How to organise a marketing campaign in SmartSuite

Executive overview

Managing a campaign across briefs, milestones, tasks, and assets in scattered tools creates coordination gaps. SmartSuite's marketing campaign template centralises all of it in one structure.

Start from the built-in template, convert key fields to Smart Docs for richer formatting, set default values so every new campaign inherits your standard brief, then layer in sub items or checklists for task tracking.

The core insight: default field values do the setup work for you — every new campaign starts pre-structured, not blank.

Setting up the campaign brief

• Load the marketing campaign template from SmartSuite's template library
• Convert long-text fields to Smart Doc fields for slash-command formatting and linked records
• Paste your creative brief into the field's default value settings — not directly into the field
• Set default assignee to the record creator so ownership is automatic
• Delete demo data at the solution level before adding your own

Tracking tasks: sub items vs checklists

• Sub items support custom fields (dates, status, confidence ratings) — best for major milestones
• Checklists have built-in assignee and due date fields — best for simpler recurring tasks
• Both can have default values set so standard steps are pre-populated on every new record
• Use sub items and checklists together: milestones as sub items, execution tasks as checklists

Linking assets, channels, and personas

• Channels, brand assets, and buyer personas are separate databases linked via linked record fields
• Create new records in those databases directly from within the campaign record
• Linked record display can be customised to show a summary preview without opening the record
• Grouping and sorting by linked campaign field is available across all related databases

Keeping the team aligned

• Use the built-in comments area to tag team members and share campaign details
• Comments trigger notifications in each tagged person's notification centre
• Add multiple assignee fields to define distinct roles (e.g. project manager, proofer)
• Link each assignee field to the status field so tasks surface in each person's "My Work" view
• Automations can send weekly status emails for all active campaigns