Add activity to campaign using in-app marketing

Make your marketing campaigns successful by creating, distributing, and assigning planning and campaign activities in Dynamics 365 Sales.

License and role requirements

Planning and campaign activities

Planning activities are those you want to perform before you launch the campaign, and campaign activities are those you want to manage as part of the campaign. Examples of planning and campaign activities you can add include:

• Identify advertising channels and supporting materials

• Contact media channels to reserve time or space for advertising

• Create or refine target marketing lists

• Contact a design agency to request creation of collateral pieces and advertising materials

  By default, a campaign targets an activity to the group of marketing lists that you select for the campaign. If you want to run a campaign activity on a subset of your marketing lists, you can distribute the activity to certain members instead.

Add a planning activity to a campaign

1. In the site map, select Marketing Lists.

2. Open a marketing list record, and then in the Campaigns area, open the campaign to which you want to add a planning activity.

   Note

   Alternatively, you can open a campaign from the Campaigns area in the Sales Hub site map.

3. To add a new activity, on the Related tab, select Planning Activities, then select New Activity, and then select the type of activity you want to create.

   -OR-

   To add an existing activity, select Add Existing Activity. In the Lookup Records panel, search for and select the required activities, and then select Add.

4. In the form that appears, add the information about the activity.

5. When you're ready to save your data, select Save.

Add a campaign activity to a campaign

When you add and distribute a campaign activity, an activity is created for each member in the marketing lists that you've chosen for the campaign.

1. In the site map, select Marketing Lists, and from the Campaigns area, open the campaign to which you want to add a campaign activity.

2. On the Related tab, select Campaign Activities, and then select New Campaign Activity.

3. In the Summary section of the Campaign Activity form, enter the required information:

   a. Subject. Type the objective of the campaign activity.

   b. Used in Campaign. When you create the campaign activity from a campaign, the campaign is automatically added here.

   c. Channel. Select the channel through which the communication for this activity must be sent. For example, the channel might be phone, letter, or email.

   Note

   Supported channels are email, appointment, phone call, fax, and letter. Custom activities or other out-of-the-box activities are not supported.

   d. Scheduled start and end date. Enter the expected date and time that the activity is scheduled to start and end.

4. In the Anti-Spam Settings section, enter the frequency cap (in days) for marketing activities directed at any contact. Contacts that have been contacted more recently than this will be excluded from new campaign activity distributions. Enter "0" to disable the limit.

5. (Optional) Select the Audiences tab to view the information about the records (account, contact, and lead) for whom the activity has been created based on the channel type of the campaign activity. These records are the ones present in the marketing list(s) associated with the campaign activity.

   If you don't see the Audiences tab, select the Campaign Activity form.

   Option type	Description
   Selected table type	Activity is created for these records to be acted on based on the activity type mentioned in the channel for the campaign activity.
   Excluded table type	The users in this section have opted out of any Marketing Materials or opted out of certain types of marketing materials such as email or phone calls. This information for the respective record can be seen on the Details tab of the record (account, contact, or lead). The other reason to be excluded could be lack of information. For example, for a campaign activity through Email channel, the records with no associated email ID will be excluded.

6. Save the changes. You'll specify the actual details of the activity when you distribute the campaign activity. For example, for an email activity, you'll draft the email content when you distribute the activity.

   The marketing list from which the campaign activity is created is automatically added in the Marketing list section. To add more marketing lists, select the More Commands icon , and then select Add Existing Marketing List.

Distribute a campaign activity

You can distribute a campaign activity when you're ready to initiate the campaign.

1. Open the campaign activity and on the command bar select Distribute Campaign Activity.

2. In the activity form, enter the information that you want to distribute. For email activities,

   • Draft the email that you want to send to the members.

   • To allow your members to unsubscribe from any future marketing email communication, add the unsubscribe link to the email. Select the Unsubscribe option in the designer.

     

3. Select Distribute.

4. Choose who will own the activities, and then select Distribute.

   Note

   • When you distribute a campaign activity or run a quick campaign, and if a contact, account, or lead in the target audience (typically specified in a marketing list) doesn't have data in the Email, Fax, Address, or Primary Phone fields, respective activities like Email, Phone, Letter, and Fax won't be created for that contact, account, or lead.

5. After the activity's status turns Completed, you can view more details about the activities:

   • To view more information about the type, owner, and status of the activities created for the campaign, view the Timeline section. If your campaign has letter or fax activities, they'll not be listed in the timeline by default. To view them, select Related > Activities.
   • To view the reasons for failures, select Related > Successes/failures and then select the corresponding failure view. For example, if your campaign was targeted to accounts, select Account Bulk Operations Failures view.

     Note

     In the case of email activities, successes and failures don't indicate email delivery status, instead they indicate the status of email activity creation in Dynamics 365.

Close a campaign activity

After all the distributed activities are closed, you can close the campaign activity.

To close the campaign activity:

1. Open the campaign activity record and, on the command bar, select Close Campaign Activity.

2. Set an appropriate status for the activity, and then select Close Campaign Activity.

3. (Optional) Update the campaign activity record with the actual costs in the Actual Cost field. This helps guide you in planning the budget for future campaign activities.

Can't find the options in your app?

There are three possibilities:

• You don't have the necessary license or role. Check the License and role requirements section at the top of this page.
• Your administrator hasn't turned on the feature.
• Your organization is using a custom app. Check with your administrator for exact steps. The steps described in this article are specific to the out-of-the-box Sales Hub and Sales Professional apps.

Related information

Get started with in-app marketing
Create a marketing list using in-app marketing
Create or edit a campaign using in-app marketing
Create a quick campaign using in-app marketing
Add a marketing list, sales literature, or product to a campaign using in-app marketing
Track a marketing campaign response using in-app marketing
Customize quick campaign and campaign activity distribution forms