Marketing Applications
Marketing, when it is done well, is a kind of scientific experiment conducted under very prescribed conditions, for a well defined purpose, and with results that are carefully measured. In fact, some argue that the measurement aspect is possibly the most important aspect of marketing. Measurement enables us to see where the marketing campaign is taking us, and then to see the impact of any campaign tuning that we may wish to try.
opentaps Marketing Tab provides for conducting marketing campaigns with a professional approach including:
- Defining the campaign in terms of the name, date range, budget, estimated actual cost, a description, a target audience, delivery mechanism, tracking codes to measure results, and tracking codes to measure the contact routing.
- Multiple contact lists and delivery mechanisms, with list membership information selected from the opentaps Party data for people who are Leads, Contacts, Partners, Employees, Customers, etc.
- Message delivery support for email campaigns delivered via the opentaps web email system, and USPS mail sorting support for postal mail campaigns delivered via presorted bulk mail.
- Email preparation and sending for specific campaign delivery and tracking.
- Customer feedback capture via Survey style campaigns delivered via the integrated ecommerce web site, or associated with items on an order to capture order information for future marketing use.
- Reports on campaign results for impressions per contact, orders, order amount, and conversion rate from impressions to orders.
When your campaign is delivered via a third party such as a magazine advertisement or a telemarketer, you can use all of the features of opentaps Marketing Tab except the delivery mechanism. You will still have the ability to use your tracking codes for each delivery method which you will gather from the inbound contacts made to your campaign response mechanisms (phone, email, or other method).
Members of your Contact Lists will come from the system database, thus they have been entered into the system as Leads or some other classification of person. When you buy a distribution list for use in your marketing campaign, you may wish to import the list into your Leads data if you will be doing the message distribution via opentaps email, for example. To do this data importation ask your technical system administrator for assistance with importing a distribution list.
To access the marketing support applications from the main navigation screen click:
* CRMSFA > Marketing Tab which opens that Find Campaigns Screen. * Click: [Find Campaigns]] to view the default Marketing Campaign list that are currently "In Progress" status. * Alternately you can enter a campaign name or another status choice to see more campaigns. * Click: any campaign Name in the displayed list to see the View Campaign Screen.
The View Campaign Screen
The View Campaign Screen provides a summary of your campaign definition, the contact lists (and contact types) you will use, and the tracking codes you will capture for each visit to your campaign.
To change the Status of the campaign:
* Use the [Edit] button to change the Status drop down box selection * Click: [Update]
To change your distribution plan for the campaign, change the Contact Lists associated with the campaign by using either the [Create New] button or the [Add List] button provided. These buttons work with the completed Lists that you have created on the system.
If you need to work with individual member entries in the Contact Lists, use the Shortcut buttons for [Create Contact List] or [Find Contact List]. Select or create lists that you need to edit for their membership line items.
To change tracking codes for the campaign, use the [Create New] button to add another tracking code which meets your needs and include the new one in the next part of your campaign.
Using opentaps Campaign Email Distribution If your campaign is in the "In Process" status you will see the [Write Email] button which you can use to send your campaign message email to everyone on the email type lists you have selected for the campaign. Complete the Write Email screen, which is a special version of the screen suited to the campaign message distribution:
* Select the "Marketing Campaign" from the drop down box * Select the "From" email ID to be used * Select the "Template" you want to use for this email * Enter the "Subject" line you want your customer to read * Enter the "Text" of your marketing message in the box provided * Make sure you have included your Tracking Code in the Subject or the Text for retrieval * Carefully review and correct your email before taking the next step * When you are certain the email is exactly correct, and that it is approved, * Click: [Send] to send the email to everyone on all of your email type distribution lists associated with this particular campaign.
When your target customer responds, with the Tracking Code you have provided, you will be able to measure how the response was generated and ultimately the business it produced.
Preparing Contact Lists for Distributing Your Message
When you have your campaign target audience members captured on your opentaps system as Leads, or Contacts, Partners, employees, or Customers you can prepare a special "Contact List" for use with a Marketing Campaign. This Contact List can be one of three types: email, phone, or postal mail.
A Contact List is created with the [Create Contact List] shortcut button. Proceed by:
* specifying a Name, * optionally selecting the Marketing Campaign (you can also do this from the Campaign screen), * specifying a Contact Type (such as email), and entering a description of this list. * Then,Click: [Create Contact List] below these data items.
This opens the View Contact List screen where you can add members to the list as follows:
* Use "Find List Members" search function to locate specific members by providing a search term. * Use "List Members" > [Add New] to select members from the list of all candidates on the system, which is called "Available to Add" * Check the Select box for all the desired Contact List members and Click: [Add Selected] * To return to the "View Contact List" screen when finished adding members, * Click: [Back] near the top of this page.
Processing a Postal Mailing List
For contact lists designated as postal address contacts, you use the buttons for [Sort USPS Business Mail] and [USPS Business Mail Sorting Details] to sort the addresses for USPS Business or Bulk Mail service. You will then be taken to the USPS Business Mail Sorting Details Screen where you can view and modify the mailing details. You can use [Calculate 3605-R Postage Rate] to calculate the postage rate for USPS Business or Bulk Mail service. See USPS Bulk Mail for more details.
The Forecasts Tab < Tabs pages > Managing Business Projections
Managing Business Projections < Manual pages > Managing Sales
Other related screens in the Reference Manual:
Create Campaigns Screen, View Campaign Screen