Setting up campaigns

Click Setup->Marketing campaigns from the main menu.

Each campaign is given a numerical ID, which will be used for marketing campaigns online. Active campaigns will be shown in menus throughout Pearl so that you can assign contacts, orders, sales and costs to the campaign. A number of assignments are also made automatically by Pearl (such as inbound links from other websites).

Note that costs and revenues shown for a marketing campaign are taken from your accounting data and as such will not appear until purchases or sales have been posted to accounts.

Mail merges

Users clicking to your site from a link within an email sent using the Pearl mail merge tool will be tracked if the mail merge has been assigned to a campaign. Each link within the email will be appended with the campaign and the mail merge ID.

When the visitor arrives at your site by clicking a link in the mail merge, a cookie (file) will be placed on their computer which will remain there for 30 days. If they then go on to make a purchase online, this purchase will be tagged with the campaign ID, as well as with the mail merge ID.

Note
Mail merge cookies from a further mail merge will overwrite previous mail merge cookies, but once a campaign cookie has been placed on the visitor’s computer it will not be overwritten. Campaigns are generally used to mark the original source of the customer.

Sales generated as a result of a mail merge can be viewed by clicking the number in the sales column on the Marketing->Mailmerge stats screen, likewise sales for a campaign can be viewed by clicking the number in the “orders” column on the Marketing->Campaigns screen.

Contact pages

Your website is set up as default with two “form” pages into which visitors enter information:

1. Main contact page
2. Registration page

These are customisable so that you can define the information captured from your website users. Pearl OfficePro users can add further contact pages specific to their requirements or marketing campaigns.

Click Website->Contact pages from the main menu to take you to the contact page edit screen.

Each contact page can be configured to send an automated email response and/or create a contact in your database as well as sending the results of the form to a specified email address.

Bear in mind that if you choose to create a contact in your database from a “contact” page rather than a registration page, the user will not know that their details are being stored and may be surprised when they later come to register on your site and find that their email address is already on your records.

Before attempting to create a new contact in your database, Pearl will check to see if there is already a contact with the same email address. If the contact already exists, a note will be added to the contact’s notes trail.

For each contact page you should enter some information to show the user before and after the form is displayed. Note that you can enter javascript into the boxes so that you can use tracking tools such as Google analytics to view a conversion rate or goal achievement rate.

Custom fields

You can set up any number of custom fields for customers and/or suppliers to allow you to store or capture information beyond what Pearl provides as default. These custom fields can be added to your registration and contact pages, as well as showing in a customers account (viewable by themselves online) for editing if required.

Click Contacts->Custom fields from the main menu.

Custom fields should be set to be visible for suppliers and/or customers, in this way you can set different fields for the two types of contact.

Landing URLs

Landing URLs can be created when you set up a marketing campaign, so that you can track offline marketing programmes such as printed adverts. A landing URL is something along the lines of http://www.yoursite.com/freetrial/ or http://www.yoursite.com/10percentoff/, and will forward the visitor to a page of your choice, which would usually be marked with a campaign ID.

To create a Landing URL please email your requirements to info@thisispearl.com

Landing URLs can only give a certain accuracy since many website visitors may well arrive at your site another way having seen an advert. The key is to offer an incentive to get the user to type the whole landing URL in; perhaps the destination is a page inaccessible from any other part of the website (an “inactive” category for example), or perhaps a new contact page into which they enter their information to receive further information by automated email response.

Lists of contacts (trade shows/purchased lists)

Pearl will allow you to import lists of contacts created in Excel, and assign a campaign to these contacts. If any of the contacts then go on to make purchases or create sales you will be able to track them against the campaign.

 

1. Click Contacts->Import/Export from the main menu
2. Format your spreadsheet of contacts as shown
3. Save it as a “Text (Tab de-limited)” file
4. Select a campaign ID and a group
5. Import the contacts

Selecting a group specifically for this list of contacts will allow you to find them more easily later. Contacts can be added or removed from multiple groups at any time.

Google Adwords, Overture, Yahoo and other online lead generators

If you choose to run a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign then Pearl can be set up to track sales made as a result of these clicks. Each of the PPC providers will provide tracking and conversion results, but using Pearl in addition to this requires no extra work and will allow you to measure sales versus expenses and give a true return on investment figure (if you’re using Pearl accounting).

Each campaign is assigned a numerical ID, which should be added to any link that directs a potential customer to your website, for example to tag a visitor as referred by campaign 3, use
http://www.yourwebsite.com/?cid=3

Any visitor arriving at your website by clicking this URL will have a cookie placed on their computer that will last for 30 days. If at any point in the next 30 days they register or place an order, their contact information and the order will be tagged as being referred by that campaign. Once a contact has been tagged with a campaign it cannot be changed.

Just set up a campaign as outlined above and make sure that all inbound links have the campaign id (?cid=XX) appended to the end of the URL.

Google Products (Froogle)

Google has a free product search that only requires you to register and regularly upload a spreadsheet of items to generate extra visitors to your website. You should also create a campaign to monitor the sales made as a result of Google Products generated visitors, and then link the Google Products feed to this campaign on the Website->Setup page.

Promotional codes

Promotional codes can be used in conjunction with any other marketing channel to allow you to track the effectiveness of your advertising. Offering a discount or free shipping will give the customer an incentive to enter a code which will allow you to see exactly the source of the sale.

If, for example you take out an advert in a magazine you can offer a discount to readers of the magazine that is not offered elsewhere. The customer would enter a promotional code into the website checkout when they buy online, or mention it over the phone, and the sale would be reduced in price accordingly.

You can assign a code to a campaign, or leave it unattached to a campaign. Note that if you do assign a campaign to a promotional code, when the code is used, the campaign set will overwrite any other existing campaign information for that particular sale.

If a customer has not already got campaign information attached to them, the campaign used for the code will be attached to the customer, meaning that any further sales within 30 days will also be marked against the same campaign.

Search engine optimisation

Pearl allows you to create a website designed for optimal search engine rankings.

Meta tags

Hidden at the top of every web page is information about the page, including keywords and a short description. Entering key words and a description into the Website->Setup screen will appear in the invisible header for each and every page on your site. If you wish you can also add keywords and descriptions for specific products or categories, which will override any company-wide meta information.

URL re-write

A page/product on your website is specified as http://www.yourwebsite.com/index.php?p=product&products_id=1234. This is not ideal for search engines, so as you add products and pages Pearl will re-write these URLs and store the modified link in the database, for use throughout the site. The re-written URL will include relevant text, such as the product name or the page title.

A category link will be re-written as http://www.yourwebsite.com/category-name-here-c-123.html where 123 is the category ID and “-c-“ identifies the link as a category. You can use this format to link to pages within your site to improve search engine placing; the text does not have to match the category name or title, allowing you to insert extra keywords. The URL http://www.yoursite.com/magic-dust-bags-c-123.html would link to the same page as the URL above.

In a similar fashion, http://www.yourwebsite.com/big-dust-bag-p-4422.html would link to the product with ID 4422, where “-p-“ points the visitor to a product page.

Good practice

Include keywords and phrases that visitors may be searching for throughout your website text. Vary the way that you refer to items to catch the most possible options; for example “swimwear” and “swim wear”. Sister items need to have the same name, though, to appear in the same drop down menu of product options.

CSS and <div> placement (advanced)

If you use CSS to create your website template then you can place the important content near the top of the raw HTML file that makes up your page, without changing the visible layout of the page. Please get in touch with us if you are interested in a template designed by Pearl designers.

As always, if in any doubt then experiment on the demo system first!