Bulk Marketing

Action: none

Overview

This form provides the ability to select a group of prospects or customers based upon specific criteria and to generate labels, printed letters, eMail, SMS messages in bulk, or a printed report.

Label, Letter & eMail formats and content that is used by this Marketing tool is defined within the ProfitSystem Labels, Tag, Letter editor.

Selection Criteria

Three Options exists for building criteria. Two options select customers, the third selects prospects, i.e. people who have not been registered to an event. In addition, Prospect/Customer type, Wedding/Event date and date created are criteria that may be utilized in selecting the groups.

Option 1 The first option looks for customers who purchased an item of the specified categories, for a non-zero price occurring during the sale date range specified. They would have had not purchased anything from the other category, regardless of price or date of purchase.

Option 2 For the second option is set for wedding event types and looks for any events with members assigned the role that matches the role specified in this form. Then, it looks to see if any of the member roles has a sales ticket, if they do not, then the wedding is added to the list of wedding events to be contacted. The bride, groom, or both are added to the contact list, depending on the option selected.

Option 3 The third option selects prospects (are not a bride or groom of an existing event) that are interested in one or more styles (styles of interest are specified and appear on their prospect interest list). Or, if a vendor is specified, then any style from that vendor must appear in their prospect interest list. Styles or vendors may be manually entered by separating them with a comma.

Prospect/customer type... Only customers or prospects are included that match the TYPE code entered here. Leave blank for ALL prospects & customers.

Wedding date range... Only customers or prospects are included that have event dates that fall within the date range entered here. Leave blank for ALL prospects & customers.

Created date range... Only customers or prospects are included that were created (added to system) that fall within the date range entered here. Leave blank for ALL prospects & customers.

Track views & un-subscribes (checkbox)? (for HTML eMail only)... The track views and un-subscribes checkbox is only used when sending HTML emails. (Which is a Letters/Tag/Mailing Label of Printer type Email.) Checked, the Profit System will create an email campaign to track Statistics, and will automatically add an un-subscribe link to the end of each email sent, as well as a special tracking image. When the user displays the images of the email the tracking image will automatically increment the counter for a read email. The system will prompt for a Campaign name. Enter a descriptive name such as July2011Promo. This way you can see statistics based upon the campaign.

The un-subscribe link, when clicked by a reader will take them to an web page with an un-subscribe confirmation message. Their email address is added to the un-subscribe queue on the BBL Systems data warehouse when they confirm the un-subscribe. Later the shop will request the un-subscribes via the Process/Web Forms Get Form / eMail results option.

A tracking image is included in the email. When the email is viewed by the customer, the BBL Systems data warehouse tracks the fact that the tracking image was viewed. It then knows which customer viewed which email. Many online email systems such as Yahoo, GMail, and Hotmail specifically block images from being displayed in emails to prevent such tracking. However, if the email message contains pictures of gowns, etc, then the customer will probably choose to view the pictures in the email, which will allow the tracking to occur. When the tracking image is viewed, then a view count is added to the view queue on the BBL Systems data warehouse.

The un-subscribes and view counts are downloads from the data warehouse via the Get Form/Email Results option on the Marketing switchboard. When this option is selected, the Profit System connects to the BBL Systems data warehouse and downloads the un-subscribe requests, view counts, and prospect forms filled out. This data is also downloaded automatically when View Email Statistics is selected or Process Web Prospects.

As the un-subscribe requests are downloaded the email addresses are automatically cleared from the customer, prospect, and appointment file. The email is replaced by “Removed on date/time” View Email Statistics is used to view the list of email campaigns. A campaign is created each time “Track views and un-subscribes” is checked and an email is sent. There is no need to check it for letters or mailing labels. For each campaign, the total number of un-subscribes, and specific emails un-subscribed is shown. The total number of views, as well as which email addresses actually viewed the email is shown as well.

Buttons

Ok... Processes the entered criteria and will show the total # of customer or prospects found matching the criteria. If emails or SMS messages are sent to those customers or prospects, then the total # of emails sent may not match the number of customers/prospects found since everyone might not have an email, or a valid email or have a SMS carrier specified.

After the # number of records found, select the letter, label, or Email to be sent. An SMS and Print List buttons appear as well. SMS will prompt for an SMS to send to all the recipients, and Print List will print a contact list for all the recipients.

The Print List report has an option to group by SA. This is useful to distribute to sales associates to use as lead sheets.

A completed to-do is created for every email sent, linked to the recipient (customer or prospect.,) The contents of the email are saved to an Emails folder, located in the Livedata folder.

Cancel... Exits the form without processing.