Email campaigns in Microsoft Dynamics

Learn how to create, synchronise and send email campaigns using Microsoft Dynamics.

Gareth Burroughes avatar
Written by Gareth Burroughes
Updated over a week ago

Email campaigns must be created in Dotdigital and synchronised to Dynamics. In this section, we manually synchronise email campaigns. But, you can also set up email campaigns to be automatically synchronised.

Once your campaign has sent, you can view the reporting data in Microsoft Dynamics.


Create and synchronise an email campaign

  1. Create an email campaign in your Dotdigital account

    Learn how in the Email basics section of the Help Centre.

  2. In Microsoft Dynamics, go to Email Campaigns under Dotdigital in the left hand menu.

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  3. Select Synchronise in the command bar to manually synchronise your email campaigns.

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    If you do not have the correct privileges to perform this action, a popup window appears telling you that you cannot complete the synchronisation. Contact your CRM administrator for help.

  4. After the synchronisation has finished, you should see the name of your email campaign in the list. Select the name to access the campaign information page.


Select a target marketing list

Before you can send your email campaign, you need to create an email-activated Marketing List and synchronise that list to Dotdigital.

After you've created your Marketing List, to add the Marketing List to your campaign:

  1. Select the name of your email campaign from the list on the Active Email Campaigns page.

  2. Select Target Marketing Lists.


    Target_marketing_lists.png

  3. Select Add Existing Marketing List, then select the Marketing Lists that you want to send the email campaign to from the sidebar.

  4. Once you have chosen all the lists you want, select Add.


Send an email campaign

  1. From the campaign information page, select Send Email Campaign.

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  2. Select your targeted marketing lists.

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    A warning icon appears next to the name of the Marketing List if one of the following conditions is true. Hover over the icon to confirm the reason.

  3. Select Continue. The Email Campaign Targets Counts page is displayed. This page displays the total amount of targets that you can send emails to. If any targets were excluded from the total amount, the lower part of the page displays a pie chart, illustrating the reasons for the exclusion.

    target-summary.png

  4. Select Continue. The Email Campaign Options page is displayed. From this page, you can choose whether to send your campaign immediately or schedule the send for a predetermined date and time in the future.


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    If you created a split test campaign, you can set your specifications for sending (% of targets to send an initial batch to/delay period/measuring metric). After you've set these specifications, the Summary section of this page displays your selected timescales and details of how the email sends are split.

  5. Select Continue. The Email Campaign Wizard Summary page is displayed to allow you to check the details of the campaign before it is sent.

  6. Select Send Campaign.

    campaign-summary.png

  7. A new window advises you that you are about to send your campaign. Select OK.

    Email campaigns must be in an Activated state to be sent. By default, they are set to Activated.


Cancel a scheduled send

  1. Go to Email Sends under Dotdigital in the left side menu.

  2. Expand the Send Status drop-down menu and select Scheduled.

    To quickly locate a specific campaign, you can use the Search field.

  3. Select the checkbox next to the scheduled campaign name.

  4. Select Delete in the command bar.

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You can also delete a scheduled send directly from the Email Campaign Information page:

  1. Go to Email Campaigns under Dotdigital in the left hand menu.

  2. Select a campaign name.

  3. Expand the Related drop-down menu, and select Email Group Sends.

  4. Select the checkbox next to the scheduled send.

  5. Select Delete Email Group Sends from the command bar.


View reports

After a campaign is sent various campaign statistics are synchronised from Dotdigital. This synchronisation happens depending on the intervals that are specified on the Scheduled Sync Settings page.

Learn more about Scheduled Sync Settings in Administration Settings in Microsoft Dynamics.

The reports can be broken down into the following types, depending on the synchronisation level you have set for the campaign:

  • Basic: Displays a high-level summary of the overall campaign performance

  • Advanced: Displays more granular data

Set sync level

To set the level of synchronisation for a campaign:

  1. Go to Email campaigns under Dotdigital in the left hand menu.

  2. Select the name of the email campaign.

  3. Select the three dots menu, then select Administration.

  4. Expand the Synchronisation Level drop-down menu. This is set to Basic by default, or you can select Advanced.

  5. Select Save.


    sync_level_campaign.png

You can access the reporting data from the campaign information page.

Basic

The Statistics tab page provides a quick summary of how the email campaign performed.

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This page displays the following information for your sent campaign:

  • Number of sends

  • Number delivered

  • Campaign click data

  • Campaign open data

  • Bounced sends

  • Blocked sends

  • Forwards

  • Replies

  • Unsubscribes

  • Complaints

  • Page views

You can access the Engagement Summary, Send Summary and Social Summary tabs from the campaign information page.

The Engagement Summary tab provides graphical summaries of the engagement statistics, such as Top 10 Clicks, Bottom 10 Clicks, Email Opens by Date First Opened, etc. These statistics are retrieved from Dotdigital and made available within Microsoft Dynamics.

The Send Summary tab provides a table of all targets of the campaign in descending order of Date Sent. The list can be filtered using the arrow icon above the table to refine the data displayed. For example, you can view only those recipients who opened the marketing email. You can use the scroll bar at the bottom of the page to see more information such as how many times the recipient opened the mail and the first and last times they did this.

The Social Summary tab displays a summary of the number of views generated by your email campaign after being shared on social networks using the Dotdigital social network bookmarking tool.

Advanced

More granular data is available for a specific campaign by accessing the three dots menu on the right.

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The Click Summary page shows those recipients who have clicked a link within the marketing email, in descending order of click date and time.

The data can be filtered by the URL that was clicked on, enabling you to view only those recipients who clicked on a particular link. Selecting a particular record opens the Email click information page for that contact which displays the same data in non-editable fields rather than a tabular view.

If the appropriate page tracking script has been installed and configured on your website, the Web Page Views section shows recipients’ activity on your website after they have clicked through from your campaign. It also shows WebInsight data if this is activated on your account.

The Return on Investment report tracks and reports on any transactional events on your website resulting from an email campaign, for example a purchase of a product, or download of a whitepaper.

The Social Bookmarks tab displays the views generated by your campaign after being shared on social networks using the Dotdigital social network bookmarking tool.


Synchronise data about historical email campaigns from Dotdigital to Dynamics

You can pull through historical data for email campaigns previously sent from Dotdigital, provided the campaigns have already been synced to Microsoft Dynamics. Enabling this historical data sync will see the individual campaign report data (opens, clicks, bounces, etc.) created within Dynamics and associated with existing Contacts and Leads.

Contacts and Leads

Please note that no new contacts or leads are created. All contacts and leads are matched on the email address and, where the same email address is being used across a contact or lead, then the contact or lead with the most recent modified date is selected to match to.

If you want to pre-select the contacts and leads that are used to match within Dotdigital, simply add these to an email activated Marketing List and synchronise to a Dotdigital list in advance of changing the campaign synchronisation level.

To sync historical data for a synchronised email campaign:

  1. Select Email Campaigns from the left side menu under the heading Dotdigital.

  2. Select the name of the email campaign.

  3. Select Administration

  4. Change the Synchronisation Level to Detailed (Basic plus individual tracking)

To sync historical data for multiple synchronised email campaigns:

  1. Select Email Campaigns from the left side menu under the heading Dotdigital.

  2. Select the checkboxes next to the email campaigns you want to sync.

  3. Select Edit from the toolbar.

  4. In the Edit records side panel, select Administration.

  5. Change the Synchronisation Level to Detailed (Basic plus individual tracking).

  6. Select Save.

    sync_level_multiple.png

Check which marketing lists are associated with an email campaign

  1. Select Email Campaigns from the left side menu under the heading Dotdigital.

  2. Select the name of the email campaign.

  3. Select Target Marketing Lists.

  4. The Marketing Lists which are associated with your email campaign are displayed.


View the last synchronisation date for an email campaign

  1. Select Email Campaigns from the left side menu under the heading Dotdigital.

  2. Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the page to show the Last Synchronised column.

  3. This column displays the date and time that campaign reporting data was received into Microsoft Dynamics.

    If you require more recent information, you can manually re-sync the campaign.

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