Installing the Thunderbird plugin

128 selected mail to the selected record. The plugin also allows you to select several documents at once, simply by selecting a document and pressing the ctrl button when selecting the next document. Do not forget to click the Search button to refresh the Documents list when you have selected a different document type. • Create a New Document This feature can be used to create any of the configured document types in the Document Settings tab. Suppose you would like to create a new lead from an e-mail. In the Create a New Document section, select CRM Lead , then click the Create button. A new lead will be created in OpenERP from the selected e-mail. • Create a New Contact Partner If you cannot find a partner or contact for your e-mail in OpenERP, the Thunderbird plugin allows you to create one on the fly simply by using the information contained in the e-mail. Select the e-mail from which you want to create a new contact, then click the Push button. In the Create a New Contact section, click the New Contact button. This option offers two possibilities: either you just create a contact address, or you create a partner with the contact linked to it. • When you just want to create a new contact, complete the address data in the dialog box and click the Save button. The contact will then be created in OpenERP. • When you also want to create a new partner, complete the contact data. Then click the Create Partner button, add the partner’s name and click the Save button. • You can also add a new contact to an existing partner. Click the Search button next to the Partner field and select the corresponding partner from the list. Then complete the contact data and click the Save button. Figure 11.7: Creating a contact on the fly from Thunderbird • Open the Document created in OpenERP To access archived data from different documents in OpenERP you can use the menu OpenERP → Document which allows you to access the document in OpenERP directly from your e-mail. Tip: Knowledge Management The Thunderbird plugin is compatible with OpenERP’s Knowledge i.e. Document Management. If you install the Knowledge application you will be able to: • search through the content of your company’s documents those that have the type .doc, .pdf, .sxw and .odt and also in archived emails, • have a shared file system that is connected to various OpenERP documents to share information and access it with your favorite browser, • organize and structure your documents such as projects, partners and users in OpenERP’s system. Note: Testing the Thunderbird plugin If you install the Thunderbird plugin as described, explore its functionality as described in this section using the database you installed. 129

11.3 Marketing Campaigns

OpenERP offers a set of modules allowing you to easily create and track your Marketing Campaigns. With the Marketing application you define your direct marketing campaigns, which can be displayed in List or Diagram view process. To use the email functionality, you have to configure your email account. Go to Sales Configuration Emails Email Servers . Configure your server i.e. Google, example below. The object defines where you want the emails to enter e.g. as a Lead. See Using the e-mail gateway Click the Fetch email button to get the emails directly. OpenERP also automatically creates a Scheduled Action to fetch the mails every 5 minutes. The email is automatically created as a lead according to the object used.

11.3.1 Automate your leads with Marketing Campaigns

Example with the email marketing campaign we follow at OpenERP for our SAAS offer. Whenever someone subscribes to OpenERP online heshe fills a form which becomes the lead of OpenERP SaaS offer Campaign. Our SaaS salesperson triggers the marketing campaign by sending an introductory email of services we offer and thanking for subscribing for the one month free trial. Based on the response, we plot whether the lead is interested in OpenERP SAAS offer, Training or buying the OpenERP book. Significantly these are our subsets and based on their cues we send them email catering that respective needs. If they respond back, they are converted into an opportunity and thereby on subscription of our services they become our partner. In lack of response, we sent them another reminder regarding the offer after a weeks duration. If they still did not respond, our salesperson gives a voluntary call inquiring their needs. Hence like a flowchart we can trigger a respective activity for every possible cues. The chances of leads going unattended becomes very low, and for every lead we have a predefined method of treating it and we could measure it with our goals. Based on the goals we can also evaluate the effectiveness of our campaign and analyze if there is a room of improvement. What are the questions you should focus on? Designing every marketing campaign is mostly a long term process and the success of any campaign depends on the research and the effectiveness in the selection of customers in the campaign. There are certain questions that every marketeer always asks while designing a campaign. • What would be our marketing campaign? • Who would be the target audience? • How would we measure the effectiveness of our campaign? The OpenERP campaign works on the basic principle of lead automation. A lead is created based on a specific response by a customer towards a stimuli. E.g: Filling the subscription form on your website. The first step is defining the campaign i.e. the sequence of steps to be performed. On defining the campaign we trigger a set of activities in the marketing campaign module of OpenERP. Based on the lead automation we define the sequence of steps we ought to follow, the modes of creating and processing these activities and the cost involved with these campaign. Thus after each activity and based on its respective stimuli we can trigger the next event of the respective campaign. Why is the Segment important? The two most important points for any successful campaign are the adoption of a concrete methodology of execution and choosing the right segment: a target loop of customers to whom our campaign would be directed. Inappropriate focus on segment would result in the campaign being misfired and our efforts would reach deaf ears. Through the Segment tab in the Campaign module we can define our segment for the Campaign activity, since it is possible that with every step downwards our segment gets narrowed in terms of number. You can also synchronize the entire campaign steps based on our defined segments. How is Marketing Campaign related to CRM?