How to Set Up Marketing Campaigns in NetSuite

SuiteFoundation Series

Marketing. In many ways, it’s foundational to a successful business. A business may have superb products or services and follow the best practices, but at the end of the day a business without customers won’t be in business for long. NetSuite targets this need with its marketing features. The ability to set up marketing campaigns in NetSuite ensures that your marketing efforts always stay connected to every other aspect of your business.

Marketing Preferences

The first step to using the marketing features in NetSuite is to set your company’s marketing preferences. You can access the Marketing Preferences page by navigating to Setup > Marketing > Preferences > Marketing Preferences. Under the General tab of this page, you have a wide variety of options available, including things like the default reply and from email addresses; the default promotions code and lead source on sales transactions; opt-in invitation and confirmation messages; and the default sales rep notification template for new leads or customers. Under the Subscription tab, you can determine the appearance of the unsubscribe option on any email campaigns.

Marketing Campaign Records

When you start a new marketing campaign, you need to create a new campaign record. To create a marketing campaign record, navigate to Lists > Marketing > Marketing Campaigns > New. On this record, you will be able to fill in any information related to your campaign, including things like the start date of the campaign, the end date, the expected cost, and the expected revenue.

Campaign Record Prep

As you work through the marketing campaign record, you will come across several fields that require you to set up some things before you can fully fill out the campaign record.

Campaign Category—The first of these fields is the campaign category. A campaign category describes the medium of the campaign, such as email, TV, online ads, or a newspaper. You can create campaign categories for each of the types of campaigns you will be using at Setup > Marketing > Campaign Categories > New.

Campaign Vertical—Campaign verticals describe specific market categories within a larger market group. To create new verticals, navigate to Setup > Marketing > Campaign Management > Verticals.

Campaign Audience—According to the Help Center, a campaign audience is simply “the target audience of a marketing campaign.” You can create a new campaign audience by navigating to Setup > Marketing > Campaign Management > Audiences. In addition to campaign audiences being useful to you on marketing campaign records, they also help you identify the source of leads you acquire through your marketing efforts.

Campaign Offer—A campaign offer is simply an offer that you provide along with the campaign, such as a “buy one, get one free” offer. To create new campaign offers, navigate to Setup > Marketing > Offers > New.

Promotion Code—Another field that requires some additional setup is the Promotion Code field, which enables you to provide a promotion code that would give customers discounts. You can create new promotions at Commerce > Marketing > Promotion Codes > New.

Campaign Events

The Events tab is significant because it breaks down the different parts of a campaign. A single campaign could have multiple events involved with it, and the Events tab enables you to organize and control what each of those events look like.

Email Event—One of the most common event types is through email. If you create an email event, then you will also need to set up an appropriate email template. An email marketing template is an HTML file that you edit and customize either directly using HTML or indirectly using the Rich Text Editor. To customize a marketing campaign email template, navigate to Documents > Templates > Marketing Templates > New, and choose the Campaign type. You can either start with a preexisting template layout or a blank template, and then customize the content of the email. You can also include images in your email template, as long as those images are in the File Cabinet and as long as you have checked the Available Without Login box on the File record.

In addition to choosing an email template for this event, you can also select your target group, provide a name for the event, designate the expected cost, and attach a promotion to the event. Then, you can set the date and time that you want the email to be sent. Once you are satisfied with email event information, change the status of the event from “Not Started” to “Execute,” and save the marketing campaign. Your campaign email will automatically send at the designated date and time.

Lead Nurturing—The second event type is lead nurturing. Lead nurturing enables you to strategically target promising leads with more information that should help them transition to actual customers. You can use NetSuite’s Workflow Manager in a lead nurturing campaign to dictate which emails different leads will receive, as well as which subsequent messages leads will receive based on their interaction with previous messages.

Direct Mail—This event type is fairly similar to the email event, except that it deals with physical mail. As with the email event type, you can select your target group, provide a name for the event, choose a template, and designate the expected cost.

Other Events—The Other Events tab includes basically any event that is not mail-related.

Campaign Metrics

Once you have created and initiated a marketing campaign, it’s important for you to understand the exact impact that the campaign has on things like lead generation and sales. A variety of marketing reports give you detailed information on the following key metrics.

Return on Investment

Reports that show the ROI compare the cost of the campaign to the final transaction revenue. In order for this information to be accurate, you need to be sure that the cost of the campaign as a whole and specific campaign events have been included on the campaign record. You also need to select relevant campaigns on transaction records to associate the campaign with any resulting transactions. Reports that help you understand the ROI of campaigns include Campaign ROI Analysis Summary & Detail, Sales by Paid Keyword Summary & Detail, and Sales by Lead Source Summary & Detail.

Lead Source

Another key metric provides insight into your lead sources—in other words, which campaigns have resulted in which leads. Your lead sources titles should correspond with your marketing campaign titles. You can designate the lead source on lead, prospect, customer, and contact records, which will demonstrate which campaigns bring in which customers. Reports that track this metric for you include Lead Source Analysis Summary & Detail, Gross Lead Source Analysis Summary & Detail, and Leads by Paid Keyword Summary & Detail.

Campaign Response

A final key metric is the campaign response. NetSuite will automatically track responses to and interactions with your campaign emails. For other campaign events, you can manually record any responses that you receive. The main report that tracks campaign responses is Campaign Response Summary & Detail.

Conclusion

The ability to run marketing campaigns in NetSuite demonstrates a well-kept NetSuite secret: NetSuite doesn’t just manage business growth—it also propels business growth. Hopefully this quick overview of how to use marketing campaigns in NetSuite has given you some fresh ideas about how your business could be using NetSuite to its fullest potential.

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