Week 3 - Campaigns

Salesforce provides the "Campaigns" object to track marketing projects such as Open House Events, Information Sessions, Print Advertisements, Mailers, Email Blasts, etc. Campaign information fields include (but not limited to) campaign name, date, location, time, description, and budgetary information which are all stored within a campaign record. Campaigns provide a summary of member responses as well as aggregated stats such as the number of total converted students aiding in calculating a Return on Investment (ROI).

Prior to my use of Salesforce, I found it nearly impossible to calculate a ROI as the leads I did track were contained in various spreadsheets consisting of Open House attendees as well as some general inquiries. Information regarding the marketing project details were stored in my calendar, financial expenses were contained within a separate financial system, and lead emails were often left unassociated to affiliated messages in my inbox. Salesforce makes it possible for me to track this data with the use of Campaigns (and supporting information) by associating leads and tracking their converted status I am able to determine the marketing project's effectiveness. In the midst of an economic recession, it is crucial to be able to identify whether or not a marketing campaign is effective and, among many others things, salesforce provided me the ability to do just that.

Campaigns can also be associated with a Parent Campaign in order to create groupings or hierarchies. These groupings are essential when attempting to create a quick report on aggregated data as (at this point in time) many of the credit programs using salesforce are all utilizing the "Credit Campaign" record type. Parent campaigns are one way to group and differentiate your marketing projects from other groups. These parent campaigns can also be beneficial in creating a new "campaign view" to create a much more user friendly campaign list. Views allow an end user to easily navigate through the campaigns affiliated with their program removing the noise of unrelated projects.

It is a suggested best practice to utilize campaigns when creating a web to lead form. In this sense, Campaigns are used to group the leads from a particular form to the lead itself indicating which websites (or web to lead forms) are the most successful. For example, was the cost of the print ad worth the number of leads and/or converted leads generated? A properly established web to lead form affiliated with a campaign, in this case "Print Ad" campaign of some sort, allows you to track the number of responses and determine whether their prospective lead records converted into student accounts. All you would need to do is add the url of a web to lead form on the Print Ad which would track to a Print Ad campaign created within SF. I will be providing detailed information on creating a basic web to lead form in upcoming weeks.

Campaigns are also valuable when working with other Email Service Provider (ESP) apps such as Vertical Response. The ability to track campaign responses to an email blast within the individual lead record is very useful. For example, by viewing a prospective student record you could see which marketing campaigns they attended, which email bast they opened, clicked, bounced, or unsubscribed. I will be providing much more information regarding Vertical response in the upcoming weeks.

As always, a PowerPoint slide show and videos have been uploaded to the "Salesforce Guide" video page. The videos are also uploaded to screencast.com and easily accessible from the right side bar. Feel free to comment with questions :)