Marketing

Connect with campaign respondents in 4 steps

Published: January 1, 2008

How do you contact people who have responded to one of your marketing campaigns? If you have outsourced your marketing campaign, you may not have records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the responses generated by the campaign. However, after you import the campaign responses, you can convert the responses to leads and then capture them in a marketing list so that you can communicate with these new potential customers using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In this article, we'll explain how to import campaign responses from an external source, convert them to leads, add them to a marketing list, and then send an e-mail quick campaign to the members of the new marketing list.

Step 1: Import campaign responses from Excel

You purchased an opt-in e-mail list, but instead of importing all the addresses into Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you chose to outsource the e-mail marketing campaign and import only responses to this campaign. Each week, your e-mail marketing vendor sends you a Microsoft Office Excel worksheet. This file contains the contact information for all the people who have expressed interest as a result of the e-mail campaign.

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, campaign responses are records of the communication you receive from potential customers in response to a specific campaign. The article 4 ways to put campaign responses to work for you describes several ways to create campaign responses in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For this example, we will import the responses from a comma-separated values (CSV) file that is named responses.csv.

Important

The minimum data that you must have to import a campaign response is the name of the parent campaign in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and a subject, such as “E-mail campaign result” or “Ayla Kol wants to place a bulk order”. However, to send an e-mail message to the person later, the data you import must also include an e-mail address.

Import campaign responses

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, on the Tools menu, click Import Data.
In the Data file box, click Browse, locate and select the responses.csv file, and then click Open.
Click Next and follow the directions that appear on the screen in the Import Data Wizard.

Note

If the data map you need does not exist, contact your organization's Microsoft Dynamics CRM administrator to request one, or refer to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Help for information about how to create data maps.
To review the status of the bulk import after you've submitted it for processing:
1. In the Navigation Pane, click Workplace.
2. Under My Work, click Imports.
3. To review the import information, such as the number of campaign responses imported and any failures that occurred, double-click the responses.csv bulk import record to open the bulk import.

Step 2: Convert campaign responses to leads

You have successfully imported the campaign responses you received from your vendor. In doing so, you have created Microsoft Dynamics CRM campaign response records. However, you cannot yet send e-mail directly to the potential customers represented by the campaign responses.

Each campaign response record may be related to records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, or they can represent people who are not yet in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database. Until customer records (accounts, contacts, or leads) exist for the people represented by the campaign response records you have imported, you cannot communicate with them directly. However, you can communicate directly with leads. You can convert campaign responses to lead records and still maintain information about which marketing campaign originated the response.

Convert a campaign response record to a lead record

In the Navigation Pane, click Marketing, and then click Campaigns.
Open the campaign you associated with your campaign responses when you imported them.
Under Details, click Campaign Responses.
Open the individual active campaign response that you want to convert to a lead.
On the Form toolbar, click Convert Campaign Response.
In the Close and Convert the Response dialog box, under Close response and convert into a record, click Create New Lead.
Select the Open newly created records check box to see the new lead, and then click OK.
On the Lead form, fill in any required fields that were not automatically filled in when you converted the campaign response to this lead record.

Tip

If you click the Administration tab, you can see the name of the campaign that originated the campaign response in the Source Campaign box.
Click Save and Close.

Step 3: Add the leads to a new marketing list

To communicate only with people who responded to the e-mail campaign you outsourced, you can create a new marketing list that includes only the leads you converted from campaign responses.

Add leads created by a specific campaign to a new marketing list

In the Navigation Pane, click Marketing or Sales, and then click Marketing Lists.
On the Actions toolbar, click New.
In the Name box, type a name for the list, and in the Member Type box, select Lead.

Enter any other information that you have for the list.
Click Save. Leave the Marketing Lists form open.
Under Details, click Marketing List Members.
On the Actions toolbar, click Manage Members.
In the Manage Members dialog box, click Use Advanced Find to add members, and then click OK.
On the Add Members page, in the Look for list, select Lead, and then create a query that will find all of the leads from your recent campaign.
1. Click Select and select Source Campaign.
2. Leave Equals as is, click Enter Value, and then click Lookup to search for and select the name of your first campaign.
Click Find.
Select the Add all the members returned by the search to the marketing list check box, and then click Add to Marketing List.
Click Save and Close.

Step 4: Send an e-mail blast to your campaign respondents

Now that you have identified the people who responded to your marketing campaign and you have added them to a marketing list, you can use the marketing list as you would use any other marketing list. For example, you could follow up your initial e-mail blast with an e-mail quick campaign that includes information customized specifically to the people who responded.

Send an e-mail quick campaign to the members of a marketing list

In the Navigation Pane, click Marketing, and then click Marketing Lists.
Open the marketing list to which you want to send an e-mail quick campaign.
On the Form toolbar, click Create Quick Campaign.
In the Create Quick Campaign Wizard, follow the instructions that appear on the screen.
- When you are prompted to choose an activity type, select E-mail.
- If you want Microsoft Dynamics CRM to send the e-mail messages automatically, select the Send e-mail messages automatically and close corresponding e-mail activities check box, or if you want to personalize each message and then send them yourself, clear this check box.
- On the E-mail form, ignore the fields that are unavailable and create the message you want to send to all the leads in your marketing list. Specifically, type the subject and the message body.

With the e-mail blast completed, you have successfully followed up with the potential customers who responded to the first e-mail marketing campaign.