SAP CRM Marketing: Plan, Campaign Management & Automation Segmentation

Introduction

Marketing is a major module provided by SAP CRM other than Sales and Service.

SAP CRM provides different capabilities using which it is possible to implement various Marketing related business process.  

• These marketing capabilities can be easily customized in order to match with customer specific business processes.
• Also similar to other CRM modules marketing capabilities can be integrated with other CRM module capabilities and external systems.
• Considering the importance of customer interaction all the SAP CRM marketing capabilities are well integrated with various kinds of, both inbound and outbound channels:

• SAP CRM Marketing analytics provides:
  • robust set of analytic around the customer and products
  • it ranges from basic reporting to advanced analytics
  • predictive models/scores
  • optimization capabilities
• Following are the major SAP CRM Marketing capabilities:
  
  

  

• Segment and List Management capabilities are integrated through an easy to use graphical, interactive tool.
• With this tool SAP CRM marketing provides capabilities to import in external data like rented or purchased lists and create new customer attributes
• Customizing settings for SAP CRM Marketing are integrated into transaction SPRO which could be accessed through the SAP GUI

Marketing Plans and Campaign Management

• With SAP CRM you can view your marketing projects from three different perspectives:
  1. Marketing Calendar: For a certain time range it provides an overview of all marketing projects
  2. Marketing Plan: Provides hierarchical view
  3. Campaign automation: It offers Java applet-based process view

• As part of the SAP CRM Marketing project we have Marketing Elements at Strategic Planning Level and operative Task / Level.
• At Strategic Planning Level it offers Marketing Plan.
• Marketing plan is for planning a concrete marketing concept.
• In a marketing plan it is possible to define the strategic goals like targeted market share, budget, etc.
• Number of marketing elements is used to structure a marketing plan in form of a hierarchy.
• Marketing Plan is a top-down allocation to brand, region and so on.
• It is possible to assign one or more campaigns to each marketing plan.

• As Operative Task it includes Campaign/Promotion.
• Campaigns are to focus on operative doing.
• In a campaign you can define:
  • Event characteristics like Dates, objectives, tactics, etc.
  • Execution parameters like products, prices and so on.
  • Intended audience as target group or customer segment.
• Finally it includes Campaign Execution.
• For a marketing plan or/and campaign, in the general data we have relevant type.
• This Type behaves as the controlling element in the marketing.
• It helps in defining appropriate objectives and tactics along with default attributes such as action profile or status profile.
• To control this, it is possible to define relationship between types, objectives, and tactics as part of SAP CRM Marketing customizing.
• Default statuses for CRM Marketing:
  • Created
  • Approved
  • Locked
  • Released
• In the customizing it allows to define user statuses and assignment of these user statuses to the certain type (campaign type).
• It is the current marketing element status (or the combination of all statuses) that determines the business transaction which could be executed for a marketing element.

A marketing element has its own life cycle which begins when it is created and ends with its closure or cancellation.

• During this life cycle marketing element goes through several system statuses.
• Marketing organization is assigned in the General Data of marketing plan details and campaign details.

• For a certain time range Integrated Marketing Calendar gives an overview of all marketing activities which are planned and running.
• It is Adobe Flex technology based central entry point for the marketing activities.
• It offers capabilities to create new marketing projects and/or reschedule existing ones.
• It supports drag and drop feature for certain functionalities like changing the dates.
• SAP CRM Marketing supports mass assignment of products, product groups or a product hierarchy to marketing projects in a single step.
• It could be configured through the customizing settings for Product assignment, Product group assignment and Assignment of Product Groups / Assign Product Hierarchies
• Discounts can be configured based on products and partners using the pricing concepts:

• Partner determination procedure can be used to work with partners in a marketing object.
• In case of campaign, it is possible to make the partner determination procedure campaign-type-dependent.
• Partner determination procedure and its assignment to a marketing element is maintained in the SAP CRM customizing.
• For business partners involved in the campaign, "Involved Parties" is the assignment block available in the Web UI.
• In a campaign, we can also maintain the communication channel which represents the communication medium to be used for this particular campaign
• Possible list of communication medium can be maintained in the customizing.
• It is possible to perform campaign execution based on preferred communication method (e-mail, phone, and so on) of user.
• For this, BP master data must be updated with the preferred communication method.
• In case preferred method is not maintained, priority based backup methods can be set; for example, phone first, then e-mail, letter, fax and so on.
• Conditions that must fulfill before you can execute an e-mail campaign:
  • A campaign must exist
  • A target group must exist
  • An e-mail form must exist
  • The sender's address is required to send the e-mails

Segmentation

• Segmentation includes following major marketing related processes:
  • Creating Attributes for Business Partner Segmentation
  • Maintaining Data Sources for Segmentation

• Graphical Modeler: Usage, Data Flow, Integration
• Creating Segmentation Basis and perform De-duplication

• You can create marketing attributes in order to characterize business partners.
• Different data sources for segmentation and target group

• Also it is possible to define the data source to build target groups.
• Target groups can then be used with marketing activity to address a particular group of customers or prospects.
• Attributes can be the same regional affiliation, the same hobby, the same amount of money spent during the last few months, and so on.
• Business Partners Segmentation process:

• Target groups are created using the Segmentation.
• Segment builder is used for the segmentation.
• Segmentation Models:
  • Do not have to have target groups or segments assigned
  • It can have subsets within it
• Segments:
  • A segment is assigned to only one segmentation model
  • Target groups are not assigned to it
  • To assign a segment to different segmentation model it must be recreated by copying

• Target Group:
  • It can only be assigned once
  • Marketing Planner can use only active target groups

Personalized Mails

• Personalized mail can be used to send tailored marketing information to the members of target groups.
• The form builder application can be used for the personalized communication through following interaction channel:
  • E-Mail (Plain Text or HTML)
  • SMS
  • Fax
• Using mail form builder tool, it is possible to:
  • Personalize messaging to target list members
  • Assign mail forms to campaign target lists
  • Embed links (URL) to websites in generated e-mails
  • Insert subject lines dependent on conditions

Mail Form:

• Used to define the layout and content of the information
• Can be used for direct marketing campaigns
• Integrated editor could be used to enter text or HTML source code
• Supports to control the formatting of the mail form
• Enables to insert graphics and attachments
• You can set the communication channel for which it needs to be used
• It is possible to set the default value
• It supports layout mode and source code mode
• Attribute context can be set to populate data dynamically in mail form
• It supports conditional text blocks, i.e. the final content generated could be output from several text blocks

Campaign Automation

• This process is used to create campaigns based on predefined criteria such that it executes without any manual action.
• Predefined conditions could be based up on time framework, customer answers, other campaign relations, etc.
• Campaign automation can be used to:
  • automate your multi-wave marketing campaigns across multiple channel
  • model recurring campaign processes
  • proceed the Campaign automatically without manual action

Elements of campaign process modelling:

• Campaign
  • Depicts the start node of a campaign process
  • A campaign process contains exactly one campaign
• Campaign Elements
  • Individual steps within a campaign process
  • Can be created within process modeling are
  • Depicts an action point within a campaign process

• Decision Node
  • Controls the follow-up steps that are carried out when a response is received from a customer or prospect
• Optimization Element
  • Optimizes the campaign for probability, taking business constraints into account
• Connector Node
  • Used to jump into another "event-triggered" campaign