Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Marketing Automations (2014)

Chapter 4. Campaign Response and Performance

The marketing events should be accountable in terms of their ROI. Any marketing campaign doesn't end with the successful execution, it needs to be measured in terms of the response received and key patterns identified.

In the previous chapter, you learned how to automate your campaign management process using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. In this chapter, you will take a step further to understand how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 can also let you reconcile campaign responses and help measure performance. You will learn how to capture and manage campaign responses using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

· Capturing a campaign response

· Managing a campaign response

· Converting a campaign response to a lead or an opportunity

· Measuring a campaign response and ROI

Capturing a campaign response

A campaign response in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 allows you to capture the result of a campaign. Campaign responses could be manual, where you record the response based on inputs you received from a feedback channel. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 also allows you to automate the process of creating a corresponding response. This is possible for e-mail campaigns. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 provides the option to configure an e-mail tracking system that can trigger an e-mail reply received from a user to automatically create a campaign response.

The marketing Systems Settings dialog box shown in the following screenshot provides a set of options to automate the campaign response capturing process:

Marketing System Settings

The second option in the Marketing tab of System Settings dialog box enables you to specify whether you want campaign responses to be automatically created from an incoming e-mail activity. If e-mail tracking is enabled, you will also have the option to let users get a "Do Not Send Marketing Material" link in the e-mail, clicking on which will auto-unsubscribe them.

In addition to manually or autocreating a campaign response, you can also promote distributed campaign activities into a response or import a response using the Import Data Wizard in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. Let's first explore the steps to create a campaign response.

Creating a campaign response

In your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 instance, perform the following steps to create a campaign response:

1. Go to the list of campaigns from the top navigation menu by selecting the MARKETING tab.

2. You will see the familiar My Campaigns page you used to create campaigns in the previous chapter.

3. Click on your campaign to navigate to the details page.

4. In the campaign details page, the top navigation provides an option to navigate to the CAMPAIGN RESPONSES page as shown in the following screenshot:

Navigating to CAMPAIGN RESPONSES

5. In the Campaign Response Associated View, click on Add New Campaign Response to launch the CAMPAIGN RESPONSE window. You can specify a subject, customer details, and a channel through which the response will be received, as shown in the following screenshot. After completing the details, save the campaign response.

Creating a new campaign response

The default response represented by Response Code is set to Interested. You can however change it to Not Interested, Do Not Send Marketing Material, or Error depending on the response you captured from the customer.

Note that if the response is automated, then Channel will automatically indicate the activity from where the response was generated, and the fields such as Subject and Response Code will be auto populated.

A campaign response can also be created by promoting a campaign activity into a response. Perform the following steps to promote an e-mail activity into a campaign response:

1. Open CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES from the list under your campaign. Note that the activity must be distributed.

2. From the list of activities on the Campaign Activity details page, click on any one of the e-mail activity buttons and open the e-mail. The promotable distributed campaign activities are shown in the following screenshot:

Distributed campaign activity that can be promoted

3. In the command bar at the top of the e-mail activity, you will see the option Promote to Response under the dropdown of the CONVERT TO command, as shown in the following screenshot:

Converting a Campaign Activity

4. A New Campaign Response page will be created with information from the Email Campaign Activity. You will notice that the Subject and other details are retained. You can now save the campaign response.

Now that you have successfully created a campaign response in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, let's explore the tasks you can perform to manage the lifecycle of a response.

Managing a campaign response

Once you have created a campaign response, you can start managing the lifecycle of the response. You can edit the response and update information as you gather them from time to time. You can also designate another user to be responsible for the response by assigning a campaign response to that person.

When a new campaign response is created in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, the state is set as open. You can take action to close the campaign response by clicking on the CLOSE CAMPAIGN RESPONSE button from the command bar at the top of theCAMPAIGN RESPONSE details page, as shown in the following screenshot:

Closing a campaign response

You will be prompted to choose a status. You can specify either Closed or Cancelled and then close the campaign response as shown in the following screenshot:

Specifying a closed status

The closed status is used in conjunction with the Response Code to understand the outcome of a campaign. A closed status with Response Code as Interested should ideally be marked by generating a lead from the campaign response.

Note that closing a campaign response allows you to reactivate it at a later point in time. You will also notice that once a response is closed, the fields are locked down and no editing is allowed. You can start editing them again only if the response is reactivated. One additional thing to note is that, in most cases, you can choose the status as Closed to indicate closure of a campaign after you have received satisfactory responses. However, there could be scenarios where you would want to cancel a campaign, such as the creation of another campaign that supersedes the current campaign or makes it redundant. In such cases, you may want to choose the status as Cancelled.

Converting a campaign response to a lead or an opportunity

A campaign response is a great starting point to generate leads and opportunities. A good conversion is reflective of a successful campaign. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, you can covert a campaign response to a lead or an opportunity. To do this, open the campaign response you created by promoting an e-mail activity in the previous section. In the command bar, click on the Convert Campaign Response button. The Convert Response dialog box is displayed as shown in the following screenshot:

Converting response to lead or opportunity

You will be presented with options such as Create a lead, Convert the lead to a new account or contact, Create a quote, order, or opportunity for an account or contact, or just Close response. Choose the Create a lead option and click on OK. The campaign response will be closed and the lead will be created with the field such as Topic pre-populated from the response.

Measuring a campaign response

The success of a campaign can be measured by analyzing the responses recorded on it. One of the simplest ways to do this is by surfacing the campaign response data using the campaign performance report and analyzing the results. To launch the report, perform the following steps:

1. Click on the REPORTS tab under the navigation MARKETING menu located at the top.

2. Select the Campaign Performance report link from the list of available reports.

3. In Report filtering Criteria, select the campaign you want to analyze (a maximum of 10 campaigns can be analyzed in one go).

4. Run the report and scroll to the Campaign Responses section in the generated report. A result similar to the one shown in the following screenshot will be displayed:

Analyzing the campaign response

The report provides details such as the Response Rate and Cost Per Response, and also gives a graphical analysis (pie chart) of Response Code and Channel. You can best determine the ROI by analyzing the result set provided by the report.

Summary

Analyzing the campaign response is an effective mechanism to capture the feedback on a campaign. It captures leads and converts them into opportunities. In this chapter, you learned the different ways of creating a campaign response, managing the lifecycle of the response, and converting them into leads and opportunities. In addition, you also learned how to measure the response using the Campaign Performance report. In the next chapter, you will learn how to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 to track the key marketing metrics, get an insight into your marketing data, and create measurable goals for your marketing team.