Campaign Automation 

Use

Campaign Automation is designed to help you in the increasingly complex area of campaign management. It allows you to deal with multi-channel, multi-wave and real time campaigns, providing a direct reaction to a customer response.

Setting up a fully-automated campaign means that you have improved planning and greater transparency and several employees can access the campaign automation tool from one simple, standardized user interface, the Marketing Planner.

The process is set up to proceed automatically from the planning phase meaning that once the process model is triggered, no further manual action is necessary. Response to a particular step can be immediate. Alternatively you can set up a batch response, for example, carried out at periodic intervals or once a certain number of responses have been collected together.

In the campaign automation process, you can:

 

o                model the campaign process graphically. A simple, graphic interface allows you to have a clear overview of the procedures involved in a campaign

o                define rules and conditions for these process steps.  For example, you can define rules for sending out confirmation mails when someone responds to a survey

o                plan individual process steps. For example, you can set up a mail to be sent to a specific target group and then after a certain time period has passed, send a reminder mail

o                allow follow-up steps to be triggered for customer reaction via any communication channel as all customer-relevant channels are supported in the campaign automation procedure, whilst still providing one face to the customer

o                allow leads to be used as response elements, thereby allowing you to send out personalized e-mails to each business partner, allow you to include surveys in the e-mail create follow-up steps based on the answers to these surveys.

o                improve efficiency by using Response Prediction Modeling in SAP BW. In this way, you can pre-evaluate and fine-tune your offer and channel mix to maximize profitability while taking constraints into account.

 

Integration

All campaign activities are logged so that they can be used again in future planning and analysis purposes. Campaign automation also contains monitoring features, such as the integration of online reporting so that you can adjust your response to a campaign depending on how it is progressing.

There is also an integrated survey process to allow you, for example, to evaluate product satisfaction with a campaign and use this to trigger further activities.

 

Prerequisites

You need to complete the Customizing activities for Campaign Automation. These are found under Marketing Planning and Campaign Management.

You need to create a campaign in the Marketing Planner first before you can branch to the Campaign Automation screen. Campaign elements can either be created in the Marketing Planner or the Campaign Automation screen.

 

Activities

You can branch to campaign automation from the SAP GUI by selecting the icon Campaign Automation or from the People-Centric UI by selecting the pushbutton Process Model.
A separate browser-based application will open up. Here you will be able to see the campaign, displayed as a start node for the entire process. If you have created campaign elements, these will be shown in a worklist on the left-hand side. You can move them over to the modeling area using Drag&Drop.

To create new elements in the process, you go to Create and choose from the drop-down list. The elements can then be moved around the screen as you wish, again using Drag&Drop and you can create connections between the various elements by right-clicking on one of them and choosing Establish Connection.

To display details on any of the elements, you double-click on the element or use the right-mouse button and select Display Details. You can then see the details in the bottom section of the screen. These are shown in the form of tab pages which can be maintained here directly.

Campaign Details

On the Basic Data tab page for the campaign (the start node in the process), you set what kind of campaign automation you want. For example, you may want the campaign to run weekly for 6 months. You can find more information on this in Recurring Campaigns. This is also the place where you start campaign automation, however, this is only possible if the campaign is in display mode. If the campaign is in change mode, the system will ask if you want to save before starting campaign automation.

There are also tab pages here for setting the status and displaying process logs for the campaign.

Campaign Element Details

On the Basic Data tab page for the campaign element, you can set how to process your responses using workflow templates as it is the campaign element which contains the actual activity such as sending out an e-mail. You can either carry out a follow-up step immediately after a response is received by setting the indicator Start for each Responder or you can collect your responses over a certain period of time and then carry out follow-up steps. This is the case if the indicator is not set. You set conditions in the Rule Editor which determine when the follow-up steps are triggered.

There are also tab pages for determining the channel through which campaign execution should be carried out, for setting the status, for displaying process logs for the campaign element and for assigning segments such as target groups to the campaign.

Decision Node Details

Here you specify the rules that should be used for determining follow-up steps. There are two tab pages: Basic Data and Rule Editor. On the Basic Data tab page you specify the processing method to be used for your rules. You can either specify that only the first rule where conditions are met should be taken into account or you can specify that all rules should be checked and then executed if conditions are met. On the Rule Editor tab page you can define the conditions for these rules. For example, you can define the rule Business Partner XXX has answered campaign step XXX by XXX.

You can also copy rules inside the decision node using the Copy button.

Optimization Element Details

The optimization element enables you to optimize your campaign by carrying out simulations and testing different scenarios until you find the best possible return on investment. See Marketing Optimization and Refinement