Marketing Efforts - you either love them or loathe them. In our case, we love them and love them! While they are an excellent tool for organizing and tracking complex segmentation for direct marketing activities, they take some time to configure. From source codes to exclusions to segments to packages, there are seemingly a million pieces to set up each time you work on a marketing effort.

We’re here to help you save time on marketing effort creation - here are five top time savers for Marketing Efforts in Blackbaud CRM™.

Copy a previous marketing effort

Don’t reinvent the wheel! If you complete the same type of mailings month after month or year after year, save time by simply copying a previous marketing effort with a similar setup. From the main Direct Marketing Effort landing page, click the chevron next to the marketing effort you want to copy. Then click Copy from the drop-down menu that appears.

Copy segments from another effort

Another great feature is the Copy from another effort button inside of each marketing effort. This feature allows you to copy over segments used in another marketing effort. It’s helpful if you have recurring appeals or appeals that target similar audiences. Simply click Copy from another effort and then search for and select the marketing effort you want to copy from. The segments used in that marketing effort will be duplicated inside the marketing effort you are building.

Streamline segment creation with the segment builder tool

The Segment Builder is a helpful tool to generate multiple segments from a set of selections quickly. For example, say you would like to create multiple segments based on giving recency, frequency, and monetary values. You can create five selections for each of these categories, and the segment builder will generate segments based on every possible combination of those selections. In total, you will have 125 segments to include in your marketing effort - imagine having to build out all of those segments individually!

You can find the segment builder tool in Marketing and Communications>Segments>Create multiple segments.

Utilize segment groups

I’ve seen marketing efforts with over 100 segments in them - imagine how long it would take to add those one by one! Segment groups save you the hassle of adding segments to a marketing effort individually, instead allowing you to add them all at once.

To create a segment group, navigate to Marketing and Communications > Segments, and then select the Groups tab. Click Add to display the “Add segment group” dialogue box, where you can give your segment group a name and begin assigning segments to the group.

Build smart communication templates

If you have standard settings that you use in your marketing efforts, communication templates can help you cut down on set-up time. In a communication template, you can preselect values for many fields within your marketing efforts, including appeal, export definition, the universe, seeds, and exclusions. You can also lock selected fields to ensure that the values aren’t edited, which ensures that no errors are made during the setup process.

Communication templates can be found under Marketing and Communications > Communication Templates. You can learn more about how to set up a template in this blog post. Once you’ve set up your template, you can select that template each time you create a new marketing effort, and all of your standard settings will be automatically applied.

I hope that these tips help you streamline your marketing effort creation process! If you'd like to learn more about Marketing Efforts, please get in touch with our team.