CRM - Modules and Topics

Overview

Content

Accessing the Tool 

From within your CRM, click on the Campaigns link in the sidebar, under the Communication section.

Starting a New Campaign

From the Campaigns screen, click on the blue button labeled Create New Campaign.

Step 1 - Properties

All the information on this screen is for internal use only - your selected recipients will not see anything that you enter on this page.

• • Title: Enter a title for your Campaign, that you will use to find the Campaign in your Drafts, or in your Campaign History. This is often the same as your email subject, but it can be anything that describes the current Campaign.
  • Category: Categories are optional, and can be useful if you are sending many Campaigns through your CRM, to help organize your Campaign History and/or Drafts. For example, if you are sending multiple Campaigns about the same event or promotion because you need to target multiple queries, using a shared Category would help you keep track of these linked Campaigns.
  • Description: Descriptions are also optional fields, and can be useful to differentiate your Campaigns if you are sending many/similar messages via the CRM.
  • Campaign Type: Choose either Email, or Mail Merge. Most Campaigns will be Emails, so this document will focus on this option.
    
    

When finished populating information, click Next Step - Add Targets.

Step 2 - Targets

In this step you will select who will receive the email from this Campaign. To begin, click the blue button labeled Add Targets.

In the Send To dropdown box, you will need to choose what type of target you will be sending to:

• • Object: This will allow you to send to all Contact records within your CRM at once (which you probably never want to do), or allow you to choose records to target one by one. This can be useful if the group you are targeting can not easily be selected in a query.
  • Query: This allows you to send an email to the results of a query saved in your system. This is useful for sending emails to groups of contacts in your system that are grouped together by shared criteria, such as Membership Level, Qualification or Age, to name a few.

To send to an Object, follow the below steps:

• • Send To: Choose Object
  • Object Type: Choose the Object to send to (most likely Contacts)
  • Records: Choose All Records to send this Campaign to ALL records within your CRM. Choose Selected Records to bring up an additional section for you to select individual contacts.
  • Select Records: This section appears when you select Selected Records in the option above. Search for contacts by name in the search bar, and click Filter to narrow down the list. Check the box next to each contact that you would like to send this Campaign to.
  • Email Fields: Select the CRM email field(s) that you would like to target for each selected record you’ve chosen.
  • Return Email Targets: Click this button once you have filled out each of the options above, and your targets will be selected for this Campaign.

To send to a Query, follow the below steps:

• • Send To: Choose Query
  • Query: Choose a query from the list that you would like to target with this Campaign.
    • You may only select one query per Campaign.
    • If you do not see the query that you need listed, it may need to first be created. Please contact your CRM support team for assistance (educational materials for CRM Query creation are coming soon).
  • Email Fields: Select the CRM email field(s) that you would like to target for each selected record you’ve chosen. Please note that, in order to function, at least one email field must be returned in the selected query chosen as a Campaign target.
  • Return Email Targets: Click this button once you have filled out each of the options above, and your targets will be selected for this Campaign.

Step 3 - Create Message 

In Step 3, you will craft the actual email which will be sent to the selected targets of this Campaign.

• • From: Choose an email address from the list that you would like the emails in this Campaign to be sent from (if you do not see your email address on this list, please contact your CRM Support Team).
  • Subject: Enter the subject of the email. This will be seen by the recipients.
  • Content: Create the body content of the email that will be sent.
    1. "CLICK TO EDIT" - Opens the legacy editor to create your email
    2. "EDIT AS TEXT" - Opens a window that allows for HTML editing
    3. "CLICK TO EDIT - NEW" - Allows you to utilize the new email editor for composing your campaign

IMPORTANT NOTE: The list of available snippets in the CRM is different than those available to you through the Axis Website. When adding snippets to your email in the Axis Editor, be sure to only select snippets from the “Page Specific” section of the snippet dropdown, as these are the only ones that will reference your CRM database.

• • Schedule: Select if you would like the emails in this Campaign to be sent only one time, or on a recurring basis.
  • Send At: Select the time that you wish to send the emails out (or, if you have set up a recurring email, the time for the first batch of emails to be sent).

Step 4 - Review

In this step you have the opportunity to review your input for all previous steps. If you notice any edits that need to be made, you can easily return back to any step in the process either by clicking on the button at the bottom of the screen labeled Last Step - Create Message or by clicking on the name of the step from the cookie trail at the top of the screen.

• • Properties: Displays the information entered as Properties for this Campaign. Remember that everything in this section is internal only, and will not be seen by Campaign recipients.
  • Targets: Displays the set of contacts that you are targeting with this Campaign. You can see the Object or Query that you targeted in the grid, or to view a list of all returned targets, you can click the blue button labelled Show Recipient Listing.
  • Create Message: Displays the From Address, Subject, and body content of the email that will be sent out via this Campaign. Also displays the selected Schedule and Send At time for the Campaign, at the bottom of the section.

Finally, at the bottom of the Review screen, there are four options:

• • Last Step - Create Message: This will bring you back to the previous step and enable you to make any changes to the email.
  • Send Test Message: Displays a small popup window that enables you to send this Campaign to a single recipient - as a test only - so that you can review the format of your email in a live email client.
    • IMPORTANT NOTE: It is highly recommended that you utilize this feature at least once before officially sending the Campaign.
  • Save Draft: Saves your current Campaign as a Draft and returns you to the list of active Campaigns.
  • Finish: This is your Send button. Once you click Finish, the system will queue your email messages to be sent according to the schedule you set earlier. If you chose Now as your desired time, then clicking the Finish button will queue your emails to be sent immediately.

Viewing Your Campaign History

To access a list of all the Campaigns that have been sent via your CRM, and to view the statistics for each Campaign, click on the Campaign History link in the sidebar, under the Communication section.

Campaign History Overview

The first screen you will see once you click on Campaign History in the sidebar is the Campaign History Overview. Here, you are able to view an overview of all Campaigns sent via your CRM, with some aggregated statistics for each.

The filters at the top of this page allow you to adjust which Campaigns display in the bottom part of the page. You can filter your results upon the following criteria: 

• • Campaign Name: This is the name entered in the Properties section for each Campaign.
  • Subject: This is the subject of the email that was sent.
  • Sent By: Enables you to choose from the list of all available outgoing addresses in your CRM.
  • Type: Choose between Email and Mail Merge.
  • Sent On or After & Sent On or Before: Enables you to view all Campaigns sent between the dates that you choose in these respective fields. Be sure to accurately set the necessary date range to return the specific Campaign(s) you wish to view statistics for.

Beneath these filters is a list of all the messages that have been sent via Campaigns in your CRM that meet the criteria as specified by the filters. See below for a brief description of each column in this report:

• • Campaign Name: This is the name you entered in the Properties section of your Campaign. Click on this name to view statistics for this individual Campaign, including a list of all messages that were sent as part of this Campaign (in the event that the Campaign was sent on a recurring basis).
  • Message Subject: This is the subject of the emails that were sent out in this Campaign. You can click on this name to view a more detailed overview of the statistics for this specific message.
  • Sent By: Displays the email address that this message was sent from.
  • Selected Recipients: Displays the number of email addresses that were targeted with the Campaign.
  • Recipients Sent To: Displays the number of email addresses that actually had the message sent to them. Typically, if this number is lower than the total of Selected Recipients, it is due to unsubscribes or duplicate email addresses.
  • Opened: Displays the number of messages that were opened by the recipients.
  • Open Rate: Displays the percentage of recipients that opened the email to those that received the message, but never opened it.
  • Link Clicks: Calculates the total number of clicks on hyperlinks included within the email message. You can view a breakdown of link clicks per hyperlink by clicking on the Message Subject.
  • Timestamp: Displays the time that the message was sent from the system.
  • Re-Send: Enables you to send this exact message again, to the same group of targets, or a subset of the original group of targets. Your sending options are:
    • Use Campaign Targets: Will send the new message to the exact same group of targets as the original Campaign was sent to.
    • Use Campaign Targets, Ignore Recipients Who Opened Original: Will send the new message to ONLY those contacts who received the original message, but did not open it.
    • Original Recipients Only: Will send the new message to those contacts that the original message was sent to. This is different from Use Campaign Targets because it excludes any contacts that were targeted, but did not have the message sent to them, either due to a missing email address from their CRM record, their email address already being present in the target list in a different CRM record (duplicate email addresses), or because they had previously unsubscribed from your CRM Campaigns.
    • Original Recipients Only, Ignore Recipients Who Open Original: Same as the previous option, excluding those who opened the original email.

The statistics on this initial screen serve as an overview of your sent Campaigns. If you need to “drill down” deeper into any given Campaign, or even a specific Message from within a Campaign, you can do so by clicking either the Campaign Name or Message Subject. 

Campaign Details

To access the details of a Campaign as a whole (especially for those with recurring messages), click on the Campaign Name from the Campaign History screen. Here, you will be able to review the properties of this Campaign, as well as view an overview of all the individual messages that have been sent as part of this Campaign.

The details in this section are very similar to those on the previous screen, but this view allows you to easily gauge the long-term effectiveness of recurring email Campaigns. You are also able to drill down into the message details of any message in the list by clicking on the Message Subject of that message.

Message Details

To access the details of a message sent through a Campaign, click on its Message Subject from either the main Campaign History screen, or from the Campaign Details screen. Here, you will be able to view the properties of the Campaign that this message was a part of, as well as review the body of the email itself.

Further down, you will see a list of all the links contained within this email, and how many clicks each link received. You are able to see a list of all the contacts that clicked on the link by clicking on the number in the Clicks column.

The last section on this screen displays a list of all the recipients of this message. You are able to filter the results to track down a specific email address, by typing that address into the box labelled Sent To and clicking the Filter button. You are also able to filter the results on the following three categories: 

• • Opened: When this box is checked, only recipients that opened the message will appear in the listing below.
  • Unsubscribed: When this box is checked, only recipients that clicked on the unsubscribe link within your message will appear in the listing below.
  • Bounced: When this box is checked, only recipients that had the message bounce back from their email address (meaning they were unable to actually receive the message) will appear in the listing below.

The statistics that are shown for each recipient are broken out as follows: 

• • Sent To: Displays the CRM record that this message was sent to. Click on this name to display the message history for this record.
  • Address: Displays the email address that corresponds with the CRM record that this message was sent to. Click on this address to generate a new email to this email address.
  • Sent At: Displays the timestamp at which this message was sent from Clubessential’s email servers to the recipient.
  • Opened: Displays the time that the recipient opened the message. If the recipient did not open the message, this field will remain blank.
  • Unsubscribed: Displays the time that the recipient unsubscribed from the message. If the recipient did not unsubscribe from this message, this field will remain blank.
  • Bounced: Displays the time that this message was marked as having bounced. If the message was delivered successfully, this field will remain blank.
  • Link Clicks: Displays the number of times that this recipient clicked on any link within the message.

FAQs

Q: How can I manually select which contacts to target with my Campaign?

A: Sending to an Object:

• Send To: Choose Object
• Object Type: Choose the Object to send to (most likely Contacts)
• Records: Choose All Records to send this Campaign to ALL records within your CRM. Choose Selected Records to bring up an additional section for you to select individual contacts.
• Select Records: This section appears when you select Selected Records in the option above. Search for contacts by name in the search bar, and click Filter to narrow down the list. Check the box next to each contact that you would like to send this  Campaign to.
• Email Fields: Select the CRM email field(s) that you would like to target for each selected record you’ve chosen.
• Return Email Targets: Click this button once you have filled out each of the options above, and your targets will be selected for this Campaign!

Q: Can I use multiple queries as targets for my Campaign?

A: You are only able to select one Query at a time as the target for a Campaign. If you want to send the same message to multiple queries, you have two options:

• Contact your CRM support team to create a new query that targets everyone you need, and use this query as the target for your Campaign.
• Copy your Campaign, and change the Target for the new one.

Best Practices

1. Always be sure to send a Test of your message before finishing your Campaign. This allows you to be sure that the formatting of your email is correct when viewed from within an actual email client. Microsoft Outlook is particularly notorious for displaying certain elements of email messages differently than the rest of the internet, so if you have this installed on your computer, it can be beneficial to send yourself a test there to troubleshoot.
2. If you are sending your Campaign to the results of a Query, run that query before sending, and go through the results to ensure that the contacts returned are exactly who you expect them to be. If you notice any discrepancies, don’t hesitate to contact your CRM Support Team!

Downloadable Guide

CRM Campaigns - Guide