• "Book - COURSE 8913: APPLICATIONS IN MICROSOFT DYNAMICS - CRM 4.0 (pages 13-10 ...) -"
  Published by Microsoft on December 2007
  http://de.scribd.com/doc/60936658/8913-En-Applications-in-CRM-Student-Manual

A marketing list is a list of accounts, contacts, or leads that share common characteristics. For example, a marketing list can be a list of all the contacts that live in a certain area, or all the leads that have registered on a web form.

Marketing lists are created independently of a marketing campaign. Each marketing campaign must have at least one marketing list, because the list designates the recipients of the communications generated by the campaign activities.

Creating Marketing Lists

When creating a marketing list in Dynamics CRM, the most important properties to specify are as follows: 

• The Member Type for the marketing list is the type of record from which the members are drawn: accounts, contacts, or leads. Once you have saved a marketing list, the member type cannot be changed. Also, you can only add members of the specified type to a single list.
• Use the Type field to specify whether the list will be Static or Dynamic. Static lists will need to have their members updated periodically; the members of dynamic lists will be automatically updated based on the query specifying which members are included in the list. Once a marketing list is created, you cannot change the value specified in the Type field.

The method of adding members to your marketing list differs depending on whether you have created a static or dynamic marketing list.

Adding Members to a Static Marketing List

Regardless of what happens to the underlying accounts, contacts or leads data, the members of a static marketing list will not change unless you use the Manage Members function to update the list's members. Suppose you created a static marketing list containing contacts in a specific city to target for a marketing event in that city, and that you specified that only contacts opted in for email marketing are included in the list. Over time, several things can happen to the underlying contact information:

• New contacts in that city may be added.
• Contacts in that city may be deactivated or deleted.
• Contacts included in the marketing list may change their "opt-in" status for marketing emails.

Since the marketing list is static, none of those changes will impact the list members until you use the Manage Members function to update the list.

Marketing Campaigns and Quick Campaigns

Both marketing campaigns and quick campaigns can be run using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 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 do the following: 

• Create activities, which are the interactions with the customer, such as an email, a letter, or a phone call.
• 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.

Marketing Campaigns and Quick Campaigns

Marketing campaigns are used for traditional marketing efforts where the user may want to schedule multiple activities, such as an email broadcast followed by targeted phone calls. Marketing campaigns also allow you to add target products, sales literature, and related campaign details to the campaign. Marketing representatives and marketing managers generally use this feature.

Marketers use a wizard to create quick campaigns to use for single-activity campaigns. These are shorter term efforts that distribute only one activity. For instance, if a sales representative knows that he or she will be attending a tradeshow in a certain geographic area, he or she can use Advanced Find to quickly create a list of leads in that area. The sales representative 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 the Workplace as an activity. Salespeople or sales managers often use quick campaigns.

Comparing Marketing Campaigns and Quick Campaigns

Marketing campaigns and quick campaigns have similar functionalities: both can use marketing lists, provide distribution information through activities, and enable you to view the responses. However the following are some important differences: 

 Quick Campaigns 

Quick campaigns create a single activity for distribution to a marketing list or a unique group of accounts, contacts, or leads. The Quick Campaign Wizard simplifies the task of choosing an activity, assigning the activity to the appropriate user(s), filling in the details of the quick campaign, and distributing the activities. The scheduled activity appears automatically in the assigned user's Workplace. Create quick campaigns by first creating a list of the recipients for the campaign and then starting the Quick Campaign Wizard.

To create a quick campaign, start by identifying the customers that the campaign is targeting. Do this by selecting customers from a view, or by creating a search in which the 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.

Planning Your Quick Campaign

Before starting the Quick Campaign Wizard, determine the following: 

• The activity for this quick campaign. The activity determines the channel through which customer communications are delivered. The activities available are Phone Call, Appointment, Letter, Fax, and Email. Only one type of activity can be selected for the quick campaign, and only one instance of that activity can be distributed per customer.
• The owner of the activities. Who will own (perform) the activities. The choices are:
  • Me. The currently signed in user.
  • The owner of the records included in the quick campaign. For example, if you manage a sales team and the quick campaign is aimed at accounts owned by sales representatives on your team, you can choose to have the activities assigned to the sales representatives who own the accounts.
  • Assign to another user or team. Microsoft Dynamics CRM activity records can be assigned either to a user or a team. If you assign records to a team, consider also placing them into a shared queue where team members can accept responsibility for them as part of a formal follow-up process.
• Whether to automatically send the email and close the activity once the email is sent. This only applies if the activity type for the campaign is email.
• The details for the quick campaign's activity. The details vary by activity. Note that if the activity type is an E-mail, you can select an E-Mail template to use, generating personalized emails as the campaign activities.

Selecting Customers for a Quick Campaign 

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 desired records, and then click Create Quick Campaign to start the wizard. You can launch the campaign for all selected records on the page or all records on all pages.
• Use a marketing list to select the customers. To access existing marketing lists, in the Navigation Pane, click Marketing and then click Marketing Lists. Select the list to use, and then click Create Quick Campaign to start the wizard.
• Use Advanced Find to search records. After running an Advanced Find, in the results, click Create Quick Campaign to start the wizard.

Working with a Quick Campaign 

When creating 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 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 selected accounts, contacts or leads. 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.

Introduction to Marketing Campaigns 

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the marketing campaign represents a complete marketing effort. Marketing campaigns organize all the details in one place, including: 

• Planning activities
• Campaign activities
• Target Products
• Sales literature
• Related campaigns
• Target Marketing Lists
• Distribution of campaign activities 

By having all the information in one place, you can quickly assess how successful the campaign was.

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 email. 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 finished with the activity, you can update the actual cost. Tracking the costs assists 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 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 will create separate activities for each message and each activity uses a different marketing list to target the appropriate customers for that message. 

The types of campaign activities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are as follows 

• Phone
• Appointment
• Letter
• Mail Merge
• Fax
• E-mail 

While creating or modifying 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. 

Distributing Campaign Activities 

Once you have created your campaign activities and it is time to launch the campaign, you will then distribute the activities. You can create campaign activities early in the campaign planning cycle and then use planning activities as a reminder of when it is time to distribute them.  

Once a campaign activity has been distributed, the activity owners can view the activity records in the Activities section in the Workplace and follow up appropriately. 

Target 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. After determining the record type, it cannot be changed. 

Additionally, you can delete, deactivate, or merge marketing lists into other lists. Static marketing lists can be "locked" by selecting the Yes option in the Locked field. When this option is selected, members cannot be added to or removed from the list. 

Planning Activities 

Planning activities help you organize all of the activities required to launch and operate a campaign. For example, if your campaign were an event for your customers, you could enter planning tasks such as reserving space or hiring vendors. You can also have tasks such as designing and ordering the brochures to be mailed 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 simple for salespeople to view what the campaign is promoting, and to help create 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. Marketers can add sales literature files to a campaign to help salespeople find the information needed for effective customer follow-up. Sales representatives can download or view added sales literature whenever it is needed. 

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. 

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 to ensure that multiple campaigns driven by different staff members contain the same activities, product information, or other items you want to remain consistent.  

You can modify or publish campaign templates 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 Representatives. They can then create new campaigns from the template and modify it to suit local needs and launch unique, targeted campaigns to accounts in their geographic area.

Creating a Marketing Campaign

Marketing campaigns are used for more complex marketing efforts where the user may want to schedule multiple activities, such as an email broadcast followed by targeted phone calls. They are longer term efforts and usually distribute information through several different types of activities.

The campaign is the container for all the information, tasks, and activities you need to manage the campaign. To "launch" a campaign, distribute activities to the assigned users. These activities make up the core of the campaign. The activity specifies the channel that you will use to communicate with the customer and, once the activity is performed, constitutes the actual customer communication.

 Perform the following steps to create a marketing campaign: 

1. Create the campaign record (required).
2. Enter the planning tasks: the tasks necessary to "launch" the campaign.
3. Define the campaign activities (required): the communications that will take place, through which channel, and performed by whom.
4. Select a marketing list (required): the users to whom the communications will be sent.
5. Specify targeted products: the products advertised by this campaign.
6. Specify sales literature: any literature that might be useful or used by the people performing the activities. 

Tracking Campaign Costs 

The Financials tab on the campaign contains budget and actual cost information. The individual campaign activities also contain cost information. Generally, the campaign manager enters and updates the following information. 

In the campaign record: 

• Budget Allocated: The amount of money budgeted for the campaign.
• Miscellaneous Costs: Any costs not incurred by campaign activities.
• Estimated Revenue: The expected revenue resulting from this campaign.

In the campaign activity records:

• Budget Allocated: The amount of money budgeted for this activity. (Note that activity budget allocation is not rolled up into the campaign's budget allocation. The numbers are maintained separately.)
• Actual Cost: The actual cost of the activity when it is performed. 

When you save the relevant records, Microsoft Dynamics CRM calculates and displays the following information in the Financial tab of the campaign record: 

• Total Cost of Campaign Activities: The actual cost of the campaign, based on the actual costs entered for all the campaign's activities.
• Total Cost of Campaign: The actual cost of the campaign, based on the costs entered for all the campaign's activities plus the miscellaneous costs entered for the campaign.

Planning Activities

After you have created the campaign record, you can add planning activities to it. Planning activities are actions that are generally performed prior to distributing the campaign activities; they are the pieces that must be put in place for the campaign. Typical planning activities include the following examples: 

• Booking event venue and catering information for an event marketing campaign
• Writing advertising or website copy, or creating landing pages
• Creating any marketing collateral required for the campaign
• Appointments or phone calls to discuss various campaign-related issues
• Purchasing lists or other items from outside vendors

Campaign Activities 

Campaign Activities are in most cases the "customer touch-points" of a campaign. For example, you can use an email campaign activity to send emails to every member of a marketing list, or a phone call campaign activity can assign phone call activities to the sales representatives responsible for the contacts in a list. 

Campaign activities fall into two categories: 

• Channel activities: The activity specifies a channel of communication (such as an email, a letter, or a phone call). Channel activities can be distributed. When a campaign activity is distributed an activity record of the same kind as the channel is created. For example, when an email campaign activity is distributed, individual emails can be sent to each of the members in a marketing list, and appear as if they are sent from the users responsible for each contact record. When a phone call campaign activity is distributed, phone call activities will be created and can be assigned to the responsible account manager.
• Non-channel activities: Activities that do not have a specified channel or that have a channel of Other cannot be distributed; they act as to-dos to track actions that must be performed during the campaign. All campaign activities, including non-channel activities, remain in the owner's activity list until they are changed to channel activities, completed, and then closed. 

An activity can have a particular marketing list associated with it. For example, a campaign might have three different marketing lists for various groups of customers, to send different messaging to each group. A channel campaign activity cannot be distributed unless at least one marketing list is associated with it. 

Creating and Using Campaign Templates 

Often, you will conduct a campaign similar to one you have previously done. For example, every tradeshow requires similar preparation and activities. Creating a campaign template allows you to plan a campaign and add campaign-related items, then save the template for use in the future, for similar marketing campaigns. Users can create a new campaign from a template and then modify it to meet the specific needs of the new campaign. Using templates can reduce the amount of data entry and planning time required for a campaign.

You can add the following campaign-related items to a campaign template: 

• Marketing activities
• Products
• Sales literature
• Marketing lists
• Budget information