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Managing campaigns

The Campaigns workspace lets you create campaigns and manage the details associated with them, including steps, participants, and opportunities.

Info

A campaign is a coordinated set of predefined activities for achieving a marketing-related goal, such as a fundraising campaign.

Best practices for using campaigns

Consider using campaigns to:

  • Manage bulk email lists and track responses from contacts
  • Manage and send invitations for events such as seminars
  • Track lead stages for targeted marketing campaigns

Avoid using campaigns to:

  • Create saved lists or to share lists

FAQs for using campaigns and opportunities

This FAQ contains questions and answers about when to use campaigns and opportunities.


Use campaigns when you want to manage bulk email lists, track responses from contacts, manage and send invitations to events, and track lead stages for targeted marketing campaigns.

For more information on best practices for using campaigns, see Best practices for using campaigns.

Use opportunities when you want to track specific products or services that create further upselling opportunities.

For more information on best practices for using opportunities, see Best practices for using opportunities .

Campaigns workspace

The Campaigns workspace is divided into two areas:

  • The Campaigns list on the left, which displays a list of all campaigns.
  • The detail zone on the right, which displays all of the information related to the selected campaign. This area has the following tabs:

    Detail
    Displays the details of the selected campaign, including the name, manager, and any associated products.
    Documents
    Displays any documents attached to the campaign.
    Participants
    Displays the participants in the campaign and their status related to the campaign.
    Opportunities
    Displays any opportunities generated from the campaign.
    Stats
    Contains two graphs showing participant statuses and opportunity status versus expected revenue. The bar graph on the left displays the number of participants for each participant status (only participant statuses with at least one participant having that status will appear on the graph). The x-axis displays the different participant statuses, and the y-axis displays the number of participants. The bar graph on the right displays the expected revenue generated for each opportunity stage (only the stages with at least one opportunity on that stage will be displayed). The x-axis displays the different opportunity stages, and the y-axis displays the expected revenue. This graph displays the accumulated data for all opportunities, grouping these opportunities by stage.

Creating campaigns

You can create new campaigns.

To create a campaign:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the campaign list area on the left, click the Add button.
    The Add Campaign dialog opens.
  3. Complete the fields. You must enter the name of the campaign and define its status and priority.
  4. Click OK .

The campaign is created and appears in the Campaigns list.

Filtering the Campaigns list

You can filter the Campaigns list using the search input provided at the top of the campaigns list.

Type in the name or description of the campaign and click the Find button . To filter using advanced search criteria, click the Show Filter button and enter the required search criteria. You can search by manager, status, priority, or any combination of each. As you enter your search criteria, it displays as read-only text in the Filtered by field.

Modifying properties for a campaign

You can modify a campaign's properties.

To modify a campaign's properties:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the campaign list area on the left, click the Action button  for the item and select Edit .
    The Edit dialog opens.
  3. In the Edit dialog, modify any of the following properties:
    Name
    The name of the campaign. Enter the desired name directly into the text box.
    Description
    A description of the campaign.
    Type
    What kind of campaign it is. Choose a type from the drop-down list.
    Region
    On what scale the campaign will take place. Choose a region from the drop-down list.
    Start Date
    The date when the campaign starts. Select this from a calendar by clicking on the desired date.
    End Date
    The date when the campaign ends. Select this from a calendar by clicking on the desired date.
    Status
    The overall status of the campaign. Select a status from the drop-down list.
    Priority
    The priority of the campaign: A, B, or C.
    Manager
    The user in charge of the campaign. Change the manager by clicking the Select buttonto the right of the field and selecting a user from the dialog that appears.
    Folder
    The folder in which the documents related to the campaign may be stored.
    Activity Plan
    Sets the activity plan that will be executed for each participant of the campaign once they are initiated.
    Target Audience
    A predefined filter that can be applied to the existing entities when you select participants automatically. Select a predefined filter from the drop-down list. These filters are system-defined queries which are created using NexJ System Admin Console.
    Allocation Rules
    An assignment model that automatically assigns owners to new participants. For more information, see Using the allocation rules assignment model .
    Role
    A parameter used for the assignment model.
  4. Click OK .
    The Edit dialog closes.

You have modified a campaign's properties

Using the allocation rules assignment model

The Allocation Rules field in the Detail tab contains a drop-down list of assignment models that can be applied to campaigns (i.e., that have their Assignment Target field set to Campaign Coverage). These assignment models are created in NexJ Admin Console and automatically assign a user to a new participant upon creation based on the rule set of the model for both individually added participants and automatically selected participants.

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An assignment model is a method used to assign roles or activities to users automatically in a variety of situations, including campaigns and activity plans.

If a model requires a coverage role to function, then you can select the coverage role from the Role field beside the Allocation Rules field.
NexJ Admin Console comes with one preset assignment model for campaigns: Campaign User. This assignment model requires that you input an entity coverage role, and does the following:

  1. It looks at the coverage for the new participant. If a user who is covering the participant has the same coverage role as the one that was selected in the Role field, then that user is assigned to be the owner of the participant.
  2. If no user covering the participant has that role, or if no users are covering the participant, then the user who is the campaign manager becomes the owner.

Using the Documents tab

The Documents tab in the Campaigns workspace displays all of the documents associated with the campaign. Note that you cannot add documents here but you can add, remove, and edit the attachments of any existing documents.

Using the Participants tab

The Participants tab in the Campaigns workspace displays all of the participants associated with a campaign, as well as their status and owner.

About participants

A participant is an entity (usually not a user) that is involved in a campaign, and will be in contact with the user responsible for it during the campaign.

The status of a participant signifies their current standing within a campaign. You can choose from any of the five default statuses (inactive, initiated, responded, not interested, or removed) as well as any custom statuses that have been set in the Enumerations page in NexJ Admin Console.

The owner of a participant is the user who is specifically assigned to all the activities for a specific participant in a campaign. Depending on your allocation rules, an owner may be automatically assigned to the participant upon creation. Each participant must have an owner associated with it or you will not be able to initiate their campaign.

Adding participants to a campaign from the Campaigns workspace

You can add any entity in NexJ CRM to a campaign as a participant.

To add participants to a campaign:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the Campaigns list, select the campaign that you want to add participants to.
  3. In the Participants tab, click the Select button .
    The Participants dialog opens.
  4. In the list on the left side of the dialog, select the participants that you want to add to the campaign, and click Add .
    Your selections are added to the New Participants list on the right side of the dialog.
  5. Click OK .
    The Participants dialog closes.

Your selected participants are added to the campaign.

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You can also add participants to the campaign from the Contacts workspace. You can add:

  • A single participant by clicking the Actions button  for a contact and selecting Add to > Campaign .
  • Multiple participants by selecting checkboxes for multiple contacts in the contact list, and then selecting Actions > Add to > Campaign .

Selecting participants using a predefined filter

If several of the intended participants of the campaign share a common property, such as a company, last name, or category, then you can use the Select Participants button in the Participants tab to automatically add all of the applicable entities to the participant list.

Info

An entity is an object in NexJ CRM that represents a person (such as a user, contact, or lead) or an organization of individuals (such as household, company, or department). In addition, it can represent an investment account. When Capital Markets functionality is enabled, entities can also represent institutions, sectors, and funds .

To use the Select Participants feature, your campaign must have values in the Manager , Allocation Rules , and Role fields so that automatically added participants are assigned owners. To verify these values, click the Detail tab and review the campaign's properties. See Modifying properties for a campaign for information on how to modify these properties.

To select participants for an existing campaign using a predefined filter:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the Campaigns list, select the campaign you want to add participants to.
  3. In the Detail tab, click the Edit button .
    The Edit dialog opens.
  4. Select a target audience from the Target Audience field and click OK .

    Info

    The values for this field are set in the Predefined Filters tab on the Filters page in NexJ System Admin Console.

    The Edit dialog closes.

  5. Click the Participants tab and click Select Participants . In the confirmation dialog, click OK . All of the entities that satisfy the conditions of the filter will be added to the Participants list.

    Info

    If the entities are not immediately added to the list, click another campaign in the Campaigns list, then return to your desired campaign. The populated list will now display

You can apply different filters and use the Select Participants button multiple times to add several groups of entities to the campaign. Entities that are covered by more than one filter will only be added a single time to the Participants list.

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A maximum of 4096 participants can be added to any single campaign.

Initiating a campaign for a single participant

You can initiate a campaign for a single participant, which will assign the corresponding steps to the participant's owner and change the participant's status.

To initiate a campaign for a single participant:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the Campaigns list, select your desired campaign.
  3. Click the Participants tab.
  4. In the Participants list, locate the participant you want to initiate.
  5. Click the Action button  for the participant and select Start.

The status of your selected participant is updated to Initiated and the status of the campaign, if set to Inactive , is updated to Active .

Initiating a campaign for all participants

You can initiate a campaign in batch for all of its participants, which will assign the corresponding steps to the participants' owners and change the participants' statuses.

To initiate a campaign for all its participants:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the Campaigns list, select your desired campaign.
  3. Click the Participants tab.
  4. At the top of the Participants list, click Initiate Participants .
    A confirmation dialog opens.
  5. Click Yes .

The status of all the campaign's participants is updated to Initiated and the status of the campaign, if set to Inactive , is updated to Active .

Editing a participant's status and owner

Within a campaign, you can edit the participants' information to reflect their owner or their status. However, in order to change a participant's status, they must first be initiated in the campaign. See Initiating a campaign for a single participant and Initiating a campaign for all participants for more information on how to initiate campaigns for a single participant or all participants.

To edit a participant's status and owner:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the Campaigns list, select your desired campaign.
  3. In the Participants tab, click the Action button  for the participant, and click the Edit button .
    The Edit Campaign Participant dialog opens.
  4. In the Status field, select your desired status for the participant.
  5. In the Owner field, select your desired owner for the participant.
  6. Click OK .
    The Edit Campaign Participant dialog closes.

Your desired status and owner changes are made.

Modifying opportunity properties

The Opportunities tab displays a list of all of the opportunities that have been generated from this campaign. These opportunities have been added for each individual participant in their Journal tab in the Contacts workspace, and cannot be added or removed here. You can, however, change the properties of an opportunity here.

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If an opportunity has a business process in progress, the opportunity is locked until the business process is approved, rejected, or deleted. You can add activities to a locked opportunity but cannot edit other opportunity properties.

To change the properties of an opportunity:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. In the Campaigns list, select the campaign whose opportunities you want to access.
  3. Click the Opportunities tab.
  4. Click the Action button  for the opportunity you want to edit and select Edit .
    The Edit dialog opens.
  5. Change the opportunity's properties as needed:
    • In the Detail tab, you can change the basic properties, including description, expected and actual earnings, and its stage.
    • In the Products tab, you can associate financial products with this opportunity.
    • In the Team tab, you can add users to the coverage team for this opportunity.
    • In the Contacts tab, you can associate other entities with this opportunity.
    • In the Security tab, you can change the view and edit security levels for this opportunity.
  6. Click OK .
    The Edit dialog closes.

You have updated opportunity details for a participant.

Managing business processes

Emailing documents from the Campaigns workspace

You can email a document from the Campaigns workspace to a single contact or multiple contacts.

To email a document to a contact or multiple contacts:

  1. Navigate to the Campaigns workspace.
  2. Right-click on the required document and select Email and either For Single Contact or For Current Contact List .
    If you select For Single Contact , the Select Contact dialog opens. Select a contact and click OK . If you select For Current Contact List , the Batch Email dialog opens.
  3. [Optional] In the From drop-down, you can select your own email account or a group email account that you have access to.

    Info

    The Send from Group Mailbox permission enables you to send emails from a group email account.

  4. In the Subject field, enter the email subject.
  5. In the Body field, enter the text for your email.

    Info

    You can use the toolbar at the top of the Body field to format the text as rich text with styles such as bolding, italics, bullet points, and hyperlinks. You can also copy and paste formatted text into the field. You can also click the Image button in the toolbar and upload images from your computer to use in email signatures. The images cannot exceed 2MB in size. The images must be in JPG, JPEG, or PNG format. To specify additional image settings, navigate to the Advanced tab. For example, you can specify the size of an image and its alignment.

  6. [Optional] To insert a merge field into the Body field, click Merge Fields and select the required merge field from the list. For example, the ${firstName} merge field personalizes the email with the recipients' first names.
  7. [Optional] To add your email signature, select Include Email Signature . To modify your email signature, click Manage Email Signature .

    Info

    You can create an email signature from the User Preferences dialog.

  8. Adding attachments to emails overwrites the subject and body text that you may have entered in the Subject and Body fields. To specify attachments to include in the batch email:
    1. In the Files field, click the Select button . You can choose from the following options:
      Favorites > Manage Favorites
      Opens the Manage Favourite Documents dialog where you can select attachments.
      Select from Document Manager
      Opens the Select from Document Manager dialog where you can select attachments stored in the Document Manager.
      Select from Computer
      Opens the Select from Computer dialog where you can browse for attachments stored on your computer and select the required attachments.
    2. Select the document to include attachments for in the batch email.

      Info

      Selecting a document includes all of its attachments.

    3. Click OK .
      The dialog closes. In the Batch Email dialog, the document's description populates the Subject field and the document's notes populate the Body field.
  9. [Optional] You can click on the Recipients tab to view message recipients. You can also search the list by first and last name. You can also click on the Add button  and choose either of the following drop-down items:
    • Select individual recipients to open the Recipient Picker where you can add and remove recipients.
    • Select recipients from a list to open the Select List dialog where you can select a saved list that you previously created to add recipients
  10. In the Logging Options and Touches tab, select Create a journal entry for each recipient with personalized copies of the specified document to create a journal entry on the Activities tab for each selected lead. This checkbox is selected by default.
  11. In the Log Item Description field, enter Email.
  12. [Optional] By default, the Add Subject checkbox is selected and appends the subject of the email to the log item description. You can choose to clear the checkbox.
  13. [Optional] You can select an item in the Priority drop-down to categorize the email record.
  14. [Optional] You can choose to attach a related campaign, opportunity, product, or service request.
  15. [Optional] In the Follow-ups tab, you can choose to add a follow-up activity by selecting the Add drop-down menu and selecting an option.
    Assigning a follow-up activity adds a task to the assignee's My Tasks tab in the Home workspace. The system creates one task for each recipient of the email. For example, assigning a follow-up activity for an email with three recipients creates three tasks. If logging is enabled, the task is also included list with one task for each recipient, and it will appear with the email log in each contact's Activities subtab.
  16. [Optional] To preview the email before sending it to recipients, click Send a Draft Email to send the email to your email. If there are merge fields in the email body and attachments, they are personalized using the information from one of the recipients.
    After you click Send a Draft Email , a message displays stating that you have sent an email to your email address. Click OK to continue.
  17. To send the email, click Send Email .
    A confirmation dialog opens that summarizes of the number of attachments and leads in the batch email.
  18. Click Yes .
    The confirmation dialog closes.

The emails and attached documents are personalized and sent to the specified recipients. If an error occurs, an alarm dialog displays that tells you what caused the error and what to do next.

Related links

Creating an email signature