Messaging Campaign

A Messaging Campaign is a series of e-mail messages that are sent to a group of people to try to achieve a goal. For example, an organization might start a membership messaging campaign with goals of recruiting new members, survey participation, and donation requests for an upcoming fundraiser. Messaging campaigns provide a framework for tracking your communications to members, tracking their responses, and keeping your goals in sight.

Setting-up a messaging campaign involves selecting a campaign name, goal, start and end dates, and creating correspondence. The five standard Group Item Links (Add, Find, List, Run Query, Query Central), are available in the Messaging Campaign group item.

Adding a Messaging Campaign

The first step in adding a messaging campaign is deciding on a name and goal.

To add a messaging campaign:
  1. Click the Marketing tab.
  2. In the messaging campaign group item, click the Add Messaging Campaign group item link. The Add Messaging Campaign page displays.
  3. Campaign Name: Should be descriptive and based on the business rules for your organization around how you will name your campaigns.
  4. Campaign Goal: While this field is not required, it helps to state a campaign goal so that you know how successful your campaign is and what you may need to change in the future.
  5. Start and End Dates: Again, not required, but start and end dates help place definitive goals around when items should be completed. Start and End dates determine how long your campaign will be in effect and put milestones in place, for example.
  6. Click Save to create your messaging campaign. Once your campaign is created, you are able to add Calls to Action to the Campaign Profile.

Finding a Messaging Campaign

Finding a messaging campaign that has been created is easily accomplished. The Find function is universal throughout NetForum and detailed on the Find topic.

Finding a messaging campaign within the Marketing module follows the same format and function. You may search by the following:

  • Campaign Name
  • Campaign Goal
  • Start Date
  • End Date

The Advanced View checkbox allows you to conduct boolean searches to broaden and narrow your search as needed. If you are uncertain with what you are looking for, use the NetForum wildcard character, the percent sign (%) to help you with your search.

Navigating to the Messaging Campaign Profile

The Messaging Campaign Profile is displayed once you have created a new messaging campaign in the NetForum application. If you want to navigate to and view a specific profile page:

  • Click on the Marketing module from the Module Menu drop-down.
  • On the Group Item menu, click Campaigns. You can then choose to List Messaging Campaigns or to Find a Messaging Campaign.
  • You can also choose to click on the Create Campaign link from the Marketing content group page.

Depending upon which list you choose, its Messaging Campaign Profile will display.

The Messaging Campaign Profile

Adding a messaging campaign creates the Messaging Campaign Profile. The Messaging Campaign Profile shows the campaign name, goal, and the start and end dates that you specified when you created the campaign. The profile also has two child forms; the call to action child form and the statistics child form. The call to action child form helps you schedule the message campaign correspondence while the statistics child form keeps track of that correspondence. Both are discussed in more detail below.

A messaging campaign may require several correspondence templates, for example, an initial correspondence, follow up correspondence, reminder correspondence, or other correspondence.

Call To Action Child Form

Once you have created your messaging campaign, you are ready to begin sending the correspondence associated with it. The call to action child form keeps track of each Call To Action (CTA) you add to this campaign and also enables you to add one from the profile itself by clicking the Add record button. The Call To Action form appears that is identical to the CTA form you use when you create one from the Call To Action Group Item.

Once a CTA has been added to the call to action child form its promotional code, description, and start date is listed.

If you expand the folder, you are able to view the following about each CTA associated with the messaging campaign:

  • Last Activity
  • Organization
  • Recipient
  • E-mail
  • Status
  • Messages Sent
  • Opened
  • Forwarded
  • Clicks

This enables you to view exactly what actions have been performed for each CTA you have sent. Click the green GoTo to go directly to the Call To Action Profile if you need to modify the message.

Statistics Child Form

The statistics child form, depending on the features of the messaging system that is running, can tell you the number of messages that were sent, opened, forwarded and clicked.

External Messaging Provider

If you are using an external messaging provider then these statistics are compiled by the messaging integration which updates the NetForum data per that integration.

NetForum Messaging Provider

If you are using NetForum as your messaging engine, then you must insert a line of code into any Correspondence Template that you use in order to increment the "opened" and "forwarded" counts. Please note that this feature will not work with every mail reader, and it will work only when the user is connected to the internet while opening the message. Therefore, the true number of messages that were opened or forwarded will in reality be higher than these statistics. Additionally, this feature relies on a certain eWeb page (OpenRate.aspx). Therefore, the eWeb site must be operational and accessible over the internet, even if you aren't using it.

OpenRate.aspx calls the SP co_call2action_detail_message_opened which increments the database columns behind the opened and forwarded count. These columns are co_call2action_detail.acd_opened_count and co_call2action_detail.acd_forwarded_count.

With the NetForum messaging system, NetForum "thinks" the email is forwarded if the email is being opened a second time by an IP address that is different from the original IP address that opened the email, as stored in the md_page_access table. Therefore, the forwarded count may not be totally accurate as a user could open the email from different machines which could cause the system to "think" it has been forwarded to someone else.

Sent

This is set automatically by the messaging service when the Call to Action is delivered.

Opened

When your messaging service is NetForum , this statistic can be tallied by inserting the line below in the html body of the Correspondence Template and changing the URL to that of the real NetForum site: 

<img src="http://www.netFORUMsite.com/eWeb/eMarketing/OpenRate.aspx?acd_key={acd_key}" width="1" height="1"/>

Make sure that this is entered in the raw HTML view and not in the regular WYSIWYG editor. When the end user views the message, this will be invisible. The "src" contains a URL to a specialized eWeb web page that will take the value of the acd_key (which references the particular customer and call to action) and increments the values. The site in the URL must be the same NetForum site from which the messages are being delivered to ensure the correct linkage. There is nothing visual on this page; it's just a page to log the fact that the email was opened.

Every time the message is opened, the opened statistic will be incremented by 1, based on the assumptions above. If the user keeps opening the message, or opens it on different computers/devices, the count will keep incrementing.

Forwarded

If your messaging service is NetForum , this statistic can be tallied by inserting the same special tag into your correspondence template as described in the Opened section.

Every time the message is opened by a user who is not the original recipient (based on IP address), the forwarded statistic will be incremented by 1, based on the assumptions above. If the recipient opens the message on difference devices (e.g. home computer, work computer, mobile). If the user keeps opening the message, the count will keep incrementing.

Clicked

When your messaging service is NetForum , Clicks are used only on specialized pages eInviteReviewer.aspx, eInviteSurvey.aspx, TellAFriend.aspx, and eInviteEventReg.aspx. Further tallying of clicks requires custom programming as described in Tracking Click-Throughs