As a Customer Relationship Management tool, Microsoft CRM 4 has an entire module related to marketing. A key component of the marketing module is campaigns. Campaigns in Microsoft CRM deals with planning and executing a database marketing campaign. Campaigns are related to database marketing because the campaigns you create deal with data stored in your Microsoft CRM system, and the campaign results will also be stored in your Microsoft CRM system. You need not be a marketing professional to use campaigns. This chapter will introduce you to campaigns, how to execute them and how to record responses.
This chapter logically follows Chapter 19, in which we cull our database to produce lists of customers, prospects, and so on. Now we want to put those lists to good use.
Marketing campaigns can be simple. A campaign can be comprised of a single activity, such as sending a letter, or a campaign can be very sophisticated and comprised of multiple steps. A complex campaign can consist of several phone calls, letters, and trade show attendance involving many people. Whichever campaign is decided upon, marketing managers would like to track campaign response rates. They can then correlate the number of impressions to responses to opportunities and hopefully to new business. This analysis is vital in determining a campaign's effectiveness.
CRM campaigns allow for tracking responses and linking them to sales opportunities. In addition to response rates, campaign managers can track a variety of other campaign-related data and report on results. These tools can help a marketing manager improve planning and execution of future marketing campaigns.
Microsoft CRM is the tool to carry out and track a marketing campaign, but before you do that, you can use CRM to develop a clearly defined plan for the campaign. Proper planning is an essential component of any marketing campaign (but you already knew that didn't you?). When you're armed with a plan that has clearly stated goals and a well-defined budget, you're ready to execute your first Microsoft CRM 4 marketing campaign.
But before we begin our journey through campaign management with Microsoft CRM 4, let's explore a marketing scenario. Our three funny guys, Moe, Larry, and Curly, are planning to attend the big Comedy Convention in Las Vegas later this year. The Comedy Convention sends a list of attendees to exhibitors prior to the convention. Our three funny guys have decided to use Microsoft CRM to market to the attendee list prior to the meeting in an effort to maximize the number of prospects who visit their booth. Their pre-conference marketing consists of different channels — e-mails, letters, phone calls, and so on.
After the conclusion of the conference, our heroes will post-market to the conference attendees that stopped by the booth. With Microsoft CRM, they will be able to manage campaign responses and the effectiveness of the marketing campaign in terms of related opportunities and hopefully new business.
The following list outlines several important aspects of the benefits of using Microsoft CRM for a marketing campaign:
Track budget versus expenses. Money, money, money. Your budget is extremely important, and you want to make sure you have one established before you start. Then, as the campaign progresses, the cost is automatically calculated in Microsoft CRM. You can enter and adjust information for the total budget of the campaign, the expected revenue, miscellaneous costs, or the total actual cost.
Assign promotion codes. Use promotion codes to help track responses. Track responses by associating different codes with different media outlets.
Target products. Add products to Microsoft CRM and associate those products with a marketing campaign. Now you're experiencing the power of a relational database!
Define lists. All campaigns need at least one marketing list associated with it. Marketing lists are collections of accounts, contacts, or leads that have been identified as the target market for a campaign. Marketing list creation can be based on database queries (Advanced Find) or simply by adding users to a particular list or lists. For more on lists, see Chapter 19.
Collect marketing material. Now you'll know who received the unique coffee mug you provided as a thank you. Or perhaps the pen that writes underwater to a depth of 60 feet.
You'll also want to set your revenue target and the starting and ending dates of your campaign. We suggest that you put all this together in an outline before building your campaign. That way, you can see any holes in your campaign before they become an issue.
Let's return to our marketing scenario. The Stooges in preparation for the upcoming Las Vegas conference create a campaign in Microsoft CRM. Let's create the campaign together. Just follow these steps:
On the navigation pane, click the Marketing button.
At the top of the navigation pane, click Campaigns.
The Campaigns window appears, Most likely your view will be My Campaigns, but you can switch your view by clicking on the View drop-down list (See Figure 20-1).
On the window's toolbar, click the New button.
The New Campaign form is displayed, as shown in Figure 20-2.
Enter a name for your campaign in the Name field.
We're entering 2008 Las Vegas Convention.
Click the arrow to the right of the Status Reason field to select an option from the drop-down list.
Because we're creating a campaign here, we choose Proposed. After your campaign is defined and everything is in place, you can change the status to Ready to Launch. The other options are self-explanatory.
Enter your campaign code in the Campaign Code field.
You can enter a code (perhaps as part of a marketing gimmick) or let the program assign the code (just leave it blank for now). The campaign code helps you link responses to the campaign for those important reports and demographic data. The assigned code follows the format your system administrator chose in the settings area.
Choose your campaign type from the Campaign Type drop-down list.
The options are Advertisement, Direct Marketing, Event, Co-Branding, and Other. Select the option that best fits the type of campaign you are creating.
Next, enter the expected number of responses to the campaign in the Expected Response field.
For example, if you're sending 500 mailers and expect a 1 percent response rate, you would put 5 here. This allows you to later measure the actual response rate against what you estimated.
In the Price List field, select a price list to associate with this campaign.
If you're using products in Microsoft CRM, we recommend that you choose a price list so that the campaign has something to work from. If you're not using products then leave this field blank. To learn more about using products with Microsoft CRM see Chapter 7.
In the Offer field, describe your offer.
Fill in the fields in the Schedule section.
These fields are optional, but we recommend you complete them. The proposed dates let everyone working with the campaign know when you'd like to execute the campaign. The actual dates allow you to compare actual to proposed.
Enter a campaign description as needed.
Click Save (the disk icon).
Your data is saved, and you can move on to the other tabs.
Now enter information on the Financials tab as follows:
Click the Financials tab. (See Figure 20-3.)
Complete the Budget Allocated, Miscellaneous Costs, and Estimated Revenue fields.
The other two fields (Total Cost of Campaign Activities and Total Cost of Campaign) are calculated automatically as you define and run your campaign.
We put $35,000 in the budget field and $350,000 in the estimated revenue field. The Stooges want a minimum of a 10x return on any marketing venture.
Remember to click Save (the disk icon).
We suggest that you save your data each time you move to a new tab or option within your campaign.
After you've entered your financial information, you can either click the Save and Close button or enter notes in the Notes tab. You can use notes as a running journal of campaign-related interactions. Notes are not required and will not be reported on, so use them as you see fit.
The Administration tab contains basic campaign administration notes (Owner, Created date, date of last modification, and who did the change), which are filled in automatically. The only field you can edit on this tab is Owner. The Owner field defaults to the logged-in username; you can change the owner by clicking the hourglass to the right of the field.
In the case of a trade show, there's often a lot of preparation needed to have a successful conference. The planning tasks could include: reserve booth space, book hotel and flights, ship the booth, order booth related items, and more. All of these tasks are time sensitive and perfect candidates for the planning tasks section. Additionally, each task can be individually assigned to the proper person within your organization. In Microsoft CRM, tasks are simply activities assigned to CRM users. These activities are associated with the campaign and are found in the campaign planning tasks, on a user's calendar, or in Activities (under Workplace). Completed activities remain listed with a Status Reason of "Completed."
In this section, we will explore the creation of Planning Tasks. All you have to do is follow these steps:
On the navigation pane, click the Marketing button.
At the top of the navigation pane, click Campaigns.
The Campaigns window appears. Most likely your view will be My Campaigns, but you can switch your view by clicking on the View drop-down list. (Refer to Figure 20-1.)
Double-click a campaign to open it (or continue to use the campaign you created above).
On the navigation pane, select Planning Tasks.
The Planning Tasks window appears.
On the Planning Tasks window's toolbar, click the New button to create a new task.
The Task: New window appears, as shown in Figure 20-4. This window is similar to the one you see when scheduling activities (which we discuss in Chapter 14).
Fill in the Subject field.
The subject should be descriptive such as
Order Trade Show Booth Graphics.Fill in the Description field (the large box below the Subject field).
(Optional) Change the owner from you to the person responsible for the task.
If you're the one responsible for the task, ignore this step.
Ensure the Regarding field has the campaign entered.
It will be by default, but if you change it, the planning task will no longer be part of the campaign.
If desired, fill in the remaining optional fields.
Remember, the more information you have, the better you can complete a task.
To add notes to this task, click the Notes tab and enter away.
As with other note fields in Microsoft CRM, you can enter information free-form.
Click the Save and Close button, which saves the task and returns you to the planning tasks workspace, or click Save and New and add more planning tasks.
Campaign activities are often referred to as steps or waves. This is where all the marketing takes place. The campaign responses are reactionary to the activities. Therefore, the better your message (the activity) is, the greater the responses. What's great about this is that you can assess those activities that generate the most response and improve future campaign responses.
To create a campaign activity, follow these steps:
On the navigation pane, click the Marketing button.
At the top of the navigation pane, click Campaigns.
The Campaigns window appears. Most likely your view will be My Campaigns, but you can switch your view by clicking on the View drop-down list. (Refer to Figure 20-1.)
Double-click a campaign to open it (or continue to use the campaign you created above).
From the campaign form, click Campaign Activities on the navigation bar.
Click the New button on the form toolbar.
The Campaign Activity: New window appears, as shown in Figure 20-5. Parent Campaign, Subject, and Owner are required fields, although Subject and Owner are the only fields you can edit.
The Status Reason field is set to Proposed and grayed out. This will change later.
Select the appropriate option from the Channel drop-down list.
This is where you tell the program how you want this phase carried out: phone, fax, letter, e-mail, appointment, and so on. To clarify, this isn't a marketing channel, such as direct marketing or distribution. By the way, you must make this selection to distribute campaign activities, a topic we cover later in this chapter in the Distributing Campaign section.
Channel Options:
Phone: Schedule phone calls to marketing list members. These calls will be made by Microsoft CRM users.
Appointment: Schedule appointments with marketing list members. These calls are made by Microsoft CRM users.
Letter: Send letters to marketing list members. In reality, Microsoft CRM does not create a letter but an activity to send a letter. If you want to create an actual letter then use the Letter via Mail Merge option.
Letter via Mail Merge: Send letters using the mail merge function. You can access letter templates that contain Microsoft CRM data. Note: You must use the Outlook Client to perform this step. See "Distributing Campaign Activities," later in this chapter.
Fax: As with letters, Microsoft CRM does not create a fax but an activity to send a fax. If you want to create an actual fax then use the Fax via Mail Merge option.
Fax via Mail Merge: Send Faxes using the mail merge function. As with letter via Mail Merge, this feature is available from the Outlook Client.
E-Mail: Send e-mail directly to marketing list members from Microsoft CRM. E-mails can be sent immediately or scheduled for users to send. If scheduled, users will have to send them one at a time.
E-Mail via Mail Merge: Send E-mails based on templates. This feature is available from the Outlook Client only.
Other: Use this to indicate a type of campaign activity that will not be distributed, such as a Newspaper Advertisement.
Choose the appropriate option from the Type drop-down list.
The type is the purpose of the campaign activity, such as research or lead qualification.
In the Subject field, enter a subject for your campaign activity.
Although you can call the activity anything you want, we suggest that you keep the subject logical and self-explanatory. For example "first pre-conference e-mail to conference attendees" is preferable to "e-mail attendees."
Add an activity description in the large text box below the Subject field.
If you'd like a label called Description associated with the box, speak to your dealer, or ask us how (
http://www.consultcore.com/dummies.htm).(Optional) From the Owner drop-down list, choose an owner.
The Owner field automatically defaults to the user creating the campaign activity, but you can change it. If you want to delegate tasks in the campaign, this is where you do it. Assign the owner here, and the task appears in the owner's activities.
In the Outsource Vendors field, assign an outsource vendor.
Use the magnifying glass to search for and select a vendor. For example, if the local printing company, Ink, Inc., is printing the invitations to your webinar, they are your outsource vendor.
Choose a scheduled start and end date.
This is self-explanatory.
To the right of these fields, you'll see Actual Start and End Dates, which aren't enabled. These are filled in automatically when you start the campaign.
Fill in the Budget Allocated field with the cost of your budget.
This way, you can check your budget at a glance instead of having to e-mail folks or rifle through papers on your desk. The companion field to the right, Actual Cost, is just that — the actual tally of everything related to this campaign.
Fill in the Priority field.
If desired, fill in the Anti-Spam No. (number) of Days field.
Microsoft CRM will scan the contact's record to make sure the contact hasn't received any other marketing materials within the time frame you specified. It prevents you from overloading the contact with multiple marketing messages. If done right, you can maintain the appropriate number of touches without spamming your customers and prospects.
Click Save (the disk icon) or the Save and Close button.
Remember, if you want to do some more work on the campaign activity, just click Save. Your campaign activity will be saved and the option in the navigation pane will be enabled.
Tip
Prior to distributing this activity, we need to associate one or more marketing lists with the campaign. We'll do so later in the chapter; for now, save and close your campaign activity.
So let's take a look at target products and sales literature.
Often, marketing campaigns are designed to sell a product. If your campaign is designed around one or more products, you can associate those products with the marketing campaign (if not, skip this section). When the campaign is completed, you'll be able to analyze response rates and close rates and compare them by product as well as by campaign. A wonderful feature of Microsoft CRM is that it lets you analyze your data from many different perspectives.
To add a target product, follow these steps:
With the campaign form open, click Target Products in the Sales area of the navigation pane.
The Target Products grid is displayed.
Click Add Existing.
Look up the product(s) you want to associate with the campaign and click >> to add.
Click OK.
The product(s) are associated with the campaign.
The process for adding literature to this campaign is very similar to adding products. Adding literature to a campaign is not required, however doing so let's you associate printed materials to the campaign:
With the campaign form open, click Sales Literature in the Sales area of the navigation pane.
The Sales Literature grid is displayed.
Click Add Existing.
Look up the literature you want to associate with the campaign and click >> to add.
Click OK.
The literature is associated with the campaign.
Marketing lists are mechanisms used to determine the target audience for campaign activities. Every campaign needs at least one associated target marketing list to execute campaign activities. Without a target marketing list, you can't distribute campaign activities. If your campaign does not include personalized marketing or sending something to person, then you will not need to add a marketing list. However, most marketing done with Microsoft CRM is targeted to people, and therefore one or more marketing lists will be necessary. Adding one or more target marketing lists is similar to adding products and literature. Just follow these steps to add a target marketing list:
With the campaign form open, click Target Marketing Lists in the Marketing area of the navigation pane.
The Target Marketing List grid is displayed.
Click Add.
Look up the marketing list(s) you want to associate with the campaign and click >> to add.
Click OK.
You're prompted with the Add Marketing Lists to Campaign dialog box shown in Figure 20-6. If you add the marketing list after you create campaign activities, you can add the list(s) to all existing activities. If you'd like to have more control over this, deselect the check box in the dialog box.
Tip
If you add the marketing list before you add all of your campaign activities — and you'd like to distribute the list over all campaign activities — simply re-add the marketing list.
With at least one target marketing list assigned to the campaign, we can return to the campaign activity created earlier. Our activity is sitting dormant. It hasn't been associated to a single record in the database, nor has it been assigned to anyone on our team to carry out the activity. Microsoft CRM has a built-in mechanism called Distribute Campaign Activities to facilitate the association and assignment of individual campaigns.
Consider this scenario, which illustrates how and why campaign activities are distributed. Assume that the initial step or wave in our campaign calls for making outbound telephone calls. The marketing list we associated with the campaign has 3,500 prospects, and our inside sales team consists of 35 people responsible for making the calls. (They need not be sales people, simply users of Microsoft CRM.) Logistically, this task would be very difficult to do manually; however with Microsoft CRM, this task is quite manageable.
Here are the steps to take to distribute the campaign related calls to the sales team:
On the navigation pane, click the Marketing button.
At the top of the navigation pane, click Campaigns.
The Campaigns window appears. Most likely your view will be My Campaigns, but you can switch your view by clicking on the View drop-down list. (Refer to Figure 20-1.)
Double-click a campaign to open (or continue to use the campaign you created above).
Click Campaign Activities on the navigation menu.
Double-click the campaign activity to be distributed.
If you've already associated a Target Marketing list, skip to Step 11; otherwise, continue to Step 6.
From the campaign activity form, click Target Marketing Lists on the campaign activity navigation pane.
Click Add from Campaign on the form toolbar.
The Lookup Marketing List Dialog box opens
Click the magnifying glass on the upper-right to see all marketing lists or begin to type the marketing list name and click the magnifying glass icon.
A list of all the marketing lists associated with the campaign appears. If the lookup dialog box is empty, you need to associate at least one marketing list with this campaign. To do so, cancel out of this dialog box and follow the steps to associate a marketing list above.
Click the marketing list or Ctrl+click the marketing lists that you'd like to associate with the campaign.
Click OK.
On the Navigation Bar click Information. Ensure that the method of distribution from the Channel drop-down list is correct.
As you can see in Figure 20-7, we chose the Phone channel.
Click Distribute Campaign Activity on the toolbar at the top of the form.
The box that appears depends on the channel you selected. Because we selected Phone as the channel, the New Phone Calls dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 20-8.
Note
To distribute campaign activities where the channel option is Letter via Mail Merge, Fax via Mail Merge, or E-mail via Mail Merge, follow these steps from within the Outlook Client for Microsoft CRM. These activities cannot be distributed from the Internet Explorer client.
Enter the subject.
Subject is a mandatory field. Basically, the subject is a description of the activity you're distributing.
Enter a description in the large text box beneath the Subject field.
The description can be a short script for the person making the call.
On the bottom right corner, click Distribute.
Again, the dialog box that appears depends on the channel you chose to deliver this activity. Because we're using a phone call as our channel, the Distribute Phone Calls dialog box appears.
Select the appropriate options in the Confirm Distribution dialog box.
We have three options here to indicate the owner (the person the call is being assigned to) of the phone call. Choose one of the following radio buttons, as shown in Figure 20-9.
Tip
If your campaign activity is e-mail, you can choose the option to send the e-mails automatically and close the activity. If you don't, you'll have to send the campaign e-mails manually.
Click OK.
You return to the campaign activity window. Take a look in the navigation pane, where you'll see added options to help you track this distribution.
Click Save (the disk icon) or the Save and Close button.
Voila! You're done!
The phone call option and channel will track where the phone calls went and how many failed attempts were made. As you can see, Microsoft CRM makes campaign scheduling especially easy for those in large companies and those who handle a large number of activities for marketing campaigns.
The navigation bar on the campaign activity form now has two additional items: Phone Calls Created and Failures. Figure 20-10 illustrates those changes. Failures lists those activities that were not distributed. Usually, failures are related to records where the contact method for the type of communication is set to Do Not Allow. To learn more about Do Not Allow, refer to Chapter 19.
After an activity has been distributed, the next step is to close the activity. This allows you to be able to distinguish between closed activities, completed activities, and pending campaign activities. To close an activity, follow these steps:
On the navigation pane, click the Marketing button.
At the top of the navigation pane, click Campaigns.
The Campaigns window appears. Most likely your view will be My Campaigns, but you can switch your view by clicking on the View drop-down list. (Refer to Figure 20-1.)
Double-click a campaign to open (or continue to use the campaign you created above).
Choose Actions
The Close Campaign Activity dialog box appears (as shown in Figure 20-11).
Indicate the Status, choose the dates, and click OK.
When you create a marketing campaign, you expect results or responses, whether they're negative or positive. There are even folks dedicated to determining response rates, filtering that information into percentages, and making little pie charts and bar graphs from those responses. Good news or bad, you can record it in Microsoft CRM.
Another little bonus to being able to record your responses in a central system like this is that your sales department and your marketing department can see the same information! Whoa! Who doesn't want their departments working together, in sync and in harmony? (Okay, maybe not in harmony, as the marketing department stomped the sales department last year in the softball game, but you get the picture.)
Excited now? Good. Here's how you (or your sales staff) can record those responses. Essentially, there are two ways to record campaign responses, from the activity form or from Campaign Responses on the campaign navigation bar. We explore both methods in the steps that follow.
Earlier in the chapter, we distributed phone calls to staff members. Presumably, an individual opens the activity and makes the call. If so, that person can convert the activity to a campaign response. Here's how to do it:
On the navigation pane, click the Marketing button.
At the top of the navigation pane, click Campaigns.
In the Campaigns window, double-click your campaign.
The campaign window appears.
On the navigation pane of the open campaign window, click Campaign Responses.
On the window's toolbar, click New.
The Campaign Response: New window appears, as shown in Figure 20-12.
Tip
Another way to make this window appear? With the campaign activity open, just click Actions
Most of the fields are self-evident, but we touch on some of them here.
Response Code: This indicates the response of the customer. You can choose from Interested, Not Interested, Do Not Send Marketing Materials, and Error.
Promotion Code: You can link the response to a particular promotion. If the customer is calling because of the free bunny slippers, for example, you can indicate that here. Several campaigns can have the same promotion, so this is just another way of grouping data for marketing analysis.
Customer: This can be an account, a contact, or a lead. If you arrived at the campaign response form via Step 1, the customer field will already be filled in.
When you've completed the form, click the Save button.
After the form is saved, look at the toolbar. A new button has been added — the Convert Campaign Response button.
Click the Convert Campaign Response button.
The Convert Campaign Response form opens. (See Figure 20-13.)
Click OK.
When you've completed the form, click the Save and Close button.
The Campaign Response window closes, and you return to the open campaign window.
By recording campaign responses, you can easily check the status of each campaign throughout its lifespan. This is a great feature because you can see, for example, whether one promotion is taking off or a certain employee is having trouble making calls.
Now, say you're running two campaigns: one to identify interest by product category and one to reflect different marketing strategies for each product category. That's great. But what if you want to compare them? Easy! Just relate the campaigns to each other. Here's how:
On the navigation pane of the open campaign window, click Related Campaigns.
The window switches to the Related Campaigns workspace, as shown in Figure 20-14.
On the window's toolbar, click Add Existing.
Like the other options mentioned in this chapter, the Look Up Records dialog box appears.
Search for the other campaign you want to relate to this one, select it, and click the right-pointing arrow to add it to the right-hand pane.
Click OK.
You return to the Related Campaigns workspace.
Click Save (the disk icon) or the Save and Close button to save your work.
Tip
One of the great features of Microsoft CRM is that you can do a report on just about anything, including campaign performance, which you can check by clicking the Campaign Responses or Related Campaigns selection in the navigation pane of your campaign window. Then just click the Reports icon on the window's toolbar (or select a report from the drop-down box by clicking the arrow next to the Reports icon). You can print the report as a table or a graph. Either way, use the information to help you stay on top of what's going on in the campaign.
There are times when you'll want to create a single marketing touch and send it to a group of records. Quick campaigns are the answer. On the toolbar grid for Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Marketing Lists, you can find a Create Quick Campaign button. Here, we explore this feature with contacts, but it's similar for other record types as well.
All you have to do to set up a quick campaign is follow these steps:
On the navigation pane, click Contacts.
The window switches to the contact grid.
On the grid toolbar, click Create Quick Campaign.
Figure 20-15 shows the three options available for a quick campaign:
For Selected Records
For All Records on Current Page
For All Records on All Pages
Tip
If you want to select multiple records on the page, use Ctrl+click.
Choose an option and click Next.
Provide a name for your campaign.
Make the name as descriptive as possible, keeping the 200-character limit in mind.
Click Next.
Choose the activity type and the owner.
The next screen depends on what you choose for an activity. We're choosing Phone Call for this example.
Enter a subject and a description.
Click Next.
Click Create.
Figure 20-16 shows the Create a Quick Campaign Wizard. It summarizes the number of records impacted by the quick create. If the summary looks good, click Create.
To view all of the quick campaigns in the system:
On the navigation pane, click the Marketing button.
At the top of the navigation pane, click Quick Campaigns.
Double-click a quick campaign.
Figure 20-17 depicts the Quick Campaign grid.
From the grid, you can easily ascertain how many people were targeted (total members), the number of success and failures, and the status of the campaign.
Double-click a quick campaign.
The Quick Campaign detail form opens. Figure 20-18 shows the quick campaign detail form. The items are self explanatory; however we want to point out that by clicking the Created item (Phone Calls Created, in our example) in the navigation pane, you open campaign activities and record responses as described in the "Recording Campaign Responses" section earlier in this chapter.
