Running a Marketing Campaign

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We don't need to tell you how crucial Marketing Campaigns are growing your business. But we can help you keep on top of your Email and SMS marketing with ease. In the following section, we will go through the details involved in creating and managing your marketing campaigns, all from within You'reOnTime!

Creating a New Campaign

Every marketing campaign needs a target audience, so let's start here.

  1. Click on Marketing.
  2. Select Create a New Campaign.
  3. This will show the SMS & Email Marketing screen. By default, this will be filtered to show All Clients.
  4. To alter the filtering for a more targeted marketing campaign, click on the Filter button. This will then display all of the filtering options.
  5. You can apply multiple filters at the same time to really hone in on particular clients. In this example, let's say that we've just trained up some staff in hair colouring, so we want to target clients who've had that service in the past 6 months that might be looking to get the service again. To do this, let's apply the following filters:

    Show Clients Where:   Clients who came in
    From Date:   6 months ago (1/10/2016 in this example)
    To Date:   3 months ago (31/12/2016 in this example)
    With Email:        Has email (we want to do an email marketing campaign in this example) 
    With Service Category:  Colour

    Note: The results will automatically update as you add filters.


Email Marketing

Now that we've got the target audience that we want for the marketing campaign, we can choose to send an SMS or Email. In this example, we'll send an email. 

  1. Click on the Send Email button.
  2. You can select an email template from the drop-down list or choose a themed template by clicking the Select Template button.
  3. You can alter the content of the email or create a new one from scratch in the Create email body text window. In this example, we've typed out a new email from scratch.
  4. Merge Fields are placeholders for values that will be replaced when the message is sent. For example: [ClientFirstName] will be replaced with David, [FormsLink] will be replaced with a link to outstanding forms, and so on. To insert a Merge Field, simply put your cursor in the message box where you want the field to appear then click on the Merge Field drop-down menu and navigate to the Merge Field you want to add. 
  5. You can preview your Email message by adding your email address and clicking Send Preview Email.
  6. Click the Schedule button to set a time and date to send the email (even create recurring emails) or click Send Email(s) to send it now. 

SMS Marketing

From time to time you may want to send marketing SMS messages to get that "instant" connection with your clients. The setup for an  SMS Marketing campaign is very similar to Email Marketing but has a few key differences. Let's go through the process.

  1. Start a new Marketing Campaign using the steps from Create a New Campaign. For this example, we'll create a new Marketing Campaign for students. To do this, we've filtered on clients that have Mobile Phone details and the label "Student" on their account.
  2. Next, click on the Send SMS button.
  3. Choose an SMS text template from the drop-down menu, or create a new message in the Message field.
  4. Merge Fields are placeholders for values that will be replaced when the message is sent. For example: [ClientFirstName] will be replaced with "David", [BusinessPhone] will be replaced with your business contact number, and so on. To insert a Merge Field, simply put your cursor in the message box where you want the field to appear and click on the Merge Field link.Note: keep your SMS Marketing messages short. Any message longer than 160 characters will count as two or more SMS credits.
  5. If you like, you can give your marketing campaign a memorable name, or just leave it as the default.
  6. You can now send yourself a Preview SMS, Schedule the campaign to send at a later date (even repeatedly), or just Send SMS(s) using the corresponding button. 

Purchasing SMS Credits

When using the SMS features of You'reOnTime, you will need to maintain an SMS Credit Balance. You can either manage purchases of SMS credits manually or set up automated purchasing when your SMS Credit Balance reaches a certain amount.

  1. Navigate to Marketing > Purchase SMS Credits.
  2. Enter your details in the Billing Information section. 
  3. Select the number of credits you wish to purchase (100, 250, 500 or 1000). The total cost of the purchase is displayed below this.
  4. Enter your credit card details for the payment.
  5. You can select to automatically top up your credit balance when it falls below a certain threshold. To do this, tick the checkbox and enter the automatic top-up threshold. When your credit falls below this number, the automatic payment will be triggered for the number of credits selected from the Credits To Buy dropdown menu.
  6. Click Purchase Credits to complete the purchase. 

Campaign History

You can review the history of your marketing campaigns in Campaign History.

  1. Navigate to Marketing > Campaign History.
  2. This will show you the summarised history of your previous marketing campaigns.
  3. You can filter on SMS or Email marketing by changing the selection in the dropdown box. It will default to All Types each time you open this screen.
  4. The report displays your campaign history in reverse chronological order and details the number of messages sent, how many messages bounced, and how many were opened and clicked. Note: SMS campaigns only track sends and bounces.
  5. If you have sent a campaign that you did not intend to send at that point in time, you can also cancel your marketing campaign, assuming it has not already been sent. 

6. Once paused, you can choose to either resume or cancel your marketing campaign

7. Additionally, You'reOnTime has implemented a "safety measure"" for marketing campaigns, ensuring that you can only send off one marketing campaign at a time, to prevent double-ups and other complications in regards to emails.

Inbox

The  Inbox displays a list of correspondence between you and your clients. It shows every SMS, Email and Voicemail message received; SMS and Email your business has sent; even the status of messages that have not been delivered. 

  1. Click on Inbox in the sidebar.
  2. The Inbox will be displayed, showing you the latest correspondence. From here you can see if the message was outgoing (sent) or incoming (received), when it was sent or received, the name of the client, and the subject of the email (or preview of the message if SMS).
  3. Click the Filter button on the right of the screen to display filter options.

    - You can filter messages by Message Type using the drop-down menu.
    - Search for  bounced messages by ticking the Show bounced messages checkbox. 
    - You can also search by name, email or phone number. Your results will be filtered in realtime.
  4. From here you can click on the View button to quickly see the message sent or received. 
  5. If a message is displayed as bounced, you can attempt to resend it by clicking the Resend button.
  6. You can also click on the client name to go to that client's account.

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