Account Owner Tutorial

What's Annum?

Annum is an integrated marketing calendar and omnichannel planning system. It is purpose built for strategic planning. It's where you flesh out your integrated marketing plan.

In Annum you see insights, Initiatives, Tactics, and in-market dates. It serves as a plan of record that shows the omnichannel customer experience.

Annum is not a project management or production tool. Those tools support the execution of the strategic plan with tasks, deadlines, to do lists, and creative asset development.

App Orientation

The far left pane provides global navigation to the three functional areas of the application.

Plans in the upper left hand corner will take you to a list of the Plans you have access to. Each business or brand is set up on its own unique Plan. Select Launch Plan to view.

Under Help you will find links to: our instructional Guides, Feedback for reporting bugs and suggesting new features, and Contact Us for connecting via email.

Click on your icon to manage your account, access your Profile, or log out. If you have a self serve account, click on Subscriptions to add and remove Plans and to access billing information. If you don’t see Subscriptions, contact us regarding Plans and billing. In your Profile you can edit your name and email address and change your password. Here you can also see a list of the Plans you have access to and your role for each.

Types of Plans

Annum offers two options for planning:

A Plan of Record is a singular plan or calendar designed to accommodate all Initiatives and Tactics for a brand or business.

Our Lead and Nested Plan Structure is a connected parent-child calendar system for large enterprises. The Lead Plan or calendar represents the overarching organization and different business units are set up as Nested Plans or calendars underneath.

Here are some key distinctions to help you know if you are working in a Plan of Record or a Lead and Nested Plan Structure.

Plan of Record

Lead and Nested Plans

(View from within a Lead Plan)

When you are in a Nested Plan you can see Initiatives and Tactics from the Lead Plan precede by the house icon and in the more vivid Channel color. You also have the ability to toggle the Lead Plan on and off in the Filters. You are not able to see Initiatives and Tactics from the other Nested Plans and they do not appear in the Filters. As such, you will not see the use of Nested Plan acronyms.

Learn more about plan set up and how to enter and edit Tactics in our Lead and Nested Plan structure.

Account Management

As the Account Owner, Account Settings is the place where you can see the plans associated with your account along with all team members. To access Account Settings click on the black dot in the bottom left hand corner of the app and select “Account Settings” from the pop-up.

To Change the Name of Your Plan

1. Click on the black dot in the bottom left hand corner of the app
2. Select “Account Settings” from the pop-up
3. Under “Plans” click on the pencil icon to the far right of your plan
4. Click in the box to type in a new name
5. Click on the checkmark to the far right of your plan to save the new name

Payment details and Plan subscriptions are managed in our Subscription Portal for our self serve customers. If you do not see “Subscriptions” and want to change your plan or have a billing question, please contact us.

Plan Set Up

Every marketing plan is different. It starts with the business' unique objectives and target audiences, and broadens to encompass the communication methods and channels that are most relevant and effective. Annum provides a system for omnichannel planning that is structured to support your objectives, your strategy, and your planning methods.

You will find Plan Settings at the center top of the Plan you are working in. Here you'll find controls to enter overarching components of your strategy and plan, customize the Channels and data you are working with, and manage your Team.

If you are working in our Lead and Nested Plan Structure, set up Channels, Strategic Priorities and Initiatives in the Lead Plan first so they can be adopted by all Nested Plans. Nested Plans can also set up their Channels, Strategic Priorities and Initiatives. See Lead and Nested Plans Structure for more.

Customize Channels and Tactic Types

Our omnichannel calendar starts out with a default list of Channels and Tactic Types. Account Owners and Plan Admins can customize them to meet your planning needs.

Visit our guide on Customizing Channels and Tactic Types for detailed instructions.

Turn on Calendars of Interest

Timing in relation to seasonality and external events is critical to the success of a strategic marketing plan. That's why Annum features calendars of holidays, observances, events, and customer insights that can be turned on with a click.

Calendars of Interest must be turned on in a Plan by a Plan Admin in order to be accessible. We offer a set of standard calendars as well as the ability to add custom calendars set up for public sharing.

Visit the Calendars of Interest Guide for the full list and set up instructions.

Set Strategic Priorities

Keeping the focus on your marketing objects, target audience segments, and their journey phases during tactical planning can be challenging. Within our omnichannel calendar you can simply enter these elements of your strategy and tag Initiatives and Tactics to them as you plan. This keeps them front and center and lets you Filter by Strategic Priority to check cross-channel coverage.

Visit our guide on setting up Strategic Priorities for detailed instructions.

Plan Initiatives

Initiatives are overarching, priority marketing efforts that are supported by multiple connected Tactics. 

Default categories include:

• Campaign – a positioning or theme driven multi channel marketing effort to distribute key messages (e.g. a brand awareness campaign)
• Promotion – a discount or reward driven marketing effort to drive action (e.g. 10% off your first order when you subscribe to the newsletter)
• Key Date – an important event, happening or observance (e.g. a product launch)
• Monthly Theme - a topic that ties into seasonality or major initiatives and is used to unify and inform marketing activities within a month (e.g. a Monthly Theme of Gratitude for November)

Plan Admins can edit the names of the default categories and add custom categories. 

Once an Initiative, such as a Campaign, is entered into your Plan, you can tag Tactics to it as you create them. Then, when you select that Campaign as a Filter everything else drops out of the calendar except for the Tactics tagged to that Campaign. This gives you a cross channel view of all campaign elements for more strategic integrated planning.

Enter an Initiative and Set Duration

Visit our guide on Planning Initiatives for more detailed instructions.

Simultaneously Manage Your Budget

Within Annum, budgets are managed at the tactical level. This means that you enter budget data while you plan. If it's in the plan, it's in the budget. If it's in the budget, it's in the plan. Easy, intuitive, efficient.

Visit our guide on Managing Your Budget for detailed instructions.

Manage Team Members

Annum was designed to break down the organizational silos that exist between marketing disciplines and channels. It serves as a single source of truth for all marketing team members, agency partners and consultants. It can be expanded to include product, sales, and customer success teams for cross departmental alignment. It centers everyone on the omnichannel customer experience.

Visit our guide on Managing Team Members for detailed instructions.

Plan Tactics

Tactics are specific, individual, timed actions a business takes to communicate and/or engage with its audiences, for example: a Happy Valentines Day Instagram Post on February 14, 2022 at 8:00 a.m.

Tactics are organized by Channel and Tactic Type. Channels are the different tools and media vehicles a business uses to communicate with its intended audiences, for example: website, organic social media, signage, paid search. Tactic Types are the types of actions a business takes to communicate/engage with its audiences in different Channels, for example: home page banner, social post, front window sign, PPC text ad.

When setting up a repeating Tactic, note that all instances of that Tactic share the same details in terms of topic, associated notes, custom fields of data, tags, and budget numbers. It is currently not possible to change this associated data by instance, however it is planned as a future enhancement. If you desire to set up a repeat for a weekly blog post, for instance, we suggest you use the Notes field to plan different topics by publish date.

Platforms are third party websites, apps and media where a business publishes content and advertises, for example: Instagram, Google, Clear Channel.

After creating a Tactic you can click on the button in the upper right hand corner to:

• Simply save what you have created
• Save what you have created and make a copy of it
• Save what you have crated and reopen the window to add another

Select Your Best View

Initiatives and Tactics that are entered into Annum, can be viewed a number of different ways based on your needs. Use the following buttons at the top of the application to select the right view for you.

The Day and Month views are most helpful when trying to determine time of day or best day of week / month for a Tactic. In order to keep the day grids of these two views uncluttered, Annum displays month long observances/events, overarching Initiatives, Monthly Focuses, and long running Tactics in the Overstory.

The Monthly Channel Focus is an opportunity to establish a cue for planners in a specific Channel. For example if you would like the Social Media team to share posts relating to "Gratitude" during the month of November.

Get Strategic With Filters

When you have a lot going on it's hard to ensure that all Channels are working synergistically for the success of your key Initiatives and Strategic Priorities. In order to help you make better strategic decisions, Annum features Filters that can provide a cross channel integrated view of all Tactics related to a specific Campaign, Promotion, Key Date, Objective, Target Segment, or Journey Phase.

Export as PDF

All the views of your plan within Annum can easily be exported and saved as PDFs by using the Print settings of your browser.

Please note that the PDF will reflect what ever is viewable on your screen. If you have any modals closed/hidden, they will not be represented in the PDF. If you have any Filters activated, only what you have filtered in and can see in the calendar will be shown in the PDF.

For Chrome Users

1. Go to File > Print.
2. Scroll down to "More Settings" and click to open.
3. Scroll down to "Options" and check the box for "Background Graphics" so you can see the colors of the bars.
4. Select from Option A or B below.

OPTION A

1. Scroll back up to the top and click in "Destination" and select "Save as PDF."
2. Enter the name for the document, select the destination, and click "Save."

OPTION B

1. Scroll down to "Open PDF in Preview" and click to open.
2. In the Preview application click "File" then "Save."
3. Enter the name for the document, select the destination, and click "Save."

For Safari Users

1. Go to File > Print.
2. Click on "Show Details" under the small image of your PDF.
3. Check the box for "Print Backgrounds" so you can see the colors of the bars.
4. Click on "PDF" and select "Save as PDF."
5. Enter the name for the document, select the destination, and click "Save."

For Other Browser Users

Google the name of your browser + "export to PDF."

For more explanations and instruction, visit Guides where you will find a Glossary of terms, other role tutorials, and more. If you still have unanswered questions, contact us.

Our strategic omnichannel marketing planning calendar is patent pending.