Campaigns

Campaigns are the fundamental element to your Advanced Marketing tool. You will need to set up a Campaign to send emails and newsletters and run reports on your marketing activity.

A Campaign will have one or more Campaign Stages. Campaign Stages let you group multiple emails or contact segmentations in one Campaign.

When using the Advanced Marketing tool, you can also opt to create a Simple Campaign, where you simply create an email, select a mailing list and send.

In this article you will read about:

• Overview campaigns
• Create a campaign
• Campaign statistics
• Add a List to a Campaign

Overview campaigns

From the Marketing menu, click Campaigns to display the summary grid of your past Campaigns. If you have not yet created any campaigns the table will be blank.

As with all your CRM data tables you can click on any of the column headers to sort the data by that column. Depending upon your security settings, you can choose to see My Campaigns, My Group’s Campaigns or All Campaigns from the dropdown menu above the column headings. The Active Only checkbox will limit the list to just your active campaigns (i.e. the campaigns currently running).

The search bar above the table allows you to search all the displayed fields: entering ‘Adwords’ will search for all Campaigns containing the letters ‘Adwords’.

To view or edit a Campaign simply click on the Campaign name to open it. Click the checkbox to select one or more Campaign and new editing icons will appear at the top of your page, e.g. to copy.

Editing a campaign

You can open an existing Campaign by clicking on the Campaign Name.

On the Campaign page, the details of that Campaign are shown plus a table showing that Campaign’s “Campaign Stages”, the Leads from that Campaign, and the Opportunities from that Campaign.

Click Edit to change any of the details of the campaign, update the stages and change the associated emails as required. Click Save.

Deleting a campaign

Deleting a marketing Campaign will delete all it’s Campaign Stages and the Activity Status of it’s Members.

Columns

As with all your CRM data tables you can click on any of the column headers to sort the data by that column. Depending upon your security settings, you can choose to see My Campaigns, My Group’s Campaigns or All Campaigns from the dropdown menu above the column headings. The Active Only checkbox will limit the list to just your active campaigns (i.e. the campaigns currently running).

The Search bar above the table allows you to search all the displayed fields: entering ‘Adwords’ will search for all Campaigns containing the letters ‘Adwords’.

You can change the view of your Campaigns grid to fit your requirements. To change the columns displayed on the table click ‘Columns’ and select/deselect the columns you wish to show. You can change the order of the columns by “dragging and dropping” from the title bar. If all the columns available don’t fit your screen size a “+” box will appear on the right of the table – click this to open and view all the data

Create a campaign

To create a new Campaign (with Campaign stages) and send an email, click the +Add button.

A new screen will open:

• Campaign Name: 
  The name that you want to call the Campaign, such as “September Finance Campaign” or “Adwords 2020-01”.
• Active:
  You’ll need to set the Active checkbox to Yes to be able to add or delete contacts to the campaign or schedule it for mailing. Even if you are just sending a test email to yourself you should set the campaign to Active.
  
  

  If a Campaign is Active no emails will be sent until you schedule your email

  This means that you can safely send a test email to yourself. However, if the Campaign it is not Active you will not be able to send the email.

• Campaign Type:
  Use this box to describe what kind of Campaign it is, such as Advertising, Event, Newsletter. You can define what Campaign Types are available using the Dropdown List CampaignType. This can be accessed in Setting / System Settings, then Custom Dropdown Lists.
  
• Campaign Status:
  Use this box to describe if the Campaign is Running, Planned or Completed. You can define what Campaign Status are available using the Dropdown List CampaignStatus. This can be accessed in Setting / System Settings, then Custom Dropdown Lists.
  
• Start Date and End Date:
  The start and end dates of the Campaign. These are just for information, they don’t affect any processes in the CRM system.
• Budgeted Cost and Actual Cost:
  Enter your original Budgeted cost for the Campaign and the final Actual cost. The actual cost will be used to calculate cost per lead and cost per opportunity. These are just for reporting purposes.
  
• Drip Feed:
  Tick this checkbox if you want this Campaign to be a Drip Feed campaign, where your Contacts are sent a series of automatic emails at predefined intervals.
• Owner:
  The member of staff who “owns” the Campaign, selected from the User list.
• Notes:
  Use the Notes box to describe the Campaign for future reference. Text entered in the Notes field will be shown when you hover your cursor over the Campaign Name on data tables.

Save and create stage

The purpose of Campaign Stages is to divide a larger Campaign into individually manageable segments, letting you group related emails and contact segments.

For example, you could email all your prospects in a first stage campaign, and then send another email as a second stage to just those who clicked through on the first stage.

Or, you could email all or some of your customers with an invite to a golf day, and then send further details to those that accepted, and finally a reminder the week before as a third stage.

You could also segment your database into customers, prospects and suspects, create a stage for each segment, send them slightly different newsletters and then see both the individual segments’ response rate as well as the consolidated numbers.

Campaign stage
The Campaign Stage page holds all the information about the Campaign, who it has been sent to and how they responded. The fields on the Campaign Stage record are as follows:

• Campaign Stage Name:
  

  The name that you want to call the Campaign Stage, such as “Initial Letter” or “Follow Up Call”.

• Campaigns Stage Status:
  Use this box to describe if the Campaign Stage is Running, Planned or Completed. You can define what Campaign Status are available by the dropdown table CampaignStatus which can be accessed from Settings / System Settings/ Custom Dropdown Lists /CampaignStatus.
  
• Campaign Stage Order:
  The order that this Campaign Stage runs in the Campaign. Enter any alphanumeric such as “02”.
• Default Activity Status:
  This is the Activity Status that new Members (your Contacts) are assigned when added to this Campaign Stage. This is normally “Selected”, and is driven by the CampaignActivity dropdown list.
  
• Email:
  If this is an email campaign, the name of the email that will be sent. Select the email you wish to send from the dropdown list.
  
• Notes:
  Use the Notes box to describe the Campaign Stage for future reference. Text entered in the Notes field will be shown when you hover your cursor over the Campaign Stage Name on data table.
  
• Track Clickthroughs:
  Default this is enabled. To track data for your reports.

How to create a campaign stage

1. Open your Campaign and on Campaign Stages grid click the “+ Add” button. This will open a new Campaign Stage page.
2. Give your Campaign Stage a Name, and in the ‘Email’ box select the email you wish to send. If you have not yet created your email, you can add this later.
3. You can then either just ‘Save’ the Campaign Stage or click ‘Save and Add Members’ to select the contacts you wish to mail.

Save and add members

Having created a new Campaign Stage you can select the contacts you wish to mail by using the ‘Save and Add Members’ button or, if you have already saved the stage, re-open it by clicking on the Campaign Stage name and then clicking the Maintain Members button. If you remove a contact, this will take Contacts out of the Campaign Stage, it won’t delete the actual Contacts themselves.

 

Campaigns statistics

As all your marketing data is fed back to the customer account page your sales people will also be able to see how your customers responded to a campaign.

For an overview of your campaigns, click Campaigns on the Marketing menu. This displays a summary of your campaigns, as shown below. You can sort the data by clicking on the column headers.

Your CRM logs your email campaigns against each customer account and records the engagement with your individual contacts. You can monitor and manage your ROI (Return on Investment) and see which campaigns are most cost effective.

When you send an email marketing campaign, the details of who, what and when are logged in your CRM and you can view this by Campaign, Campaign Stage and at customer account level. The Campaign Statistics shows who you mailed, whether the contact opened your message, whether they clicked through on your links or whether they unsubscribed from your messages. It will also record any issues found with a contact’s email address showing ‘bounces’ and undeliverable addresses.

• Campaign Stages Table:
  If you have created multiple Campaign Stages you can also view your stats by the Campaign Stage. Maybe you have segmented customers by different locations, or separated prospects from customers, or maybe you are running A/B testing to see how different emails, titles and text impact your response rate. Comparing data from your different stages will give insight into the engagement and interest of your different customer groups.
• Leads:
  The Leads grid will show you all the Leads that have been attributed to this campaign (by choosing this campaign from the campaign field on the Account).
• Opportunities:
  The Opportunities grid will show you all the Opportunities that belong to Accounts that have been attributed to this campaign.

Add a List to a Campaign

Using the Campaign Wizard, once you have created your email design, the next step is to select your mailing list. If you have not yet created a List, do so first by following the steps above. Then, go to Campaigns and create a new campaign by clicking on Add simple campaign. Give your campaign a name in the next screen and click Save. If you want to learn how to create a Campaign in detail, read this article. 

Click on the List icon at the top of the campaign wizard.

Using the dropdown menu, select the List Type you want to use, i.e. a Static or Dynamic List. Once selected, a second dropdown menu will appear displaying the List Names you have saved for that List Type.

Once you have selected your List, new buttons will appear allowing you to edit the List or change it. If you have selected a Dynamic List, the screen will also display the criteria set for that List, plus a button to edit the criteria if required.