Direct Marketing Effort Workflow

Unlike other types of marketing efforts, direct marketing efforts are built from communication templates which standardize and streamline the setup process . Templates define default settings and simplify setup by including only the options you need to create a communication.

Setting up direct marketing efforts requires several steps.

• System administrators configure communication templates and name patterns.

• Campaign analysts build marketing efforts based on templates. They add segments to the marketing effort and configure any settings not defined and locked by the template.

• Campaign analysts execute the marketing effort and monitor its status.

For more information about how to configure communication templates and name patterns, see Communication Templates and Communication Name Patterns.

From Marketing and Communications, you can create a direct marketing effort based on an approved marketing plan, which enables information from the plan to default into the marketing effort, or you can create a “one-off” marketing effort. When you create the marketing effort, you can specify records that should be included or excluded from it, or you can do this later.

Also, export definitions enable you to specify several different templates you can use to export an active marketing effort.

After you create the marketing effort, you then add direct marketing segments to target specific sets of users with certain packages or public media segments to target a demographic of people such as those who travel by a specific location, visitors of a specific website or business, or the audience of a specific television or radio program.

For the marketing effort and its various components, you can specify source codes. These source codes are included on the response devices used in the marketing effort and can be entered on gift records that come in from the marketing effort. When you record the code on a gift record, you establish the specific combination of list, package, segment, etc. that resulted in the gift for analysis purposes.

Because the same appeal Appeals are planned efforts your organization undertakes to contact constituents and generate gifts. Appeals are usually bound by a time period and have a monetary goal. can be associated with multiple marketing efforts, the program assigns and stores a “finder number” for each potential donor in a direct marketing effort. The finder number identifies the effort and the donor. For each effort, the program stores a marketing effort ID, source code, and finder numbers. The program uses these numbers to determine which segment the gift belongs in, or whether it is an indirect response or unresolved response. Additionally, if a direct marketing effort contains any potential donors from lists, the program uses the numbers for the list matchback process.

You can then test various aspects of an effort, such as different combinations of packages and segments, on a subset of recipients before you send out the actual marketing effort.

After you create and test your direct marketing effort, you can activate it. When you activate the direct marketing effort, you specify the appeal to be associated with gifts that come in as a result of the effort. Public media efforts are activated automatically when you create the effort. During the creation process, you also select the appeal to associate with the effort.

Finally, you can create an export file of the marketing effort for use by a processing house or to import into another program.

A variety of features in the program help you analyze the success of individual segments, including the Average Gift Comparison and Retention Retention states how many members of a segment gave a gift during the year. and Attrition reports.