/campaigns → New Campaign asks this first, and it is the setting most likely to be wrong for the job you actually have. It is chosen once — switching later warns you that “switching from … to … will discard channel-specific fields”, keeping only Name, Sender, Recipients and Schedule.
The four cards
| Card | What the screen says | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| Voice AI | AI-powered outbound voice calls | You need to ask something and hear the answer |
| SMS / MMS | Send text messages via SMS or MMS | The message is one-way, or a reply can wait |
| Voicemail Drop | Drop pre-recorded voicemail messages | You want the message delivered without occupying anyone |
| Send an approved template to your contact list | Your audience is on WhatsApp and you have a template |
Only Voice AI dials a conversation. The other three deliver something and stop. That is worth stating, because “campaign” is one word for four quite different things — and only one of them consumes a call slot, spends voice minutes, or can come back with an answer.
The composer changes shape with the card. Voice AI is the only one with Call Mission, Phone Menu (IVR) and Dialog Insight; the messaging types have Template and Variables instead.
Voicemail drop means two different things
A genuine trap, because the same words describe two features.
Detect and drop, inside an AI call. A Voice AI campaign rings, notices it has reached an answering machine rather than a person, and leaves your recording instead of talking to the beep. Configured under Voicemail handling in a voice campaign, with a Voicemail Action, a Voicemail Message and Voicemail Audio.
A standalone Voicemail Drop campaign. A campaign type whose entire job is leaving messages. It never attempts a conversation.
The first is a fallback. The second is a strategy. Picking the card when you wanted the fallback gets you a run where nobody was ever going to be spoken to.
Recordings for both live at /campaigns/assets/voicemail-recordings — Manage voicemail recordings, Upload recording, and a Listen button to check what you are about to send to a few hundred people.
Saving one to run again
/campaigns/templates holds reusable starting points. Save as Template from a campaign’s detail page, or New template from the templates screen, then Use template next time.
That is the manual version. A campaign can also repeat on a schedule, which turns a one-off list into a standing job — check-in calls, reminders, a weekly pass over a queue.
The thing to get right there is the audience, not the schedule. A recurring campaign pointed at a static Saved list calls the same people forever; pointed at a Segment, it calls whoever matches this time. The second is almost always what people mean.
Where we are less proven
Not every type has the same evidence behind it:
- Voice AI and recurring campaigns run in production.
- Standalone voicemail drop and WhatsApp template campaigns are tested, with less production mileage than the voice path.
Not a warning against using them — a reason to run the small version first and look at the results yourself, rather than assuming the failure shape is one we have already met.
Picking
If you are unsure: do you need the answer, or just the delivery?
Needing the answer means Voice AI — nothing else can ask a follow-up. Needing only delivery means the cheapest channel your recipient actually reads, which for most audiences is not the phone.