Planning Campaigns

Campaigns are containers for all of the information, planning tasks Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online tasks associated with specific campaigns., and campaign activities Activities associated with specific campaigns, such as letters, faxes, or phone calls. Campaign activities include campaign-specific information, and must be distributed to create the individual activities for users to perform. you need to manage for the marketing campaigns Marketing programs that use many communication vehicles to accomplish specific results. For example, using advertisements and direct mail to increase market share, introduce new products, or retain customers.. You can use campaigns to manage the end-to-end process of a complete marketing campaign. Campaigns include extensive tracking features, including detailed financial information, reports, and multiple marketing lists Lists of accounts, contacts, or leads that match a specific set of criteria.. Campaigns can also include multiple planning tasks and campaign activities required to coordinate all the resources that are needed for a campaign.

Creating campaigns

When you create a new campaign or a campaign template A framework for a marketing program that uses many communication vehicles to accomplish a specific result. For example, using advertisements and direct mail to increase market share, introduce new products, or retain customers., you can add strategic campaign information, such as:

• Budgets and expenses
• Promotion codes
• Target products Items in the product catalog. Products can be linked to other records, such as quotes, campaigns, and cases.
• Marketing collateral, including sales literature The documents that are created with specific information about products or services and given to customers to help increase sales.
• Target marketing lists

Note

Campaigns and campaign templates include the same features. You can create a completely new campaign template, or you can copy an existing campaign as a template. To use a campaign template as the basis of a new campaign, you copy the campaign template.

Campaigns can include whatever planning tasks you want to perform before you launch the campaign, as well as the campaign activities you want to manage as part of the campaign.

Running campaigns

Because campaigns are primarily containers for tasks and activities, you do not need to "launch" a campaign from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Launching a campaign simply occurs when you perform your first campaign activity An activity associated with a specific campaign, such as a letter, fax, or phone call. Campaign activities include campaign-specific information, and must be distributed to create the individual activities for users to perform..

To have staff in your organization perform the campaign activities you have created, you must distribute To create campaign activities for each account, contact, or lead in a marketing list associated with a campaign, and then to assign the activities to the specified owners, or to perform the activities automatically (such as sending e-mail messages). the campaign activity. Distributing activities from a campaign enables the owners of the records to take action on the related activities (such as making a phone call or personalizing a letter before sending it). During the campaign, you can create a campaign response A record of the communication you receive from a potential customer in response to a specific campaign. whenever a potential customer shows interest as a result of the campaign.

When your campaign is over, you do not need to close the campaign record the way you would close an individual task or activity. In the same way that a campaign begins with the first campaign activity, a campaign ends when the last campaign activity has been completed.

Differences between campaigns and quick campaigns

In contrast to campaigns Marketing programs that use many communication vehicles to accomplish specific results. For example, using advertisements and direct mail to increase market share, introduce new products, or retain customers., quick campaigns Communication methods that create a single activity for distribution to a group of accounts, contacts, or leads, or to a single marketing list. Contrast with campaigns, which support end-to-end marketing programs that have multiple activities. do not include many of the same tracking and reporting features, and support only one type of activity for each quick campaign. However, you can use quick campaigns to distribute a single activity automatically to an ad-hoc selection of marketing lists, accounts, contacts, or leads.

Campaigns can represent an organization's marketing efforts over an extended period of time. The effects of a quick campaign are immediate.

Another key difference between campaigns and quick campaigns is in how marketing lists work with quick campaigns. Using quick campaigns, you can still select one or more marketing lists and create activities for all of the records in those lists. However, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online does not associate the marketing list itself with the quick campaign. Instead, activities are created only for the accounts, contacts, or leads that were included in the marketing list or lists when you selected them.