Channels
Channels
What is a channel ?
A channel is a passageway, a means of access for a thing, a communication, or an idea.
What are marketing channels?
Marketing channels are channels used by any company to reach their end customers. These channels are generally interdependent on each other and interact with each other so as to ensure that the product reaches from the company to the end customer.
Different types of Marketing Channels
There are basically four types of marketing channels:
- Direct selling.
- Selling through intermediaries.
- Dual distribution; and
- Reverse channels.
Essentially, a channel might be a retail store, a web site, a mail-order catalogue, or direct personal communications by a letter, email or text message. Here’s a bit of information about each one.
Direct Selling- Direct selling is the marketing and selling of products directly to consumers away from a fixed retail location. Peddling is the oldest form of direct selling.
Selling through intermediaries-a marketing channel where intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers are utilized to make a product available to the customer is called an indirect channel. The most indirect channel you can use (producer/manufacturer –> agent –> wholesaler –> retailer –> consumer) is used when there are many small manufacturers and many small retailers and an agent is used to help coordinate a large supply of the product.
Dual distribution- dual distribution describes a wide variety of marketing arrangements by which the manufacturer or wholesalers uses more than one channel simultaneously to reach the end-user. They may sell directly to the end-users as well as sell to other companies for resale. using two or more channels to attract the same target market can sometimes lead to channel conflict. An example of dual distribution is business format franchising, where the franchisors, license the operation of some of its units to franchisees while simultaneously owning and operating some units themselves.
Reverse channels-if you’ve read about the other three channels, you would have noticed that they have one thing in common — the flow. Each one flows from producer to intermediary (if there is one) to consumer. Technology, however, has made another flow possible. This one goes in the reverse direction and may go — from consumer to intermediary to beneficiary. Think of making money from the resale of a product or recycling.
In CampAct the following channels are available.
- Emails
- Tweets
- Focus Items
- Preferred channel
Messages distributed by electronic means from one computer user to one or more recipients via a network.
How to create new email
- Delete section.
- Name of the email.
- Category of the email.
- Stats of the email.
- Id of the email.
- New button to create new email.
Template email- A template email is automatically sent by campaigns, forms, point triggers, etc. these can be edited but cannot be sent to a contact segment.
Segment email -A segment email can be manually sent to selected contact segments .once the email has been sent it cannot be edited however it can be sent to new contacts as they are added to the associated segments.
New template page will get displayed.
Fill the following information
- Subject
- Internal name
- Category
- Language
- Is a translation of
- Published
Click on Advanced tab and fill the following information.
- First name
- From address
- Reply-to address
- Bcc address
- Attachments
- Plain text version
Click on Save and close
Segment email - Segment email -A segment email can be manually sent to selected contact segments .once the email has been sent it cannot be edited however it can be sent to new contacts as they are added to the associated segments.
Segments can be created based on requirements.
Clone email
Steps to clone emails.
- Click on emails.
- Click on the checkbox associated with the email that needs to be deleted.
- Click on the drop-down arrow.
- Select the option clone from the drop-down list.
- Choose the type of email (segment email or template email).
- Fill the information a) subject b) category c) internal name. d)is a translation of e) Language f) published.
- Click on save and close.
Delete email
Steps to delete emails.
- Click on emails.
- Click on the checkbox associated with the email that needs to be deleted.
- Click on the drop-down arrow.
- Select the delete option from the drop-down list.
Steps to delete multiple emails.
- Select the checkbox associated with the emails that need to be deleted.
- Click on the top drop-down arrow.
- Select the delete selected option.
Delete all emails.
- Click on the top most checkbox and this will correspondingly select all the emails.
- Click on the drop-down list at the top.
- Select delete selected option.
- This will delete all the emails.
Published and unpublished emails
Email stats
Sent- The number of contacts to which the emails has been sent.
Read- The number of contacts who have read the emails.
% Read – The percentage of contacts who have read the emails.
Note-Details may not match summary numbers if the contact no longer exists in your account or if a contact was send or read an emails multiple times.
Tweets
For most of history, "tweet" has been the sound a bird makes. However, with the advent of Twitter, the word "tweet" has taken on a whole new meaning. A tweet is an online posting, or "micro-blog" created by a Twitter user. However, it also means that tweets must be brief, so you must choose your words wisely.
How to create tweets in CampAct
Fill the following information
- Name
- Description
- Tweet message
- Category
- Insert contact handle
- Insert asset link
- Insert page link
- Count
Focus Items
Focus allows you to engage users on your site through bars, modals, notifications and full page takeovers. These can be initiated at different times and with different actions such as exit intent.
Creating a focus items
When creating a focus item, you'll see that there is a place to enter a website. This is currently integrated into a service offered by CampAct.com to generate a snapshot of the given website to use a preview when building the focus item. If the website is a very complex website - the snapshot may not work. Note that this feature may change in the future.
On the left, you'll see a button to switch between mobile and desktop views. A mobile snapshot is also attempted - it may not match your website exactly due to the snapshot process but it should at least give you the general look. On the right is the builder toolbar.
On the left, you'll see a button to switch between mobile and desktop views. A mobile snapshot is also attempted - it may not match your website exactly due to the snapshot process but it should at least give you the general look. On the right is the builder toolbar.
Focus/Goal
The first step to building the focus item is to choose what the focus or goal is. There are three options:
Collect data - will use a CampAct form in the output as the content. Note that it should be a very simple form (One or or two inputs) as there is very little room to work with in some of the styles. But this is great for capturing emails for a newsletter signup.
Display a notice - information only and is great for announcements and the like.
Emphasize a link - great for landing pages with an event, sale, promotion, etc. It displays a button to click that will direct to the given link.
Each focus/goal will have slightly different settings but all have a few in common:
- Animate? - simply determine if
- When to engage - this determines when the focus is engaged based on visitor interaction. It can be immediate, on scroll, timed, or with an exit attempt. If Visitor intends to leaveis chosen, an option appears that allows configuration if links within the site should trigger the engagement or not.
- How often to engage - should the visitor be engaged every time, once per session, or during a period of time?
- Stop engaging after a conversion - once a user clicks the link or submits the form (not applicable for displaying a notice), enabling this option will no longer engage the visitor.
There are four styles supported -
- Bar - display a bar across the top or bottom of the page
- Modal - a small modal window that appears centered on the page
- Notification - these are like modals but smaller and slide in from the side.
- Full page - also like a modal only it takes up the entire view.
Each style has its own settings such as position, size, sticky, etc.
Colors
By default, CampAct will determine the top colors extracted from the snapshot. Four colors are currently supported for primary color, text color, button color, and button text color.
Again this will vary based on the selected focus/goal and style is chosen. Some support a headline and a tagline while some support only a headline due to space constraints. If the goal is to collect data, a list of forms will be available to choose from. Remember that the form should be simple.
For advanced users
Content mode
A new section called ‘content’ has been added to the builder for focus items that enables you to format content in basic, editor or html mode. This opens the door for even more creativity when engaging visitors to your site.
Preferred Channel
The preferred channel can be of the following types
- Text messages
- Mobile push notification.
The information needs to be filled are as follows
- Name
- Description
- Category
- Published
- Published at(date/time)
- Unpublished at (date/time)
Choose the type of marketing channel (Email,Text messages, Mobile push notification)
