Mercury Marketing
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Steps for [[Creating a Third-party Marketing Campaign]] | Steps for [[Creating a Third-party Marketing Campaign]] | ||
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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.<br>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. | ||
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| + | Steps for [[Scheduling Campaigns]] | ||
Revision as of 08:07, 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
