How to Test your Marketing Campaigns with Seed Contacts in SAS 360 Direct
Ensuring that the promotions launched from your marketing initiates reach their intended audience is a best practice. One way to accomplish this is to send campaign promotions not only to your targeted marketing segment but also to select members of your own team who can then verify that the information was delivered appropriately. SAS Customer Intelligence 360 accomplishes this task utilizing seed contacts. A seed contact is an individual within your organization who receives an offer at the same time as your customers. In this post, I will show you how to create seed contacts that can be used in direct marketing tasks and export templates.
A seed contacts list is the master list of the contacts (referred to as seeds) available within a business context. A business context can have just one master list. Think of it like your mobile phone which also has just one master list of all your contacts. When you enter a new contact in your phone, you are presented with a contact profile comprised of preset categories that you populate for each contact such as: first and last name, phone number, and email address. Similarly, new seed contact entries have predefined fields to collect relevant information as defined by the administrator that created it. Speaking of administrators, to create and modify a seed contacts list, a license for SAS 360 Direct and the role of either Engage Direct Admin or Super Admin is required. Individual seed contacts are grouped into named seed lists. These lists are then incorporated within direct marketing tasks or export templates.
Setting up a Seed Contacts List
Although it’s a good idea to use seeds it’s not required so you’ll need to set up a seed contacts list in the desired business context before seed contacts can be added. In the General Settings under Content Delivery, you’ll find the Seeds menu. Begin by creating a Seed Contacts List.
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A new seed contact list must be assigned to an available business context. A business context can have only one master contact list, so the list of business contexts presented is to you is comprised of business contexts where you are a member and that do not already have a seed contact list assigned to it. For this example, I created a seed contacts list and assigned it to the business context titled, Banking. The next step is to select the appropriate data items that should be populated for each seed contact.
After the criteria has been selected, you can start entering the information for the individuals in your organization who will serve as seeds for direct marketing tasks in this business context. Seed contacts can be added manually or uploaded from a spreadsheet. For more information on importing seed contacts see SAS Help Center: Seeds. The seed contact list is a master list, so if a contact’s information needs to be changed, modifications are done here, and the update is cascaded down to all seed lists.
Creating a Seed List
For seeds to be specified for a task or export template they must reside in a seed list. A business context can have up to 100 seed lists.
The seed list window features two tabs: Properties and Members. On the Properties tab, you must assign a name to the list and choose a business context. The Members tab allows you to select individuals from the available contacts associated with business context specified on the Properties tab.
Using a Seed List in a Direct Marketing Task
Seed lists are added to a Direct Marketing Task when you add the export template or create a custom export table. If you choose to create a custom Export table, you will see a Seeds tab which allows you to enable the seed list(s) to be randomly inserted within or appended to the end of the export file. Alternatively, if you choose to use an existing export template, whether a seed list is enabled was determined by the author of the template and cannot be modified from within the direct marketing task. If you have the necessary credentials and choose to edit or create an export template, you do so in the General Settings under the Content Delivery section. The export template window includes a Seeds tab that mirrors the one below.
Conclusion
In this post, you've learned to validate the delivery of your marketing promotions utilizing seed lists. For more information on how to maximize your marketing efforts with SAS Customer Intelligence 360 browse our Customer Intelligence course catalog.
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