Chapter 12: Understanding Marketing Campaigns

CHAPTER 12: UNDERSTANDING MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

Objectives
The objectives are: Understand the benefits of closed loop marketing. Identify when to use a quick campaign and when to use a marketing campaign. Know the purpose of quick campaigns and the key steps to create one. Know the purpose and elements of marketing campaigns. Identify the way campaign results can be captured. Understand the analysis and reporting available for campaigns.

Introduction
This lesson summarizes the marketing functionality and key features you can use to increase marketing effectiveness. It explains the core concepts of marketing campaigns in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This lesson will give you an understanding of closed loop marketing, quick campaigns, marketing campaigns, the parts of a marketing campaign, and campaign responses and reporting. Marketing concepts and business drivers are also discussed to provide an overall context. The specific procedures for conducting Marketing Campaigns in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are covered in depth in later lessons.

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Benefits of Closed Loop Marketing

In many organizations there is division between what happens in the Marketing department and what happens in the Sales department. This division can cause one or more of the following problems: Sales has no visibility into what marketing is doing to support their efforts. Marketing has no visibility into what the sales team does to follow up on the leads they produce. Overall marketing effectiveness does not improve because there is no way to measure what works and what does not.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is designed to help companies solve these problems by providing one tool to connect the efforts of both groups. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM the goal of each marketing campaign is to provide what is known as closed loop marketing. By ensuring that the campaign targets, campaign activities, and the results of the campaign activities are related and captured in a consistent format, the entire team can measure data such as: Number of leads produced Number of converted leads Number of opportunities Revenue produced from closed opportunities Cost per lead Cost per opportunity

The ability to know what was spent on a campaign and relate it to the actual revenue that resulted is the essence of closed loop marketing. A marketer with this information can plan, forecast, and target more effectively. This information helps the marketing team assess the quality of lead sources and design campaigns that produce better results with each effort.

Marketing Campaigns Versus Quick Campaigns

There are two types of campaigns you can run using Microsoft Dynamics CRM: marketing campaigns and quick campaigns. Marketing campaigns represent marketing efforts over a period of time, while quick campaigns represent an instant marketing effort. Both types of campaigns allow you to: Create campaign activities, which are the interactions with the customer, such as an e-mail, a letter, or a phone call.

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Use marketing lists, which are lists of customers that meet specific criteria, such as all customers who have bought a specific product in the last year. View campaign responses, which are the customer replies to campaign activities.

BEST PRACTICE: You can use Campaigns to automate e-mail marketing activities. When you use an e-mail as a campaign activity, you can choose whether the e-mail is sent automatically by the system or requires the e-mail owner to send the e-mail. By default, the system sends the e-mail for you. Marketing campaigns are used for traditional marketing efforts where the user may want to schedule multiple activities, such as an e-mail broadcast followed by targeted phone calls. These are longer term efforts, usually distributing information through several types of activities. Marketing campaigns also allow you to add target products, sales literature, and related campaign details to the campaign. This feature is usually used by marketing representatives and marketing managers. Quick campaigns are used for single-activity campaigns and are created using a wizard. These are shorter term efforts, distributing only one activity. For instance, if a sales representative knows that he will be attending a tradeshow in a certain geographic area, he can use Advanced Find to quickly create a list of leads in that area. He can then use the list to create a quick campaign and schedule a phone call for each lead. Each scheduled phone call automatically shows up in his Workplace as an activity. Quick campaigns are often used by salespeople or sales managers. Marketing campaigns and quick campaigns have similar functionalities: both can use marketing lists, distribution information through activities, and let you view the responses. The main difference is the length and complexity of the campaign. Quick campaigns are short and only distribute one activity. Marketing campaigns are longer in duration and can include many types of activities.

Using Quick Campaigns

To create a quick campaign, start by identifying the customers the campaign is targeting. This is done by creating a search whose results are the target customers. From the search result, start the Quick Campaign wizard. Quick campaigns allow activities to be assigned to users and queues for completion. The activities can closed and reported on. Selecting Customers for a Quick Campaign

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There are three ways to select customers for a Quick Campaign: Select the contacts, accounts, or leads directly from a view, such as My Active Leads. In the list, select the records you want, and then click Create Quick Campaign to start the wizard. You can launch the campaign for all records on the page or all records on all pages. Use a marketing list to select the customers. Creating marketing lists is discussed in later lessons. To access existing marketing lists, in the Navigation Pane, click Marketing, and then click Marketing Lists. In the list, select the list to use, and then click Create Quick Campaign to start the wizard. Use Advanced Find to search records. Advanced Find is covered in Lesson 4, The Customer Centered View. After running an Advanced Find, in the results, click Create Quick Campaign to start the wizard.

Working with a Quick Campaign

When you create a new quick campaign, you can choose who owns the activities that are distributed. The activity, such as the phone call, is then completed by the owner you have specified. You can assign the activities to: Yourself: This allows you to quickly make a list of customers to personally work with. The owner of the records: This allows you to assign work to the specific owner of the customer record. Another user or a queue: This allows you to assign the work to a queue for anyone to work on.

After you create the quick campaign, Microsoft Dynamics CRM creates and distributes the activities to the appropriate resource. Once the quick campaign has been created and distributed, the assigned user can view and take action on the campaign activities and the responses. The records for customers can be viewed and reports can be run to analyze the effectiveness of the campaign.

Completing the Quick Campaign

Once the quick campaign is created and distributed, the activity owner can view and take action on the campaign activities and the responses. The customer records can be reviewed and reports can be run to analyze the effectiveness of the campaign.

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Understanding Marketing Campaigns

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the marketing campaign represents a complete marketing effort. Marketing campaigns organize all the details in one place; including the planning tasks, the campaign activities, the products, sales literature, related campaigns, the marketing list, and the distribution of the marketing activities. By having all the information in one place, you can quickly assess how successful the campaign was. Marketing campaigns can have the following elements: Campaign activities: The interaction with the customer, such as a letter, phone call, or e-mail. Planning tasks: Tasks that must be accomplished to execute the campaign. Target products: Any products around which this campaign is centered, if it is about promoting specific products. Sales literature: Any existing literature used during the campaign. Marketing list: A list of specific customers that are being targeted in the campaign.

Campaign Activities
Campaign activities form the core of a campaign. They are the action that constitutes the campaign, such as sending a letter, making a phone call or sending an e-mail. Campaign activities can include a priority and a budget. For example, if the activity is a letter, the budget might include the cost of printing, envelopes, and postage. This information helps you determine the cost and value of the campaign. When you have completed the activity, you can update the actual cost. Tracking the costs assist you in planning future activities and campaigns. Campaigns can have more than one activity; For example, You might send a letter and follow up with a phone call. Activities within a campaign can all use the same marketing list or each activity can use a different list. For example, a campaign might include three different marketing lists for various groups of customers with different messaging for each group. In this case, you would create separate activities for each message and each activity would use a different marketing list to target the appropriate customers for that message. The types of campaign activities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are: Phone Appointment Letter Fax E-mail

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As you create or modify campaign activities, you can enter the costs of the activities. When costs are updated in activities, they automatically update the total cost of the overall campaign. This allows you to view all costs associated with a campaign.

Marketing Lists
Simply stated, marketing lists are lists of accounts, contacts, or leads that match a specific set of criteria. Marketing lists can only contain one record type, such as contacts, accounts, or leads. Once you determine the record type, it cannot be changed, though individual records can be added to the list or removed from it. Marketing lists can be deleted, merged into other lists, or deactivated. Once you have determined that the list is complete, the marketing list can be locked, to prevent any changes to the list.

Planning Tasks
Planning tasks help you organize the tasks you need to complete in order to launch and operate a campaign. For example, if your campaign were an event you were holding for your customers you could enter planning tasks such as reserving space or hiring vendors. You could also have tasks such as designing and ordering the brochures that you plan to mail out.

Target Products
A marketing campaign can be designed to promote one or more products. If your organization uses the product catalog in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can add products to the campaign to make it easy for salespeople to view what the campaign is promoting, and also to help you create very specific reports showing campaign effectiveness. For example, the marketing team might be interested in knowing how many campaigns were run to promote a certain product over a certain period, and how much revenue those campaigns generated.

Sales Literature
Sales literature is content about a product or a service. Salespeople can review the literature and deliver it to customers based on their interest level. Sales literature files can be added to a campaign to help salespeople find the information they need to know in order to follow up with customers effectively. Sales representatives can download or view added sales literature whenever it is needed.

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Adding Related Campaigns
Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to add related campaigns to each other so you can compare the effectiveness of each separate campaign or look at all the campaigns together. For example, to run several small campaigns promoting a certain product over the course of a year, you can add the smaller campaigns to an overall campaign. Once the campaigns are completed, you can run reports to analyze the effectiveness of the overall campaign and of each of the related campaigns.

Distributing Campaign Activities

When it is time to launch the campaign, you will distribute the activities. Campaign activities can be created early in the campaign planning cycle and then planning tasks can be used to remind you when it is time to distri Once youve created your campaign activities and it is time to launch the campaign, you will then distribute the activities. Campaign activities can be created early in the campaign planning cycle and then planning tasks can be used to remind you when it is time to distribute them. Once a campaign activity has been distributed, the activity owner(s) will see these under Activities in their Workplace. They will then be responsible for performing the activity, such as making the phone calls or sending the e-mail.

Using Marketing Campaign Templates

Campaign templates allow you to plan a campaign and then reuse it for any number of marketing campaigns. You can add many campaign-related items to a template and then use that template to create multiple campaigns. This reduces the amount of time and planning required to create campaigns. Templates can also help you to ensure that multiple campaigns driven by different staff members contain the same activities, product information, or other items that you want to keep consistent. Campaign templates can be modified or published for use by any number of Microsoft Dynamics CRM users. For example, if you are part of a centralized marketing team that provides support to staff located in other regions or countries, you can create a template and make it available to all Marketing and Sales rRepresentatives. They can then create new campaigns from the template and modify it to suit their local needs and launch unique, targeted campaigns to accounts in their geographic area.

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Managing Campaign Responses

The goal of any marketing campaign is to create measurable results. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, these results are captured as campaign responses. The responses can be acted upon, by converting them to a lead, quote, order, or opportunity. You can also use the campaign response to convert an existing lead to an account. And you can use campaign responses as one way to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. After a campaign has been created and the activities have been distributed, the targeted audience will begin responding to the campaign. At this stage, the emphasis shifts from an outbound marketing campaign to an inbound salesfocused, sales effort. You can capture responses to the marketing campaign and determine the appropriate follow-up. You can capture campaign responses several ways: Record responses manually by creating a new campaign response. From within an activity, such as a phone call you received, convert the activity to a campaign response. Import responses, such as from an outsourced marketing campaign. In a campaign that uses e-mail via mail merge, customers can respond by e-mail and their messages are automatically converted to campaign responses.

Once the campaign responses have been created, you can convert a campaign response to a new lead, quote, order, or opportunity.

Analyzing Campaigns
Effective analysis requires entering and tracking the correct data. You need to determine what kind of analysis you want to do, and then create processes or other procedures to ensure that the correct data is entered and tracked. Marketing campaign reports can be used for building marketing plans. By analyzing the report that provides data on the financial effect of campaigns, an organization can determine which campaigns were successful. By using this data, you can decide which campaigns should continue to run and which should not or make changes to the campaigns. The data can also provide valuable information about the timing of critical campaigns. Combining this data with competitor data and a marketing plan can be your best defense to against competing companies. Also, by evaluating sales growth based on other Microsoft Dynamics CRM reports, the marketing plan can incorporate new campaigns to meet aggressive sales quotas for products balanced against the budget limitations imposed on the campaign.

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There are two reports that can be especially helpful in assessing campaigns. The Campaign Comparison Report indentifies your most and least successful campaigns. The report compares campaigns based on parameters such as cost effectiveness and number of responses. The Campaign Performance Report tracks the progress and status of your campaigns. The report provides a detailed view, including all the dates, targets, definitions, responses, and financial returns from each campaign.

Summary
This lesson provided an overview of marketing campaigns. It reviewed the benefits of closed loop marketing. Additionally, it compared the differences between marketing campaigns and quick campaigns. The lesson also reviewed the parts of a marketing campaign and how to use them. Finally, it discussed the use of campaign responses and available campaign reporting.

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Test Your Knowledge

Closed Loop Marketing
1. Which of the following is a benefit of closed loop marketing? ( ) Sales has visibility into what marketing is doing to support their efforts ( ) Marketing has visibility into what the sales team does to follow up on the leads they produce ( ) Overall marketing effectiveness improves because there is a way to measure what works and what does not ( ) All of the above

Quick Campaigns
2. Which of the following is not a feature of quick campaigns? ( ) Associate a marketing list ( ) Create campaign activities ( ) Create multiple campaign activities ( ) Send e-mail to a marketing list

Cost Related Functions

3. Which of the following cost-related functions can you perform in marketing campaigns? (Select all that apply.) ( ) Forecast expenditures by month ( ) Budget the cost of activities ( ) View the total cost of the campaign ( ) Enter the actual cost of activities

Records
4. Which type of records can you use to create a marketing list? (Select all that apply.) ( ) Account ( ) Contact ( ) Lead ( ) Opportunity

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Marketing Campaigns
5. The following can be associated with a marketing campaign? (Select all that apply.) ( ) Campaign activities ( ) Marketing lists ( ) Leads ( ) Target products

Campaign Activities
6. Which of the following are types of campaign activities? (Select all that apply.) ( ) Letter ( ) E-mail ( ) Planning task ( ) Appointment

Campaign Response
7. Which of the following can be converted into a campaign response? (Select all that apply.) ( ) Lead ( ) Task ( ) Phone Call ( ) E-mail

Campaign Response
8. A campaign response can be converted to which of the following? (Select all that apply.) ( ) A lead ( ) An opportunity ( ) An account ( ) A quote

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Quick Interaction: Lessons Learned

Take a moment and write down three key points you have learned from this chapter: 1.

2.

3.

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Solutions
Test Your Knowledge
Closed Loop Marketing
1. Which of the following is a benefit of closed loop marketing? ( ) Sales has visibility into what marketing is doing to support their efforts ( ) Marketing has visibility into what the sales team does to follow up on the leads they produce ( ) Overall marketing effectiveness improves because there is a way to measure what works and what does not () All of the above

Quick Campaigns
2. Which of the following is not a feature of quick campaigns? ( ) Associate a marketing list ( ) Create campaign activities () Create multiple campaign activities ( ) Send e-mail to a marketing list

Cost Related Functions

3. Which of the following cost-related functions can you perform in marketing campaigns? (Select all that apply.) ( ) Forecast expenditures by month () Budget the cost of activities () View the total cost of the campaign () Enter the actual cost of activities

Records
4. Which type of records can you use to create a marketing list? (Select all that apply.) () Account () Contact () Lead ( ) Opportunity

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Marketing Campaigns
5. The following can be associated with a marketing campaign? (Select all that apply.) () Campaign activities () Marketing lists ( ) Leads () Target products

Campaign Activities
6. Which of the following are types of campaign activities? (Select all that apply.) () Letter () E-mail ( ) Planning task () Appointment

Campaign Response
7. Which of the following can be converted into a campaign response? (Select all that apply.) ( ) Lead ( ) Task () Phone Call () E-mail

Campaign Response
8. A campaign response can be converted to which of the following? (Select all that apply.) () A lead () An opportunity ( ) An account () A quote

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