Understanding and Utilizing Salesforce Campaigns for Nonprofits
Salesforce campaigns are a powerful tool that nonprofits can leverage to track and manage their marketing activities, enhance engagement with supporters, and measure the success of their initiatives. This blog post will guide you on how to use Salesforce campaigns for nonprofits. We'll start with defining what are salesforce campaigns are, how to set them up, and best practices for managing them for engagement and marketing activities and optimizing them to benefit your nonprofit organization.
What are Salesforce Campaigns?
A Salesforce campaign is a feature that allows you to group marketing activities and track their effectiveness. It acts as a container for related marketing efforts and helps you organize and analyze the results. Campaigns in Salesforce are essential for managing various types of marketing initiatives, from email marketing campaigns to large fundraising events, enabling nonprofits to understand the impact of their efforts.
Why are Salesforce campaigns important for Nonprofits?
For nonprofits, campaigns are crucial in managing outreach efforts, fundraising events, volunteer recruitment, and more. They help in understanding which activities are driving the most engagement and which areas need improvement. By tracking different campaigns, nonprofits can tailor their strategies to maximize engagement and optimize resource allocation.
When you build a campaign record in Salesforce, you can track and manage the efforts related to a group of people who receive the same call to action. The call to action usually happens through invitation emails sent by the marketing team or the development team, but there are different ways in which a group can be aggregated to rally around the same cause. The campaign record includes details of the campaign, like the campaign name, its expenses, its start and end dates, meetings, mailings, phone calls, and other jobs and activities required for campaign management.
Benefits of Using Salesforce Campaigns for Nonprofits
Tracking Marketing Activities
Campaigns enable you to monitor every marketing initiative, from email campaigns to fundraising events, ensuring that you can track engagement and responses accurately. This tracking helps identify successful strategies and areas that need improvement.
Measuring Campaign Success
By associating opportunities and leads with campaigns, you can measure the success of each campaign in terms of the revenue generated and the number of leads converted. This measurement is crucial for understanding the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts.
Enhancing Engagement with Supporters
Using Salesforce campaigns, nonprofits can segment their audience, personalize their outreach, and track interactions, leading to better engagement and more successful campaigns. This segmentation helps in targeting the right audience with the right message, enhancing overall engagement.
What are the Key Features and Components of campaigns?
Salesforce campaigns include features like tracking costs, expected and actual revenue, member statuses, and the ability to create parent-child campaign hierarchies. These components are essential for detailed tracking and reporting. To successfully manage a campaign or your outreach initiative, you can leverage other key Salesforce components with your campaign, such as a list view, an automation rule (or multiple), Salesforce email campaigns, and the ability to associate opportunities and leads with the campaign object. Campaign hierarchies help you structure your efforts under one common umbrella while allowing you to measure the ROI on each particular channel you use to manage the initiative.
How to Create and Manage Campaigns?
Setup
1. Accessing the Campaigns Tab
Access to campaigns and campaign records is determined by the profile permissions and sharing settings set up by your Salesforce admin. Most nonprofits allow everyone to view campaigns and campaign data, but only certain individuals have the ability to create or modify campaign records. To manage campaigns, your Salesforce admin will need to enable the marketing user checkbox option.
To determine if you have the necessary permission, click on your user icon and choose Settings. Click on "Advanced User Details" under the My Personal Information menu section. If you need to create campaigns for your job and this box is not checked, please contact your administrator.
The first step is to navigate to the "Campaigns" tab in Salesforce. If it's not visible, use the App Launcher (waffle icon) to search for it. You can add it to your navigation bar for easy access by clicking the pencil icon. As an admin in my organization, I usually do this for every new user. Customer service!
This step is essential to ensuring that the campaign feature is easily accessible for all users who need it.
2. Creating a New Campaign
Click the “New” button to create a new campaign. Enter a descriptive name that follows your organization's established naming convention, and ensure the "Active" checkbox is selected if you're ready to launch the campaign.
3. Associating Parent and Child Campaigns
If you have multiple related campaigns, link them using the parent campaign field. This helps in organizing and analyzing related marketing efforts collectively. Campaign hierarchies allow you to group related campaigns under a parent campaign. This helps in comprehensive analysis and reporting. Hierarchies make it easier to track the progress of various segments of a larger campaign. Parent-child relationships are crucial for maintaining a structured campaign hierarchy.
4. Filling in Necessary Details About the Campaign
Select the type of campaign (e.g., email, telemarketing) and the status (e.g., planned, in progress). Enter the start and end dates, budgeted costs, expected revenue, and other metrics that describe the campaign effort. Enter the actual cost and track the number of emails sent, expected revenue, and actual revenue generated. This data helps in analyzing the ROI of your campaigns and ensuring financial accountability.
Pro Tip: I suggest including what type of Contribution Type is associated with the Campaign and Category of the Channel. These details help in setting clear objectives and timelines for the campaign.
Choose from dropdown menu options like "In Progress," "Completed," "Aborted," or "Planned" to keep track of the campaign's status. This helps in monitoring the campaign lifecycle and making necessary adjustments.
This initial setup helps organize the campaign from the outset.
Tracking Engagement
1. Adding Campaign Members
Add leads and contacts as campaign members. Track their engagement through member statuses like "Sent" and "Responded."
To include individual leads, contacts, or person accounts in a campaign, go to the respective detail pages and choose the "Add to Campaign" option. You can select specific members from contact, lead, or person account records. To streamline the process, utilize the "Manage Members" page. This page allows you to easily add members and update their statuses by selecting contacts from an account. You also have the option to select campaign members from the Contacts related list on your accounts.
If you need to make bulk imports, Salesforce gives you flexibility and options to help with that. You can import multiple contacts, leads, and individual accounts into your campaign using the Data Import Wizard. You can use this tool to add existing records or create new ones in a breeze by importing a single file. You can add up to 200 members at once from your lead or contact list views or directly from standard and custom reports. These options give you wings because they make the process fast and efficient, saving time and ensuring that your campaign is populated with the necessary members.
2. Using Related Lists and Member Statuses
When contacts or leads are added to a campaign, Salesforce automatically generates a campaign member record for each individual. These records hold important information that allows you to monitor the involvement and reactions of the participants in your campaign. Customize the campaign member status options to reflect various stages of engagement, such as "Sent," "RSVP Yes," "Attended," and "No Show." These statuses offer a concise and structured method to track individuals' engagement with your campaign, facilitating the measurement of its success.
The related list on the salesforce campaign members records becomes a useful tool for tracking and managing interactions once campaign members are added. Here is a list of all campaign members, including their current status and other important information. With the related list, you can easily update statuses, track responses, and analyze engagement patterns. For example, you have the option to filter the list to view individuals who have responded positively to an invitation or those who attended an event. This clear and concise view helps you spot patterns and pinpoint areas that need attention, guaranteeing that your campaigns are optimized for maximum impact and audience engagement. Regularly reviewing and updating the campaign member related list helps to keep your campaign management process dynamic and responsive.
Associate opportunities with campaigns to track the impact of your marketing efforts on sales. This helps in understanding which campaigns are generating the most revenue. Associating leads and opportunities ensures that all interactions are tracked and attributed correctly. This tracking helps measure the campaign's effectiveness in engaging your audience.
3. Running and Monitoring Campaigns
Once your campaigns are active and you're monitoring engagement, you want to develop a data strategy for collecting and analyzing your data to make informed decisions. This is where you will need to put on the hat for efficiency and create automation rules and the campaign custom report types to track your information and communicate impact. Implement automation rules to streamline campaign management. Use marketing automation tools like Pardot to enhance your campaign's reach and effectiveness. Automation ensures that repetitive tasks are handled efficiently, allowing your team to focus on strategy.
If your organization uses Account Engagement (Pardot), you can connect the campaigns with Pardot Automation Rules. Automation helps maintain consistent engagement with supporters. Use Pardot's automation rules to update campaign member statuses and manage marketing assets.
Advanced Features for Campaign Management
Editing Page Layouts and Fields
Customize the campaign page layout to include fields and components most relevant to your organization. Add custom fields to capture additional data and use filters to create targeted campaign views. This makes it easier to manage and analyze campaigns with better segmentation and reporting. Customizing layouts also ensures that all necessary information is easily accessible for your team to further assess the ROI of their efforts. For example, how many contributions were generated from that email campaign vs. the in-person Brunch that took place last month?
Real-Life Use Case: Meals for Janice
Imagine a nonprofit data analyst who uses Salesforce daily to manage fundraising and marketing campaigns. They need to set up a new campaign to track a fundraising event. This event is part of a new initiative dedicated to raising funds for children who need meals after school. The funds dedicated to this initiative need to be restricted for this program.
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Salesforce Campaign for Nonprofits
1. Setting Up a Parent and Child Campaign Hierarchy
First, make sure that you have a campaign hierarchy in place. Create a Top Parent Campaign that records all the efforts that the team will dedicate to fundraising for Meals for Janice. You can call that Campaign Meals for Janice Top Parent. Then, you will create a new campaign that will be the child campaign for Online appeals called "Meals for Janice - Online", and link the "Meals for Janice Top Parent" campaign as the Parent campaign of your "Meals for Janice - Online" campaign. Fill in the required fields, and set the campaign status to "In Progress." This setup is crucial for organizing the campaign from the start. Repeat the steps to create a second child campaign, this one called " Meals for Janice - Email Campaign", and link it to the Top Parent Campaign.
2. Tracking and Analyzing Data
Now that all the data is filled in and you have your hierarchy in place add leads and contacts to the campaign and use custom fields to capture additional data. You will now create a related list that can help you launch an email marketing campaign directly from the campaign members list if you are not using Account Engagement in your organization.
3. Reporting and Optimization
Using Salesforce reports and dashboards, it is now time to monitor the campaign's performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize its efforts. Add a report to the Executive dashboard so they can keep track of the money raised for this initiative. Reporting ensures that all stakeholders know the campaign's progress and outcomes. Continue to track engagement and revenue generated from the campaign. This tracking helps understand the campaign influence in achieving the desired impact and making necessary adjustments.
Wrap Up
As you can see, there are tons of benefits to using Salesforce campaigns for nonprofit organizations. Campaigns are essential for tracking and managing marketing efforts for nonprofits. They help to measure success, enhance engagement, and optimize marketing and fundraising strategies. Nonprofit staff have campaigned as essential tools at their fingertips to streamline marketing activities and achieve better results.
It's time to explore Salesforce Trailhead modules and other resources to deepen your understanding of campaigns and their benefits for nonprofits. Start implementing campaigns today to see their impact, and let me know how it goes!
