does not send on every channel at once. It works down a list until one of them reaches the guest. Channel Preferences is where that list lives.
Opening it
Channel Preferences sits at the top of the left-hand panel in the campaign builder, above the numbered steps. It is available from any step, and the settings belong to that campaign alone.
What is in it
A Prioritise guests channel preference toggle, and below it a table with three things per row:
Active. Whether the campaign is allowed to use that sender at all.
The sender itself, with a channel icon. A phone number for messaging channels, an email address for email, each labelled with the property it belongs to. So a row reads something like a number followed by your property name.
Priority. The order the campaign tries them in. Priority 1 is attempted first.
A campaign scoped to one property shows that property's senders. This is per campaign, so two campaigns at the same property can use the same senders in a different order.
Why the order matters more than it looks
The priority order is the difference between a campaign that costs very little and the same campaign costing a great deal.
Put WhatsApp at priority 1 and email at 2, and guests with a WhatsApp number are reached over WhatsApp, with email picking up the rest. Reverse it and the pattern reverses with it. Put SMS above WhatsApp and you will pay SMS rates for guests who could have been reached for less.
This is also why the SMS costs estimate on Review and Publish is a ceiling rather than a forecast. It prices the campaign as though every message went by SMS, and your channel preferences are the main reason the real figure comes in lower. See The SMS cost estimate.
Turning a channel off for one campaign
Switching a sender's Active toggle off is the cleanest way to stop a campaign using a channel, and it changes nothing about any other campaign.
That makes it the right tool for a campaign whose content only works on one channel. A message written for email, with a layout and images, should not fall back to SMS where it will arrive as a wall of text. Turn the SMS sender off for that campaign and the fallback cannot happen.
What it does not do
It does not create senders. The rows are the sender identities already configured for your properties. Channel Preferences only decides which of them this campaign may use, and in what order.
It is not the same as the channels you wrote content for. A sender being active does not mean there is a message for it. A channel with no content for the guest's language fails with Campaign template not found on the Schedules tab, whatever its priority.
It does not override language handling. If Prioritize Language is switched on under Advanced, language can take precedence and change which channel is used. See Journey campaign advanced settings.
Getting help
Open Talk to Us in the left menu of the platform, or email [email protected]. Tell us the campaign name and which channel you expected it to use.