The standard Microsoft Dynamics CRM marketing list functionality is used to drive Email Campaigns. An Email Campaign can be associated with an existing marketing list or you can create a fresh one for your campaign. For example, you may wish to use the Advanced Find feature to create a new marketing list based upon behavioural data obtained from a prior Email Campaign in order to target only those prior recipients who clicked a specific link.
Before you can use a marketing list with an Email Campaign it must be email enabled. The Email Activated button on the Marketing List information screen is used to achieve this. See below for details of how to use this.
You must also synchronise your list with dotmailer before using it for an Email Campaign. This synchronisation will create corresponding address books in dotmailer although you should always use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to maintain the marketing list. The synchronisation will be triggered when you send an Email Campaign but you can manually complete it too from the following places:
- From the Marketing Lists screen, select the lists you wish to synchronise and click Synchronise. Click OK when the pop up message appears.
- From the Marketing List information screen, select Email Marketing from the menu bar then click the Synchronise button in the main toolbar. A pop up message will appear advising that synchronisation is in progress and will then confirm that the list has been added to the synchronisation queue. Click Close.
Manual synchronisation is useful for checking how many of your targets have unsubscribe records in dotmailer before you send your Email Campaign. Although this information would be returned to you anyway with other statistics (number of opens, clicks, bounces etc) after the campaign has been sent, you may wish to obtain an estimate of the viable targets. To do this, select the Notes tab on the Marketing List Information screen after synchronising and view the attached file of the appropriate Synchronisation Summary.
There may be other occasions when you need to retrieve data from dotmailer for a marketing list, without sending a campaign and you can use the manual synchronisation for this also.
Marketing List Information screen
To access a specific marketing list, click Marketing in the menu bar, then select Marketing Lists to display the Marketing Lists screen. Click on the list you wish to view. When the screen displays, click on the arrow next to Information in the menu bar and select Email Marketing (if not already selected).
This screen is divided into a number of tabs. The toolbar at the top of the screen contains a Synchronise button which is used to manage synchronisation with dotmailer. The menu bar be used to view further information about the marketing list. Clicking an option in the menu bar refreshes the main body of the screen.
Menu Bar Options for the Marketing List Information screen
Email Marketing
This displays the main screen with basic information about the marketing list (previous picture).
The other features on this screen are:
- Email Account – select the dotmailer email account for this list
- Activated for Email – required to be Yes before I can be used with dotmailer
- Member Type – each list can be for one type only, either Contact, Lead or Account
- Type
- Static list have members that are unchanging.
- Dynamics list are based on a dynamics query that retrieve the information. This type also changes the Membership action to Remove Address Book members not in this Marketing list to allow both additions and deletions from the associated address book.
Options
- Subscription Filter – these set the rules for any subscription filtering prior to synchronising data with dotmailer address books.
- No Filter (default)
- Only include Opted In
- Exclude Opted Out - Membership Actions – these set the rules for the synchronising of data with dotmailer address books. For all the options, members added to the marketing list will be added to the address book.
- Ignore New & Existing Address Book Members not in this Marketing List - This option only adds email addresses to the dotmailer address book and leaves others unchanged .(default)
- Allow only known Contacts to be added to this Marketing List - this will add contacts from the dotmailer address book to the marketing list if they are not present during the synchronisation.
- Remove Address Book members not in this Marketing list – any contacts in the address book that are not in the marketing list will be removed during synchronisation.
Leads Only
- Allow Known Leads or create new Leads if no match found – any contacts in the address book that are not in the marketing list will create a Lead in Dynamics during synchronisation.
- Clear List on Send – if ‘yes’ is selected, the members of your marketing list will be cleared once your Email Campaign has been sent. This allows you to use the same marketing list many times. You will be able to see which members have been mailed by looking at the Email Campaign screen.
Synchronisation Options
- Synchronisation Order – this feature allows you to specify which marketing lists are given priority for automatic synchronisation. The default processing order is 1000 and given to all lists when they are created. If there no preference as to the order in which your list is synchronised, leave it set to 1000. If you wish to give priority to a list, enter a number lower than 1000. The lower the number, the greater priority.
- Manual Synchronisation Only – if checked, this will prevent the marketing list from updating when automatic synchronisation to dotmailer takes place. Control is retained by the user managing the list who can decide when synchronisation takes place.
Synchronisation Information
- Address Book Name (read only) – after the list has been synchronised this field displays the dotmailer address book name that is linked to this marketing list.
- Address Book ID (read only) – after the list has been synchronised this field displays the dotmailer address book ID that is linked to this marketing list.
- Address Book Count (read only) – after the list has been synchronised this field displays the number of members in the dotmailer address book that is linked to this marketing list. This may not correspond with the number of members in the marketing list as dotmailer may have applied suppression rules.
- Last Synchronised (read only) – displays the date and time that the list was last synchronised.
- Last Synchronised Inbound (read only) - displays the date and time that the list was last synchronised and data was received from dotmailer.
- Synchronisation Status (read only) – displays the synchronisation status.
Notes
This displays general notes, allows new notes to be added and shows synchronisations. If will show any interaction by Watchdog.
Marketing List Members
Displays the members of the marketing list and allows new members to be added.
Unsubscribers
Displays members of the selected marketing list who have requested to be unsubscribed or opt-out from this particular Marketing List, typically when using the preference centre functionality from within dotmailer.
Note: This is separate to a person who has clicked the “Unsubscribe” link from within an email as this is a global opt-out of all future communications. Global unsubcribers are added to the Suppression List and the “Do Not Bulk Email” preference is updated against their CRM record.
Email Campaigns
From this screen you can see which campaigns are using the selected marketing list. Click on the campaign name to view the Email Campaign Information screen.
You are able to add an existing Email Campaign to the marketing list from here too, using the Add Existing Email Campaign button in the main toolbar.
Email Sends
Displays all the Email Send occurrences for the marketing list, together with the campaign related to the Send.
Email Clicks
This area displays all clicks for the marketing list, sorted by campaign.
Toolbar Options for the Marketing List Information screen
Synchronise
This button can be used to manually synchronise your marketing list with dotmailer. Your list must be email activated before this button can be used (see below for Email Activate details). A pop up message will appear advising that synchronisation is in progress.
After a short time the message will update and confirm that the list has been added to the synchronisation queue. Click Close to close the pop-up.
Activated for Email
This option is used to email activate the selected marketing list. The list must be email activated before it can be used with an Email Campaign. If the marketing list has already been email activated, the option will show on the screen with a tick , see below for illustrative screenshots.
The option can be toggled on and off as required. If toggled “off” then any link with the corresponding address book in dotmailer will be removed.
Comments