Getting Started with Campaigns in Salesforce.com
The Campaigns tab in Salesforce.com often takes a backseat to Sales functionality. This is unfortunate because closed-loop ROI tracking is integral to how Campaigns interact with your sales process. Depending on the sophistication of your marketing processes, a Campaigns implementation can be a relatively daunting undertaking. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The best roll-outs I’ve seen were collaboratively built processes between marketing and sales, and were focused on simplicity and transparency.
Depending on how well you’ve defined your marketing processes, you may not know where to begin a campaign. Let’s start by answering the question “What is a Salesforce Campaign?”
This is a tricky question to answer because a "Campaign” means something different to every marketing team. For some, campaigns represent the lowest level of marketing tactics. For others, campaigns might be a culminating event like a tradeshow, including all the supporting tactics (email, sponsored dinners and booth participation). For yet another marketing team, campaigns could be the highest level of organization and measurement, and include an overarching theme (launching a new brand for example) and hundreds of related sub-campaigns and tactics.
A working definition of Salesforce Campaigns
Salesforce describes campaigns as “a marketing tactic (or series of tactics) that are designed to achieve specific goals such as increased revenue, leads, adoption, etc.” This definition is a good start, but it’s not quite complete. When talking about Salesforce Campaigns, there are plenty of marketing tactics designed to achieve specific goals that won’t show up in Salesforce, including brand sentiment or awareness.
So Bracket Labs defines Salesforce Campaigns as marketing tactics that are designed to achieve specific goals that can be tracked and measured using Salesforce.
Our definition considers the fact that Salesforce Campaigns can handle just about any of the various campaigns described above, including tactics, events and themes. But the marketing team has to determine the level of granularity, simplicity or sophistication that needs to be tracked.
When implemented correctly, Campaigns are an excellent tool to track ROI and KPIs, optimize efforts, record marketing activity and provide accountability and visibility to the rest of the company.