Review the following best practices when setting up complex campaigns:
PLAN FIRST
Building a spreadsheet of the basic structure early makes it easier to test and train users.
THINK ABOUT DATA CRITERIA
Most marketing efforts use inclusion and exclusion criteria to generate their list within their system. In fundraising organizations, this is particularly so. How are you going to determine what that criteria is and how are you going to manage the information as customers 'opt–in' and 'opt–out' of different marketing activities?
ENSURE ALL QUERIES USE NETCONTACTDATA
Include the NetContactData business object in all queries.
THINK END–TO–END MARKETING
Many marketing efforts are not isolated campaigns but are part of a broader, cyclical plan. Be prepared for that and factor it into your planning.
TRACK BUDGETS AT THE APPEAL LEVEL OR THE SOURCE CODE LEVEL
You can track budgets at the appeal level or the source code level. This tracking allows you to define overhead costs and the cost of individual inserts. The method you use to track budgets also determines how costs are entered, recorded, and calculated within the Campaign Management module.
If your organization does not use complex segmentation, set the budget level to Appeal. If your organization uses complex segmentation, especially with insert testing, set the budget level to Source Code.
DECIDING WHETHER TO USE A SINGLE SOURCE CODE OR SEVERAL
Decide whether you need a single source code or several:
- Newsletters – Newsletters and similar mailings are rarely personalized beyond the mailing label. For this reason, a single source code should be assigned for each issue regardless of whether a template segmentation job is used. The issue number or cover article might be enough to track the source code at the customer level.
- Targeted marketing campaigns – Marketing efforts that are less informational and more "call–to–action oriented" (targeted marketing campaigns) require a high level of personalization. For these types of campaigns, assign a unique source code to each segment.
- RFM analytics – If you want each RFM score to be a segment, assign a source code to each segment.
If your campaign has only one source code, you can:
- Add one or more inserts (including more than one of the same inserts).
- Generate customized lists of contacts and prospects using any combination of multiple source lists.
- Create all applicable inserts, queries, and segmentation jobs before you create a source code.