Set up an inbound marketing campaign

 

Applies To: Dynamics Marketing

Important

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing has been discontinued and is no longer available. All customer data related to this product has been permanently deleted from all Microsoft servers and is no longer available for extraction. This documentation is being provided for historical purposes only.

Use inbound marketing to motivate new, previously unknown, contacts to register their contact details through a Microsoft Dynamics Marketing landing page. This can often be the first step towards creating a lead and, ultimately, a sale or even a repeat customer. In a typical scenario, you might offer a newsletter subscription, whitepaper download, discount code, mobile app, webinar invitation, or another incentive to fill out and submit the form with a valid email address. Dynamics Marketing provides several ways of setting up an inbound campaign, depending on your goals.

Tip

Automated campaigns are only able to process contacts that are included in the marketing list(s) placed in the first position on the campaign canvas. This means that new contacts that fill out a landing page that is part of an existing campaign will not be drafted into that campaign, and that triggers set to react to landing-page registrations will not react to previously unknown contacts (though these will be added to the database). It is easy to make this mistake when planning an automated campaign. Instead, use the techniques described in this topic to implement the type of inbound campaign you need.

A simple, single opt-in inbound marketing campaign

Important

To use this scenario, the site company or client company running the campaign must not be configured for double opt-in.

The simplest inbound campaign proceeds as follows:

1. A potential contact sees an offer that motivates him or her to fill out a landing-page form.

2. The contact fills out the form and then receives an email thanking them for signing up and possibly including a link to a promised download or other offer.

To set up this type of simple campaign:

1. Go to Marketing Execution > Email Marketing > Email Marketing Messages and create the required welcome message, including the necessary links for providing a promised perk (if any). Configure it as follows:

   • Designation: Set to “Commercial”.

   • Send recurring: Mark this checkbox. This box is only available when Designation is set to “Commercial”. It makes the mail available on an ad-hoc basis, as and when a new contact comes along.

   • Message content: Include a welcome message and any other information related to the promised perks (such as download links, discount codes, etc.).

   • Verify and activate the message.

   More information: Create or view email marketing messages

2. Go to Marketing Execution > Lead Management > Landing Pages and create a landing page. Set its Content > Confirmation > Welcome email field to the message that you just created and make other settings as required. More information: Create and customize landing pages

A simple, double opt-in inbound marketing campaign

Important

To use this scenario, the site company or client company running the campaign must be configured for double opt-in.

The double opt-in process requires new contacts to confirm their consent to be added to your database by clicking on a link sent to their email address. In many countries/regions (notably in Europe), double opt-in is required before you can legally send marketing emails to any email address. This also ensures that your database only includes valid email addresses that your contacts actually can read. This process, and the procedure for setting it up, is otherwise similar to the simple, single opt-in campaign described above, but it requires that you set up the complete double opt-in system, including both confirmation and welcome emails. See Set up the double opt-in system for complete details about how to set up double opt-in, including how to set up confirmation and welcome emails.

Inbound campaign with campaign automation

You can also set up a more complex inbound campaign, which includes a workflow with additional actions and logic, and applies these to all newly added contacts. To set this up:

1. Initialize a new, blank campaign, which you will later use to establish your inbound campaign automation, and give it a recognizable name. Set its start and end dates to correspond to your inbound campaign. All new contacts that register during this period will be processed by the campaign. More information: Create and manage your campaigns

2. Create a single opt-in or double opt-in landing page as described above. In addition to the settings already mentioned, do the following:

   • Make all of the settings marked as required (e.g., if you are using campaign-based lead generation, then associate the landing page with your new campaign).

   • Make sure that the page’s Lead Management > Create lead or interaction checkbox is marked (it is by default). This means that Dynamics Marketing will create a new lead for each new contact that submits the form. This new lead will be named after the marketing context that created it (which might be the campaign, program or company name, depending on your creation strategy), plus the name submitted by the contact in the form. In addition, Dynamics Marketing will create a new landing-page interaction for this lead; the interaction will be named after the landing page itself (this is what we will use later to identify the contacts who have filled in the form).

   • If you will be using your automated campaign to send the welcome mail, then leave the Welcome email setting blank for your landing page.

   More information: Create and customize landing pages

3. Return to your new campaign and select the Automation  top-level tab to go to the campaign-automation canvas.

4. Drag a Dynamic Marketing List tile to the first position on the canvas and then double-click the tile to activate the Properties tab in the right column.

5. Choose the New button on the Properties tab to open the New Query fly-out. Use the settings here to assign a recognizable name and configure its Query logic as follows:

   • How do you wish to query contacts?: Set to “Select based on lead interactions”.

   • Expression 1: Add the expression Lead Interaction Name | Equal To | Submission <YourLandingPageName>

   • Expression 2: Add the expression Contact Do Not Email | Equal To | (Unchecked)

   • Make sure that both expressions are at the top level (no groups) and are set to combine with an AND operator.

   This list will now automatically update to include each new contact that has both registered through your new landing page and opted in via the email link (so Do not email is turned off ). If necessary, you could add additional clauses to further restrict the query. More information: List management and segmentation

6. Choose Submit to save your new query and close the fly-out.

7. Continue to set up your automated campaign as usual by adding and configuring the appropriate tiles. More information: Automate campaigns with the campaign canvas

Important

When you are using the campaign canvas to process inbound campaigns, especially when your welcome email is part of the campaign rather than part of the landing-page configuration, then you should configure your site’s Campaign Automation Options to “Bulk & Inbound”. This will help ensure that follow-up emails and other actions are processed more quickly than is typically the case for standard, bulk-mail campaigns. More information: Configure site settings

See Also

Walkthrough 3: Behavior analysis and campaign automation
Set up the double opt-in system
Create and customize landing pages
Create and manage your campaigns
Automate campaigns with the campaign canvas
List management and segmentation