Target Group
A target group is a list of business partners, marketing prospects, or contact persons that have been selected and combined specifically for a marketing activity, for example to be contacted as part of a campaign. It is always assigned to a segmentation model and can be created either by executing the selection conditions defined for a segment or independently of a segment, for example by importing an external list of business partners.
You define target groups to group together business partners or marketing prospects (for example, accounts or contacts) that you intend to target as part of a campaign. The business partners or marketing prospects grouped together in a target group are contacted when the corresponding campaign is executed.
In addition, you can use target groups as the basis for marketing analyses performed in SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW), for example to generate top n product lists, and for use in cross-selling, where particular product combinations are to be proposed only for certain business partners.
You can also use target groups without reference to a campaign. For more information, see Follow-Up Processing for Target Groups Without Campaign Reference.
A target group is therefore a business object containing a fixed set of business partners or marketing prospects that are written to the database as a concrete list. If a target group is created during segmentation, it is also a snapshot of the business partners or marketing prospects that meet the defined selection criteria of the corresponding segment at that point in time.
Note
Target groups can have the status Active
, Inactive
, To Be Archived
, or Modeling Completed
. You can only use active target groups for the functions described above. For
more information, see Status Management for Target Groups and Product Segments.
Note
You cannot mix business partners and marketing prospects within a target group.
Integration
The following figure illustrates how target groups are used within SAP CRM.
The figure illustrates that target groups play a central role in both generating lists of business partners for the scenarios listed, and in being one of the bases for cross-selling functions such as top n product lists and product association rules.
Function
When you create a product association rule for cross-selling or up-selling, you can define it per target group or segment.
Similarly, top n product lists from SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) are created by evaluating the sales figures for products purchased by a given target group.
This means that the product recommendations that business partners receive can depend not just on the products selected, but also on the target group to which they are assigned. To keep the target group information in SAP NetWeaver BW up-to-date, SAP CRM and SAP NetWeaver BW must be synchronized.
For more information, see SAP NetWeaver Library under 
SAP NetWeaver by Key Capability
Information Integration by Key Capability
BI Content
Customer Relationship Management
CRM Analytics
Marketing Analyses
, and then:
-
DataSources
DataSource for Synchronization of Target Groups in BW
-
Marketing and Campaign Analysis
ODS Objects
Target Groups: Business Partner Lists
Application
Outbound
Within campaign management, you can assign target groups to a marketing project, for example, a campaign element. When you execute the activity, the list of business partners in the target group is forwarded to the relevant scenario.
In addition, you can specify whether activities are to be generated for the business partners.
Telesales
Within a marketing campaign, you may wish to contact particular groups of business partners by telephone. These business partners can be included in a target group, and the list of business partners transferred to the Telesales application for processing. Depending on the product or service selected, the Telesales agent is able to make product recommendations based on top n products lists or cross-selling rules.
Personalized mail
Within a marketing campaign, you may wish to contact particular groups of business partners by mail (fax, SMS, e-mail, or letter). These business partners can be included in a target group, and the list of business partners passed on to the mail application for further processing. In the case of e-mail, you are able to include links to Web sites and monitor whether or not the recipients used the links to access these sites.
Inbound
CRM Web Channel
For all business partners assigned to a target group, a top n list of recommended products can be displayed. Some or all of these products may be determined from SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, others may be maintained manually. On the interface itself, products from both lists are mixed and presented together. The information that business partners provide when maintaining their marketing profile in the Web shop is used to assign customers to existing target groups, or to create new groups.