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Efficient handling of Email Unsubscribe flows in Dynamics CRM 2011 with Dynamo
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Contents Efficient handling of Email Unsubscribe flows in Dynamics CRM 2011 with Dynamo .......................................................1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................3 Prerequisites ...............................................................................................................................................................................3 Unsubscribe options in Campaign Monitor lists ....................................................................................................................4 Unsubscribe options in Dynamics CRM 2011 .........................................................................................................................5 Unsubscribe options on linked marketing lists ......................................................................................................................6 Recommended Settings on linked marketing lists .................................................................................................................7 How Dynamo synchronizes unsubscribes ..............................................................................................................................8 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Audit History ............................................................................................................................................................................ 11
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Introduction When using e-mail campaign software like Campaign Monitor, people are able to unsubscribe from certain communication or all communication. This is handled in Campaign Monitor (and most other e-mail marketing software) either by setting the status of the person in a particular list to “unsubscribed” / “suppressed”, or by adding the person to a Master unsubscribe/suppress List. The standard data model in Dynamics CRM 2011does not support this directly. This guide will give you an overview of the options you have for handling unsubscribe flows in your CRM system, when you use Dynamo.
Prerequisites In order to use the recommendations outlined in this document, you need to have Dynamo for Dynamics CRM 2011 installed in your CRM system and you need an account with Campaign Monitor You can read more about Dynamo at www.applications.dk/products/dynamo.aspx You can obtain a free trial license at www.applications.dk/downloads/trial-software.aspx You can create a free Campaign Monitor account at signup.campaignmonitor.com/signup
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Unsubscribe options in Campaign Monitor lists When you create a list in Campaign Monitor, you can choose whether an unsubscribe action will unsubscribe the person from the particular list or from all lists. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you, for each of your Campaign Monitor lists, decide what should happen when people unsubscribe. Follow this procedure: 1.
Login to your Campaign Monitor account
2.
Select the tab List & Subscribers
3.
Click on the subscriber list you want to check/set options for
4.
Click on the Unsubscribe Settings link in the lower right corner:
5.
Select the setting you want and click on Save unsubscribe settings
Setting the unsubscribe settings when you create a subscriber list with Dynamo When you link a CRM Marketing list to a new subscriber, Dynamo will automatically create the subscriber list for you in your Campaign Monitor account. Here you can also set the unsubscribe settings automatically. Follow this procedure: 1.
Create or open a non-linked Marketing List in CRM
2.
Select the Dynamo tab
3.
Click on the Connect to CM button
4.
Select the Configuration from the list
5.
Select the Create a new subscriber list and link option
6.
Click on the Link to CM button
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Dynamo will now show the following dialog. The default option is to unsubscribe people from all lists. Remove the check, if you only want people to be removed and unsubscribed from the particular list in Campaign Monitor.
Unsubscribe options in Dynamics CRM 2011 There are not many options built-in to Dynamics CRM. The options are:
If a person is on a Marketing List, the person is automatically in an Active state. MS CRM does not support people being on a marketing list in an unsubscribed/suppressed state, so either you are a member or not. This means, that in order to unsubscribe from a particular list you need to remove the list member from the list of members entirely.
Both Accounts, Contacts and Leads in MS CRM have a “bulk email” field in their communication preferences. This field can be set to “Allow” and “Do not Allow”, which functions like a mater unsubscribe in email marketing terms, as there are no indication of which communication/list the person does not allow. So in order to indicate that a person should not receive any emails, you can set this field to “Do not allow”.
Important: Dynamic Marketing Lists A dynamic Marketing List in CRM in reality just contains a query that decides who is on the list. So you need to include some kind of criteria that will exclude members who have unsubscribed. For example, you can include the “Bulk Email” field in the criteria, to filter out people who does not allow email communication.
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Unsubscribe options on linked marketing lists When you use Dynamo to link a Marketing List to a subscriber list in Campaign Monitor, you get some further control over how unsubscribes should be handled. The options are highlighted below:
1. Unsubscribe list You can create a static “unsubscribe” marketing list with the same member type as your linked marketing list, and then link the list in the unsubscribe list field. When dynamo removes list members due to an unsubscribe from the subscriber list in Campaign Monitor, it will also check if you have set a list in this field. If a static marketing list is present, Dynamo will add the person to this list. You will end up with a marketing list containing all the people who has unsubscribed from your linked list over time. You can use this list in your Advanced Find queries to filter contacts or run a special campaign flow for these people, etc.
2. Respect the Do not Bulk Email options in CRM If you check this option, Dynamo will look in the “Bulk Email” field before sending list members to the Campaign Monitor subscriber list. If a person has “Do not allow” set in this field, Dynamo will not add the contact to your subscriber list. With this option set, you are making sure that people who might have “master unsubscribed” are never added to Campaign Monitor.
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3. Resubscribe people when adding to CM When a person unsubscribes from a linked subscriber list, the person will be set to an “unscubscribed” state in Campaign Monitor, and the person will also be removed as a list member on your CRM Marketing List by Dynamo. If you manually add the person to the marketing list again, the person will be sent to Campaign Monitor again by Dynamo, but since the person has previously unsubscribed from the list, the person will not be added as an Active subscriber on the list. This is a precaution made by Campaign Monitor to prevent spam complaints. But sometimes, you might actually want or need to re-subscribe people again when you add them to your CRM Marketing Lists. With this option checked, Dynamo will tell Campaign Monitor to re-subscribe the person when adding the person to the subscriber list.
4. Set Bulk email to “Do not allow” on unsubscribes When Dynamo synchronizes a linked list, it will remove all the list members that have unsubscribed from the Campaign Monitor list since the last synchronization. If you check this field, Dynamo will also update the Account, Contact or Lead and set the “Bulk Email” field to Do not Allow.
Recommended Settings on linked marketing lists You always need to consider what Marketing flow you need to implement the integration for, but the settings below are our recommendation for the most common scenarious:
We recommend that you always check the field Respect the Do not Bulk Email options in CRM, so you do not accidently add people to Campaign Monitor that have Master unscubscribed.
If your linked subscriber list’s unsubscribe settings is set to “remove from this only”, DO NOT CHECK the Set Bulk email to “Do not allow” on unsubscribes field. If the unsubscribe settings is set to remove the person from all lists in Campaign Monitor, ALWAYS CHECK this field on your linked marketing list.
If you use a dynamic marketing list, or you set your marketing list to “Locked”, ALWAYS set the unsubscribe list and the new member list to two static marketing lists you create for the purpose, because Dynamo cannot add or remove list members on dynamic marketing lists or locked lists
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How Dynamo synchronizes unsubscribes When Dynamo runs its synchronization cycle, it synchronizes in two steps: 1.
First all the linked CRM Campaigns are synchronized. Events in Campaign Monitor since the last synchronization is created as Campaign Response Activities in Dynamics CRM and linked to the CRM Campaign and person.
2.
It finishes by synchronizing all the linked marketing lists. All new and unsubscribed people are added and removed
Step 1: Synchronizing campaigns When a person unsubscribes in your email campaigns, two things happen: Campaign Monitor creates an “unsubscribe event” on the person and then sets the state of the person on the subscriber list to Unsubscribed. When Dynamo does the campaign synchronization it will also create unsubscribe Campaign responses, like the one below:
This makes it easy to use Advanced Find to create queries that find people who has unscubscribed from particular email campaigns. You can use these queries to run CRM workflows, to remove them from Marketing lists, etc. You can also see the unsubscribe response in the list of closed activities on the particular Account, Contact or Lead:
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Step 2: Synchronizing Marketing Lists When Dynamo does the Marketing List synchronization, it will remove all the list members that has unsubscribed on the subscriber list in Campaign Monitor since the last synchronization. Unfortunately Dynamics CRM does not offer any methods of auditing on the “List Member” entity, so if you need to keep track on the people who unsubscribes on the list, you either need to use the Campaign responses (from step 1), which tells you that an unsubscribe has happened on an “Email campaign” level, or you can set the “Unsubscribe list” to a static list. If Dynamo detects a static unsubscribe list set on your linked marketing list, it will add the person to this list. In the screen-shot below you can see that one person has unsubscribed to our linked marketing list and been added to the unsubscribe list:
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Conclusion With Dynamo installed you have some further options for handling your unsubscribe flows. However, it is our experience that it takes some practice to master and you can easily loose track when you have multiple campaigns and campaign flows running, so our first recommendation is to setup some practice campaigns and try out the different types of unsubscribe methods and options, before you launch major campaigns. Also, being able to create queries with the Advanced Find feature in Dynamics CRM is a must. So practice the following types of queries as well:
Find people subscribed to a particular Marketing List
Find people who has unsubscribed from a particular Campaign
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Audit History Version 1.0 No changes. Initial release of this documentation.
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