The definitions you enter under 'Marketing' serve two important purposes:
They let QuickFill know which offers you want to make to new customers.
They allow you to capture data that QuickFill uses to compare the effectiveness of your various promotions. For example, by entering information here about mailing lists, you can get reports that show how well each list performed. The same goes for packages, premiums, channels, and so forth.
The care with which you enter data here determines how accurate and useful your response, payment rate, and renewal rate reports will be (see Filter screens, for details on creating reports). Put another way, it determines the crucial, detailed marketing data QuickFill gives you when you run reports. For example, what kind of payment rate did the BusinessWeek mailing list produce or how did Package A do versus Package B—depends on the time and trouble you take in filling out these marketing definitions. So this is definitely not the place to skimp on entering data.
The Importance of Tracking Codes
The key to the usefulness of the QuickFill system is the tracking code. Every new order you enter into QuickFill must have a tracking code. Depending on how completely you fill in the 'Marketing' definitions, the tracking code can identify the following elements of your mailing:
the name of the overall marketing plan you used to get an order;
the name of the mailing list you used for a direct-mail piece;
the contents of the package you mailed;
the channel (direct mail, telemarketing, insert cards, and so forth) you used to obtain an order;
the price, term, and premium combinations you offered.
As you, of course, know, nearly all publishers use some form of code to identify new orders. The code may contain a lot of information or it may contain very little—just the mailing list from which the order came, for example. Even the name of this code varies from one publisher to another; some call it a source code, some a promo code, and so forth. Because the primary purpose of this code is to allow you to track what's happening with your mailings and orders, we call it a tracking code.
When you created similar codes in the past, the name of the code itself most likely captured the information you wanted to know about the source of an order. For example, you may have used a code, such as BUS1FI, which told you the order came from a BusinessWeek list, through mailing package 1, and included the offer of a free issue.
With QuickFill, you don't have to worry about creating a code name that captures this marketing information. You can make up any name you want for your tracking codes—sequential numbers, say, or combinations of letters and numbers. And, of course, you can continue to use any structure or mnemonic system you're currently using.
You link the elements you want to track—the mailing list, the channel, the offer, the package, the premium, and so forth—to the tracking code. This code, in effect, serves as a short cut and eliminates your having to actually list all these elements. Think of the tracking code as the trunk of a tree and the branches as the sources of your orders. When you label the trunk, QuickFill automatically knows which branches—or sources—belong to that tree. Similarly, when you enter a new order, you just enter the tracking code that appears on the order card. QuickFill can then track exactly which combination of sources that order came from.
The bottom line? If you define your tracking codes properly, then are conscientious about printing them on every order card you mail, you can get extremely useful reports on the effectiveness of your various marketing efforts.
The Marketing menu
When you select 'Marketing' under 'Definitions' on the main menu, you'll see a submenu with seven items—'Plans', 'Tracking codes', 'Offers', 'Premiums', 'Lists', 'Packages', and 'Channels'. These are the seven components you can define for marketing purposes.
You need to define only tracking codes and offers to use QuickFill. However, the more items you define, the more useful the reports that you get will be.
If you're planning a new promotion, we recommend that you first define any channels, packages, lists, or premiums that you intend to use. Next define your offers. Then select 'Plan' under 'Marketing' and define the tracking codes that will be part of that plan (that is, define these codes on the 'Marketing Plans' definition screen). For each tracking code, you can specify the offers, premium, channel, and mailing list you'll use with that code.
An alternative procedure is to define your tracking codes—that is, on the 'Tracking codes' screen, before you define your plan. Then define a plan with no tracking codes. Do this by entering all the components of a plan except the tracking codes and clicking on "OK." Finally, you link the tracking codes to the plan by using the 'Tracking codes' screen. This process is quite cumbersome, and we do not recommend it.