Mercury Marketing
From FloristWiki
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[[Save Campaign Panel]] | [[Save Campaign Panel]] | ||
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| + | ===All Output Fields Window=== | ||
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| + | This window displays all of the available output fields that you can include in the customer extraction. Select all of the fields that you plan to use in your direct mail or email promotion. For example, if you would like to include the customer’s name and address somewhere in the letter, | ||
| + | you will have to select these fields. | ||
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| + | If you are creating a predefined campaign, you were warned upon accessing this window that changing the output fields will deviate from the campaign. This means that changing the output | ||
| + | fields will create a custom template and you are no longer following the format of the predefined template. | ||
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| + | ===Campaign Scheduler Window=== | ||
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| + | When you save a campaign, you have the option of generating the campaign immediately (saving the customer list and/or merging the data into letters), or scheduling the campaign. Creating a | ||
| + | schedule for a campaign is ideal for campaigns that you intend to run on a regular basis, for example monthly anniversary or birthday reminder letters. By creating a schedule, you are giving the Mercury Marketing application the information it needs to generate the campaign automatically, without you having to access the program. The Campaign Scheduler allows you to create this schedule. | ||
===All Criteria Window=== | ===All Criteria Window=== | ||
Revision as of 12:11, 23 April 2008
The Mercury Marketing module allows you to send direct mail and email marketing promotions to your customers. With the upgrade to Mercury Marketing, you can create custom marketing campaigns that target a specific set of customers, and use the campaigns to send email messages, letters, or postcards to the customers that you already have saved in your FTD Mercury customer database.
IMPORTANT: If you have yet to purchase the Mercury Marketing module, contact Mercury Technology Sales at 1-800-767-3222 to learn more about how it can help your marketing efforts!
To automate the marketing process, FTD has provided you with dozens of colorful, professionally designed Microsoft Word templates for all occasions, which can be customized to suit your needs. You can even create your own custom templates. When your campaign is created, your customer information is merged into the templates, and you can print the templates on your own printer, or send them to a printer to be printed.
If you plan to send email promotions, FTD has partnered with Constant Contact®, a company that maintains an email marketing Web site that is exclusive to FTD florists. Email marketing works by first creating your campaign in the Mercury Marketing application, then uploading your customer list to the Constant Contact Web site. On the Web site you select the template you want to use, schedule when you want the email messages to be sent, and then Constant Contact handles the email distribution. Constant Contact keeps all of your customer information confidential, and does not use it for any other purpose than for sending your marketing email messages.
Note: Email marketing distribution is an add-on to the Mercury Marketing module, and is billed separately by Constant Contact. You must begin by registering with Constant Contact at http://ftd.constantcontact.com. Constant Contact manages opt in and opt out and adheres to permission-based marketing. Neither Constant Contact or the Mercury Marketing module allows you to send promotions to purchased lists of customers. You may only send promotions to customers that you have a relationship with (customers that are within your database).
Launching the Mercury Marketing Module
To launch the Mercury Marketing module:
- Open FTD Mercury.
- Log in using a login name and password that has permission to use Mercury Marketing.
- On the FTD Mercury Main Menu, click Marketing. The Mercury Marketing Wizard opens, and you can begin creating a new campaign or analyzing a campaign you have already executed.
Marketing Campaigns
Marketing campaigns are promotional campaigns used to send marketing materials to a targeted list of customers for a particular occasion or purpose. For example, you can create a Mother’s Day letter for top customers, a birthday reminder postcard for all customers, or an Easter email promotion for new customers. By prompting you for specific information, the Mercury Marketing Wizard can help you create custom marketing campaigns using the data from your FTD Mercury customer database. You can then save these campaigns to reuse, edit, analyze, or schedule later.
To make the campaign creation process easy, the Mercury Marketing Wizard provides you with predefined campaigns that, when generated, use the marketing templates that FTD has created for you. Throughout the campaign creation process you can deviate from the defaults, in which case you will be creating your own custom campaign or creating a new marketing template.
The Mercury Marketing Module contains many Predefined Campaigns.
Creating Direct Mail Marketing Campaigns
Direct mail marketing campaigns are campaigns that you intend to mail to your customers in a letter or postcard format. Before you begin, decide your target audience, occasion/purpose, and template. Templates are located on your hard drive in the C:\Wings\Office Marketing Templates folder. You may want to browse this directory and open some of the templates to see which ones you might want to use.
Creating Direct Mail Marketing Campaigns Using Predefined Templates
Predefined campaigns are the quickest and easiest campaigns to generate. Most of the information is completed for you automatically. Predefined campaigns use existing templates that are already created for you with predefined merge fields. Therefore you cannot change the text of the template, unless you modify it by Creating a Single Postcard Template or by Creating a New Template.
Steps for Creating a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign Using a Predefined Template
Creating Direct Mail Marketing Campaigns Using Custom Templates
If you want to create a custom campaign (i.e., you are not using a predefined list of customers or a provided template), you must merge your customer information into Microsoft Word manually.
- To learn how to create a new template (create a template from scratch, including letter text and merge fields), see Creating a New Template.
- To learn how to change an existing template (start with an FTD-provided template, then change the text and/or merge fields), see Creating a Single Postcard Template.
Creating a Birthday Reminder Direct Mail Campaign
Steps for Creating a Birthday Reminder Direct Mail Campaign
Creating a New Holiday Reminder Direct Mail Campaign
The Mercury Marketing module includes several predefined holiday reminder campaigns, including templates for letters and postcards. Available holidays include: Boss’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, Rosh Hashanah, Secretary’s Day, Sweetest Day, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day.
Steps for Creating a Holiday Reminder Direct Mail Campaign
Creating Other (Third-Party) Marketing Campaigns
If you want to send a mailing to a printing service to distribute for you, FTD recommends that you save and send your list (.csv file) of customers only, and not merged into Microsoft Word letters. If you merge the list into Microsoft Word letters, the file will be too large to email. Using the Other option in the Marketing Wizard allows you to save the .csv file without merging the information into Microsoft Word letters.
Steps for Creating a Third-party Marketing Campaign
Scheduling Campaigns
When you save a campaign, you have the option of generating the campaign immediately (saving the customer list and/or merging the data into letters), or scheduling the campaign. Creating a schedule for a campaign is ideal for campaigns that you intend to run on a regular basis, for example monthly anniversary or birthday reminder letters. By creating a schedule, you are giving the Mercury Marketing application the information it needs to generate the campaign automatically, without you having to access the program.
Before scheduling the campaign, you must first create the campaign in the Marketing Wizard,specifying the target customer information (see Creating a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign Using a Predefined Template). Before saving the campaign, select Schedule in the Save Campaign window.
Steps for Scheduling Campaigns
Campaign Analysis
The Mercury Marketing module allows you to analyze marketing campaigns so you can track sales generated by your campaigns. Sales that are entered with a marketing campaign’s referral code in Order Entry or Point of Sale are sales that are tracked by the Campaign Analysis tool.
NOTE: The Campaign Analysis tool only displays orders that were entered in FTD Mercury (Order Entry and Point of Sale). To analyze sales statistics for orders that were placed online, go to the Constant Contact Web site (http://ftd.constantcontact.com) and run a campaign analysis.
Steps for Analyzing Campaigns
Deleting Campaigns
You can delete campaigns from the Campaign Analysis window.
Steps for Deleting Campaigns
Templates
FTD has provided you with dozens of templates to choose from for direct mail marketing (see Predefined Campaigns). These templates can be found in the C:\Wings\Office Marketing Templates directory.
Modifying an Existing Template
Modifying an existing template allows you to take advantage of the professional look of the predefined template, yet customize it to meet your needs.
Steps for Modifying an Existing Template
Creating a New Template
Creating a new template from scratch gives you the freedom to create any type of template that you want. You can select your own merge fields, type a letter from scratch, then merge the customer information extracted from your FTD Mercury database.
Steps for Creating a New Template
Email Marketing Campaigns
If you have not already considered marketing by email, here are a few reasons why it is more efficient and effective than traditional mail marketing—and why it can save you money:
- It is much less expensive—no labor costs or expenses for paper, envelopes and stamps
- It saves time—email marketing campaigns only take a couple of minutes to send, compared with the long process of printing, addressing, and mailing letters
- Templates are already created for you—they are colorful, professional, and contain personalized customer information
- Email marketing generates an immediate response from your customers—email messages can be received by your customers within minutes
- Campaign results are tracked instantly—you can use the Constant Contact Web site to track how many customers have placed orders using links in your marketing email messages
- Establish and build relationships—email marketing keeps you in touch with current and prospective customers and builds lasting relationships
Creating Email Campaigns in the Marketing Wizard
As you begin creating an email campaign, keep in mind that only customers with email addresses are extracted for the campaign.
Steps for Creating Email Campaigns in the Marketing Wizard
Creating a List of Customer Email Addresses
If you want to create a list of customers and their email addresses for other uses, you can do so using the Mercury Marketing Wizard.
Steps for Creating a List of Customer Email Addresses
Window Descriptions
Welcome Panel
When you open the Mercury Marketing module, the Marketing Wizard opens. The first panel in the wizard gives you the option of creating a new campaign or analyzing a campaign you have already executed.
Create Campaign Panel
The Create Campaign panel allows you to enter the name of the new campaign and a unique referral code, set the distribution type, and specify the campaign type. You can also load a previous campaign to refresh and run it again.
All Campaigns Window
This window displays all past campaigns that you have run. To load a campaign, highlight the campaign in the list and then click Load.
Add New Referral Code Window
The Add New Referral Code window allows you to enter a new referral code for a marketing campaign. This code is used to analyze the effectiveness of a particular marketing campaign, and therefore should be unique. Typically, it should also be short so it can be seen in the Order Entry and Point of Sale windows.
Type the new referral code in the text field then click Add. You will receive a warning message stating that you will have to restart the FTD Mercury and Mercury Administration programs for the referral code to be visible in those programs. Click OK to accept the message.
Campaign Analysis Window
So that you can track sales generated by marketing campaigns, the Mercury Marketing application allows you to analyze marketing campaigns that you have run from the marketing wizard. Sales that are entered with a marketing campaign’s referral code in Order Entry or Point of Sale are sales that are tracked in the Campaign Analysis window.
Select Target List Panel
The Select Target List panel allows you to specify the target audience for the marketing campaign.
Key Criteria Panel
The Key Criteria panel allows you to select the criteria you want to use when selecting the customers to include in your campaign. The options on this panel depend on the options you selected in the Select Target List panel.
Output Fields Panel
The Output Fields panel lists all of the output fields that are available for extraction.
Preview and Edit List Panel
The Preview and Edit List panel allows you to see the target list before you save the campaign. You should take this opportunity to verify the list is what you expected. It is possible that you will need to click the Back button to change some of the previous options. If you are not sure of the criteria, click View Criteria to display the Selected Criteria window.
Save Campaign Panel
The Save Campaign panel allows you to select options for saving your marketing campaign, such as whether you would like to execute the campaign now or schedule it, if you would like to generate mailing labels, etc.
All Output Fields Window
This window displays all of the available output fields that you can include in the customer extraction. Select all of the fields that you plan to use in your direct mail or email promotion. For example, if you would like to include the customer’s name and address somewhere in the letter, you will have to select these fields.
If you are creating a predefined campaign, you were warned upon accessing this window that changing the output fields will deviate from the campaign. This means that changing the output fields will create a custom template and you are no longer following the format of the predefined template.
Campaign Scheduler Window
When you save a campaign, you have the option of generating the campaign immediately (saving the customer list and/or merging the data into letters), or scheduling the campaign. Creating a schedule for a campaign is ideal for campaigns that you intend to run on a regular basis, for example monthly anniversary or birthday reminder letters. By creating a schedule, you are giving the Mercury Marketing application the information it needs to generate the campaign automatically, without you having to access the program. The Campaign Scheduler allows you to create this schedule.
All Criteria Window
The All Criteria window allows you to specify which customers you would like to include in the marketing campaign. For example, you may want to only include customers within certain zip codes or only customers with a particular billing cycle.
To select criteria, first click on a field’s check box to select that field, then in the text area type or select the criteria for your marketing campaign. When you are finished selecting criteria, click OK to return to the Key Criteria panel.
