Planning and Preparing Marketing Activities

Learn how to plan marketing activities and surveys.

Before executing a marketing activity, you need to enter its details and create any necessary documents and add records:

Determine how you wish to contact your customers or prospects:
- Mailings: Letters, e-mails, faxes or SMS can be created automatically within the scope of the marketing activity.
- Telephone: Activity records are automatically generated and can be edited by telemarketing staff.
- Combined channels: The customer/prospect is contacted using their preferred channel.
- Survey: A questionnaire is sent by e-mail and the answers are automatically saved in Aurea CRM. The survey is filled out by the appropriate rep if the survey is carried out by telephone.
Create the target group using a query.
You do not need to define a target group for follow-up activities and published adverts: These target groups are built up later. The target group created for a follow-up activity contains those customers/prospects that responded to the previous activity in a specific manner.

Note: Target groups can also be generated from selections created in Aurea CRM win. For more information on selections, see Selections in the Aurea CRM win User Guide.
Determine which labels should be used for letters. A label determines how the address and greeting in a letter are formatted. You can enter a general label when defining the marketing activity or enter a specific label for each person.
Note: Labels are defined in Aurea CRM win, see Label Formats in the Aurea CRM win User Guide.
Determine which database fields you want to merge with the text of the letter or e-mail.
Note: A transfer fields format needs to be defined for these fields in Aurea CRM win, see Defining Transfer Fields in the Aurea CRM win User Guide.
To create mass mailings and faxes, create a serial letter in Aurea CRM win, see Aurea CRM win User Guide.
For e-mails:
Note: To send an e-mail in a language other than the default languages, you should use UTF-16 encoding for the template document. For example, to send an e-mail in Cyrillic, encode the template document in UTF-16. You can use any text editor that supports UTF-16, to encode the template document.
1. Create a file containing the e-mail's body text.
2. Verify that e-mail addresses have been entered for the companies/persons in the target group.
Note: Aurea CRM web only supports sending e-mails via SMTP within the scope of marketing activities.
For SMS:
- Define the SMS settings.
- Create a file containing the text message’s body text.
For surveys (via telephone or e-mail):
- Add a questionnaire.

Note: To send an e-mail in a language other than the default languages, you should use UTF-16 encoding for the template document. For example, to send an e-mail in Cyrillic, encode the template document in UTF-16. You can use any text editor that supports UTF-16, to encode the template document.

Contents of a Mass Mailing

You can enter the template used by a mass mailing in the following fields:

E-mail: Template Document: If you enter a document in this field, MS Word is started before e-mails are sent, and you can merge transfer fields with the placeholders in the document template. You can use any document format supported by your version of Word.

E-mail: Template Document (TXT): Enter an HTML file in this field and use the syntax described below in HTML mails.

Note: To send email in a language other than the default languages, you should use UTF-16 encoding for the template document. For example, to send a mail in Cyrillic, encode the HTML template document in UTF-16.

Notation for HTML Files

Enter the body text to be used by your mailing in an HTML file. You have the following options:

Use variables to include field contents in the text, e.g.
```
<%KPLastName%>
```
to include the contents of the Last Name field in the Person in Company info area (KP).
Use the
```
<%Greetings%>
```
element to include the greeting defined in the label format.
Use the "
```
url:
```
" prefix in front of a field name apply URL encoding to the field. Spaces are then encoded as "%20", for example.
The "
```
html:
```
" prefix encodes the field as HTML. Characters that are forbidden in HTML are replaced, e.g. "&" is replaced by "&".
Use IF, THEN and ELSE statements to compose the e-mail based on the values stored in specific fields.
```
<%$IF FICountry = ‘Italy'%>
```
```
Text for Italian companies
```
```
<%$ELSE%>
```
```
Text for all other companies
```
```
<%$FI%>
```
- A period (full stop) is used to denote decimal places; i.e. "12.5" for twelve and a half.
- The following operators are available for logical expressions: <; <=; >; >=; =; <>
- You can carry out calculations using +, -, *, / and parentheses, e.g. (2+FIFreeDec1)*3.
- The following operators can be used in IF statements:
UCASE converts text to upper case, e.g. UCASE(KPFirstName)
LCASE converts text to lower case, e.g. LCASE(KPFirstName)
LEN returns the length of the field contents, e.g. LEN(KPFirstName)
INSTR returns the (first) position that a string or value occurs at within a text, e.g. INSTR(KPE-mail,"@aurea.com") returns the value 5 for the e-mail address "info@aurea.com"; it returns 0 (zero; not found) for "test@hotmail.com".

mmsms.ini File

To configure the system to send SMS within the scope of marketing activities, add a file named

mmsms.ini

to the

system\db

directory containing the following parameters (contact your SMS provider for details of your IDs, passwords and an interface description):

[configuration]

profile=MyProfile

Defines the name of the profile that is used.

[MyProfile]

Profile name (only the profile that is defined in the [configuration] entry is taken into account)

connectionString=

http://sms.xxxxx.at/api/?application_id=abc123&username=demo&pass=demo1

messageString="message"

dialString="deliverto"

Use the interface description delivered by your provider to define a valid and readable request. These settings are then added to the URL, e.g.:

http://sms.xxxxx.at/api/?application_id=abc123&username=demo&pass=demo1&message=message&deliverto=0043676123456

encoding=1

0 = no encoding, 1 = URL encoding

post=1

Use post=1 to send a request using HTTP POST (otherwise HTTP GET is used).

maxTextLen=300

The maximum length of the message. Longer messages are truncated at this point.

telPrefix=""

The character required by your provider before the international dialing code, e.g. ‘+’.

Err=-1

Use Err=-1 to output error messages from your provider instead of replacing them with Aurea CRM error messages.

Err3="ERROR 002"

Err4="WRONG USER"

Use these options to link error messages sent by your SMS provider with Aurea CRM error messages. The error messages in Aurea CRM are output instead of those from your provider. Example: The documentation supplied by your SMS provider describes the following error messages: "ERROR 002" occurs if the connection to the server cannot be established; "WRONG USER" occurs if the login is not recognized.

The errors in Aurea CRM are as follows:

Err1:

Invalid profile (ini file); internal error message, cannot be linked

Err2:

Message not found; internal error message, cannot be linked)

Err3:

No connection to the server

Err4:

Invalid user

Err5:

Invalid account (verify the user name and password)

Err6:

Err7:

Invalid or empty message

Err8:

Invalid telephone number

port=n

Enter the number of the port used to send the SMS. If you do not specify a port, the standard ports (80 or 443) are used.

Contents of an SMS

Enter the body text to be used by your SMS in a text file. You have the following options:

Use variables to include field contents in the text, e.g.
```
<%KPLastName%>
```
to include the contents of the Last Name field in the Person in Company info area (KP).
Use the
```
<%Greetings%>
```
element to include the greeting defined in the label format.
Use IF, THEN and ELSE statements to compose the SMS based on the values stored in specific fields.
```
<%$IF FICountry = ‘Italy'%>
```
```
Text for Italian companies
```
```
%$ELSE%
```
```
Text for all other companies
```
```
%$FI%
```
- A period (full stop) is used to denote decimal places; i.e. "12.5" for twelve and a half.
- The following operators are available for logical expressions: <; <=; >; >=; =; <>
- You can carry out calculations using +, -, *, / and parentheses, e.g. (2+FIFreeDec1)*3.
- The following operators can be used in IF statements:
  - UCASE converts text to upper case, e.g. UCASE(KPFirstName)
  - LCASE converts text to lower case, e.g. LCASE(KPFirstName)
  - LEN returns the length of the field contents, e.g. LEN(KPFirstName)
  - INSTR returns the (first) position that a string or value occurs at within a text, e.g. INSTR(KPE-mail,"@aurea.com") returns the value 5 for the e-mail address "info@aurea.com"; it returns 0 (zero; not found) for "test@hotmail.com".