Marketing Emails Aka Quick Campaigns in MS Dynamics CRM 2011

Mark Bradman, 08 June 2012

Following the scenario from our previous blog, you have spent many thousands of dollars on a Stand at a Trade Show where the measure of your success is a list of people who gave you their contact details.

As customary, you enter them into a spreadsheet for follow up by your sales team.

 

The only problem is that it could be over a week for your team to get to them all by which time they may have already been swooped on by your competitors.

Hence, this time you imported the names into Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM directly from the spreadsheet, meaning the contact details are available to everyone in your company on the morning after the Trade Show.

More importantly, you can now send a personalised email to everyone on the list reminding them of your products and services while they are still warm in their memories.

We pick up the scenario today by calling up the list you now have in Dynamics CRM which you called “Trade Show May 2012”:

1. Click
• Sales or Marketing on the site map
• Marketing Lists on the sub-menu 
• Double click “Trade Show May 2012” to open.

2. Click 
• Quick Campaign in the Marketing section
• Create Quick Campaign in the Marketing section of the Add tab.

 

3. Read explanation and click Next to continue.

 

4. Type in a suitable name, “Trade Show – Follow-up emails” and click Next to continue.

 

5. Select the Type of Activity we wish to create:
• Type of Activity: Email
• Assign Activities to: Me
• Next to continue.

 

6. Select the Email Template you wish to use:

• Tick the Use Template Checkbox
• Click the icon on the right side to call up the Slick Template form
• Select the Lead Reply – Trade Show Visit template from the Lead Templates list
The templates on this form comes out-of-the-box with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We will show you how to modify and create new templates in a subsequent blog.
• Click OK and Next to continue.

 

 

7. Click Create and you’re done!

 

All that’s left is to follow the advice on the screen above to ensure everything went as it should have.

In reality, it might be advisable to add in one more step to test the template email on a sample list before pressing the button on the full list. This takes only a few minutes and something you may have already done this in preparation for the Trade Show. Here’s how one of my tests, Bradman Test Marketing List, looks like:

 

Clicking on Quick Campaigns in the Marketing section shows you that this particular Email took me 3 goes for it to meet my own exacting standards, but then I’ve been a bit of a perfectionist.

 

My list of 2 emails is easy to check…

 

… and shows exactly what my recipients will see in their own Inbox:

 

As indicated earlier, we will go into how easy it is to modify and create new Email Templates in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in our next blog.