Understanding campaign communication

Communications tools help you build messages to be sent to targeted contacts. In addition, you can run reports about a campaign or a portion of a campaign. These messages and reports are considered “output” and can be generated at any of the four campaign levels:

  • Campaign
  • Appeal
  • Solicitation
  • Source code

In addition, you can import and export source lists.

Lists with names can be imported into iMIS Acquisition Management. Campaign Management  and Segmentation can query this list and generate lists from it. One of the most important considerations is being able to test against different list rentals. Therefore, it is important to have a testing model.

Lists without names can still be tracked in Campaign Management. At the source code level, assign the quantities included in the list rental. Track the list rental/purchase cost at the package level. Remember that the package will be attached to the source code. Different packages have different list costs, so it is important to apply the cost to the package to properly calculate the ROI.

Kill files may be prepared to accompany marketing campaigns, particularly acquisition campaigns. To prevent redundancy, an organization should run a de-duping or merge/purge of their house file (the active names) within their iMIS database and the lists that they rent.

If your organization is using these files, prepare both a segmentation job and output file specific to kill files.

Output processes are the means to generate collateral for your campaign:

  • Communication Suite
  • Email Merge – Send an email message
  • Campaign List Export – Generate a list to be sent to an external vendor for letter shopping or to contacts via listserv
  • RFM Analytics – Rank records based on Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value
  • Opportunity Process Engine – Generate projects/opportunities based on complex business rules or in response to a campaign.

You can generate output from a campaign, appeal, solicitation or source code.  When you generate output from one level, such as an appeal, output for all of the components beneath it generates. For example:

  • Appeal – generates output for all solicitations and source codes beneath it
  • Solicitation – generates output for all source codes linked to it
  • Source Code – generates output for that one source code only

Campaign list export files are stored inside Campaign Management after running. Use the View Output menu to see the results.

  • Throughout iMIS Marketing, NetContact is a required business object. Make sure that you include it in all of your queries, regardless of whether they are used as source lists for source codes or as output queries for an output process attached to a source code.
  • Use templates for best efficiency. Some templates are designed through third-party packages which integrate with iMIS; for example, Microsoft Word documents, emails, and report files. Most output processes allow you to define and save the template while you build the process itself.
  • Process Manager must be set up before running the opportunity output process.

The process for generating output is:

  1. Build the campaign structure first and define the source list (query, a previous solicitation, or a segmentation job).
  2. Define an insert.
  3. Customize the insert template, if necessary, for this specific need.
  4. Attach the output process insert to one or more source codes.
  5. Generate the output.

A seed list is a list of the individuals within your organization concerned with the campaign. Seed lists are often used to confirm the mail date and to distribute samples internally.

Seed lists are often attached to campaigns but usually not to source codes so that the seed list is not included in the return on investment (ROI) calculations.

When a process is run independently of Campaign Management, the process uses the query in its definition to determine the set of generated records. When the same process is executed as part of a campaign's output generation process, the set of records is determined by joining the query with the campaign's target list to form a subset of records. If the process's query does not have records in common with the target list, no output will be generated for that source code.

The source that you should use for the query depends on how you will use the output process. You must typically define two separate output processes for marketing inserts because source codes and job segments differentiate between contacts and prospects.

  • Job segments are defined as a contact job or as a prospect job.
  • Source codes are designated as a contact source codes or as a prospect source code.

So, to send marketing inserts to both your contacts and your prospects, you would need to create two different inserts:

  • One insert must use an output process whose query source is the NetContact business object
  • The other insert must use an output process whose query source is the Prospect business object.

Note: You should not use CsContactBasic or CsProspect as the query source for any output process associated with marketing inserts. Use only the NetContact or the Prospect business object as appropriate, depending on the associated source codes and job segments.