Preparing and Launching an Email Marketing Campaign in Siebel CRM
We talked about setting up Siebel Email Marketing earlier.
The functionality of marketing campaigns in Siebel CRM allows you to carry out various events to inform customers about new offers. The standard object model reflects all stages of the marketing campaign and contains such entities as offer and treatment. A reference is a sentence template specific to a particular interaction channel. For a contact center, this can be a conversation script; for SMS, a message text.
When conducting an Email newsletter, you must create an HTML email template and attach it to the appropriate campaign.
Despite the fact that this editor provides quite rich functionality, I recommend creating a letter layout in specialized programs outside Siebel, and use this editor for checking and small edits. Ideally, to create a letter template, you need to set a task for the designer who will develop the message layout. Then pass the resulting layout to the layout designer, who will create an HTML file with the desired styles. Already this file can be downloaded to Siebel.
After starting the mailing list, Siebel will generate two files: one - with the data of the mailing list participants according to the list of fields in the offer (see below), and the other - with the letter template. Siebel will then turn to ESD to process these files. Special directives may be indicated in the letter template, instead of which the ESD will substitute recipient data or other elements that determine the functionality of the letter.
Next on the list is a set of things to consider when designing a letter template:
The next step after creating a proposal template is to define a segment or list of participants. These are two fundamentally different ways of setting an audience for a marketing campaign. A static list works well when you need to process data from external sources. But for full-fledged marketing campaigns on an existing customer base, you must use segmentation, which is done using BI.
After the lists (or segments) and sentences are specified, it is necessary to make a correspondence between them:
In the general case, within the framework of one campaign, several interaction channels and several segments or lists can be involved. In addition, you can use different letter templates for the same sentence. In this case, it is possible to do small mailings to control groups in order to understand which channel works best or which letter template gives the best response. This can significantly increase the effectiveness of activities.
The launch of a marketing campaign takes place in two stages. First, a campaign is loaded within which a list of participants is fixed. If a static list is selected, its participants become participants in the campaign. If segments are used, then it is at this moment that a request is made in BI in order to obtain a segment.
Once the list of participants is fixed, you can start the campaign. For all offers for which an Email delivery channel is defined, the following steps will be performed.
Conducting a marketing campaign and not collecting feedback is like not conducting a marketing campaign at all. From the point of view of the Email channel, we can get information about non-delivery (via BHD), information about opening (if you inserted a special directive inside the message) and about clicking on links inside the message (if they are inserted as a Trackable URL).
The fact of letter non-delivery is defined as a property on the campaign participant:
All other responses are collected in a separate Response entity:
The Siebel marketing module is very extensive, and even if you focus on only one interaction channel (in this case Email), it’s impossible to cover everything. Here are just a few of the options that immediately come to mind.
Object model
The functionality of marketing campaigns in Siebel CRM allows you to carry out various events to inform customers about new offers. The standard object model reflects all stages of the marketing campaign and contains such entities as offer and treatment. A reference is a sentence template specific to a particular interaction channel. For a contact center, this can be a conversation script; for SMS, a message text.
When conducting an Email newsletter, you must create an HTML email template and attach it to the appropriate campaign.
Message template
Despite the fact that this editor provides quite rich functionality, I recommend creating a letter layout in specialized programs outside Siebel, and use this editor for checking and small edits. Ideally, to create a letter template, you need to set a task for the designer who will develop the message layout. Then pass the resulting layout to the layout designer, who will create an HTML file with the desired styles. Already this file can be downloaded to Siebel.
Accessibility features for letter templates
After starting the mailing list, Siebel will generate two files: one - with the data of the mailing list participants according to the list of fields in the offer (see below), and the other - with the letter template. Siebel will then turn to ESD to process these files. Special directives may be indicated in the letter template, instead of which the ESD will substitute recipient data or other elements that determine the functionality of the letter.
Next on the list is a set of things to consider when designing a letter template:
- A set of personal fields for substitution. When it is necessary to make a personalized letter with personal data of the recipient and a personal offer, you can insert special directives of the form [Field: Name].
The list of available fields is determined at the Treatment level.
Most often, Default Megre Fields is used, which defines fixed fields for unloading. This list can be expanded, but with one limitation: you can use only data from the Siebel database. If there is a need to make a more flexible data set for substitution, then you need to connect BI to this process. - Special directives. There is a set of required elements (for example, a link for unsubscribing from the newsletter) that must be present in each letter.
- Newsletter Unsubscribe: [Response: One Click Unsubsc]
If you simply insert the [Response: One Click Unsubsc] directive into the template, the ESD will insert a tag of the following form in this place:One Click Unsubscribe
The text inside the tag cannot be changed in this case, but there is an alternative way to specify a link to unsubscribe: insert the tag manually as follows:Отписаться от рассылки
It is important to put * before the word Response.
In this case, the letter received will have the correct link and the text that was indicated.Отписаться от рассылки- Opening Information: [Response: Read Receipt]
Instead of the [Response: Read Receipt] directive, ESD inserts the so-called zero pixel:
When opening a letter, the mail client will make a request to CTD to receive this picture, and Siebel will record the fact of opening a particular letter.
Do not forget to click Save Template - Links to external resources. If there are any links inside the message that the recipient should click on, and there is a need to collect information about clicks on these links, then for this task you need to use the Trackable URL. You need to define these links on the tab “Offers -> Email Treatment -> Advanced -> TrackableURLs”, and then insert the directives with the name Trackable URL inside the message.
Note: inside these links you can use fields for substitution. - Images. For images that need to be displayed inside the letter, you must use the tag
. Through the src attribute, you need to specify a link to the picture, which is accessible from the Internet.
- Attachments. You can send an email with an attachment. The main limitation is that it will be a static document. That is, its content will be the same for all recipients. Attachments are defined on the tab "Offers -> Email Treatment -> Attachments"
- Testing a letter template. The Verify and Preview button allows you to check how the letter will look after all the substitutions have been completed. Such a check must be done every time before sending the newsletter.
Recipient List
The next step after creating a proposal template is to define a segment or list of participants. These are two fundamentally different ways of setting an audience for a marketing campaign. A static list works well when you need to process data from external sources. But for full-fledged marketing campaigns on an existing customer base, you must use segmentation, which is done using BI.
After the lists (or segments) and sentences are specified, it is necessary to make a correspondence between them:
In the general case, within the framework of one campaign, several interaction channels and several segments or lists can be involved. In addition, you can use different letter templates for the same sentence. In this case, it is possible to do small mailings to control groups in order to understand which channel works best or which letter template gives the best response. This can significantly increase the effectiveness of activities.
Campaign launch
The launch of a marketing campaign takes place in two stages. First, a campaign is loaded within which a list of participants is fixed. If a static list is selected, its participants become participants in the campaign. If segments are used, then it is at this moment that a request is made in BI in order to obtain a segment.
Once the list of participants is fixed, you can start the campaign. For all offers for which an Email delivery channel is defined, the following steps will be performed.
- According to the list of participants, a CSV file with the data of these participants will be generated. What data will be uploaded there is determined by the format of the list specified in the sentence:
Most often the standard set of fields is uploaded. But if you want to upload something more complicated, then you need to connect BI again and already there determine the format of the list based on the data that is available to it. This file will be saved in the Siebel file system. - The letter template is downloaded in the MIME format, which any SMTP server (mail server) understands. This template is saved on the Siebel file system.
- A request is sent to ESD (see previous article), where information about the generated files is transmitted
- Further Siebel waits for the ESD to do its job. Collects responses through BHD and CTD
Feedback collection
Conducting a marketing campaign and not collecting feedback is like not conducting a marketing campaign at all. From the point of view of the Email channel, we can get information about non-delivery (via BHD), information about opening (if you inserted a special directive inside the message) and about clicking on links inside the message (if they are inserted as a Trackable URL).
The fact of letter non-delivery is defined as a property on the campaign participant:
All other responses are collected in a separate Response entity:
Open questions
The Siebel marketing module is very extensive, and even if you focus on only one interaction channel (in this case Email), it’s impossible to cover everything. Here are just a few of the options that immediately come to mind.
- Conducting marketing campaigns as part of marketing programs (multi-stage campaigns)
- Campaign Planning and Scheduled Launch
- Big List Performance
- Telemarketing Approaches (CTI)