Campaigns

Dynamics 365 provides a rich set of processes related to the execution of marketing activities. Campaigns are the centerpieces of Dynamics 365's Marketing module. Let's look at how a campaign is created and executed:

1. Creating a new campaign: Navigate to Marketing | Campaigns and click on the New Campaign button, as follows:

Fill in the necessary details in the New Campaign:

1. Let's look at the second part of the same screenshot:

Here is a zoomed-in version of the preceding screenshot:

1. Let's look at the third part of the same screenshot:

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The following are some of the important details of the Campaign form:

• Basic information: This consists of the campaign name, campaign code, currency, campaign type, and the expected response percentage. An out-of-the-box campaign can have values such as Advertisement, Direct Marketing, Event, Co-branding, and Other.
• Schedules: The schedules consist of dates related to the launch of the campaign.
• Activities: This grid consists of all of the activities related to the campaign, such as the out-of-the-box activities Phone Call, Appointment, Task, and Email.
• Marketing lists: This grid consists of all of the marketing lists that should be targeted by the campaign.
• Leads: This grid consists of the individual leads that should be targeted in the campaign.
• Campaign activities: This grid defines the list of activities that will be executed in the campaign.
• Financial details: This section consists of fields related to the execution of the campaign.
• Response: This grid consists of all of the responses that the customers have given to various campaign activities.

Here is a list of the steps to be performed:

1. Adding a marketing list to the campaign: On the campaign form, a user can add the marketing lists that will be targeted by the campaign. The members count indicates the number of records present in the marketing list.

1. Adding individual leads to the campaign: On the campaign form, a user can add the individual lead records that are to be targeted in the campaign, as follows:

1. Adding campaign activities to the campaign: On the campaign form, you can click on the Add button to create a New Campaign Activity. This will launch a new form for the Campaign Activity, as follows:

The following are some of the important pieces of information that need to be filled out for the Campaign Activity:

• Channel: This defines the mode of the campaign activity execution. Possible values are email, task, phone call, appointment, fax, and letter.
• Scheduled Start: This is the start time of the execution of the campaign activity.
• Scheduled End: This is the end time of the execution of the campaign activity.
• Allocated Budget: This is the budget that has been allocated for the execution of the campaign activity.
• Actual Cost: This is the total amount actually spent on the execution of the campaign activity.
• MARKETING LISTS: The marketing lists will be copied from the associated campaign.

The preceding items are shown in the following screenshot:

1. Approving the campaign: To start the campaign execution, you must first approve the campaign. You will have to change the status of the campaign to Launched. This will launch the campaign, as follows:

1. Distributing the campaign activities: After the campaign has launched, you have to distribute the predefined campaign activities. This has to be done on the Campaign Activity form, as follows:

Upon clicking the button, the appropriate activities will be generated for each member present in the marketing list. As the channel of the Campaign Activity is Phone Call, the click action will open a form for entering the basic details of the phone call activity. Some of the fields, such as To, will be read-only, as they are to be generated by the system automatically:

Click on the Distribute button after entering all of the required information. The system will prompt you to enter the owner of the generated activities:

As illustrated in the following screenshot, activities for the members mentioned in the marketing lists will be generated automatically:

1. Capturing campaign response: As this is an outgoing phone call activity, you will have to manually convert the associated phone call activity to a campaign response, as follows:

Upon clicking the button, a Campaign Response form will open:

The following are some of the important fields related to the Campaign Response:

• Customer: This is the contact, lead, or account to which the call is made.
• Response Code: This is the response that the customer gave. Its possible values are Interested, Not interested, Do not Send Marketing Material, and Error.
• Received On: This is the date of the response receipt.

Once you have saved the form, Campaign Response will be updated on the Campaign form: