Campaign entities

Article
11/28/2016

Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics 365 (on-premises), Dynamics CRM 2016, Dynamics CRM Online

A campaign in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is designed to accomplish a specific result, such as introducing a new product or increasing market share. The main way to accomplish this result is through communicating the benefits of a product or service to people and businesses. Campaigns often include more than one communication method, such as print advertisements, promotional discounts, and direct mail. A campaign can be thought of as a container in which a business keeps planning tasks, campaign activities, and campaign responses. It has a list of related products, sales literature, and a set of marketing lists of existing or potential customers. This information is used to plan and track the results of a marketing campaign throughout its life.

Marketing automation supports campaign execution through campaign activities that are used to distribute emails, phone calls, and other activities to qualified customers. Each campaign activity may include a set of marketing lists of existing or potential customers. Bulk email may result in the responses from the customers that are captured in a campaign response record.

If you plan to distribute only one type of the activity, such as an email, use a quick campaign. The results of a quick campaign are captured in the quick campaign log.

Campaigns and Quick Campaigns

A campaign or a quick campaign can be used to accomplish the following:

Create campaign activities to communicate with a customer, such as sending an email, a letter, or making a telephone call.
Use marketing lists to distribute the campaign activities. Marketing lists are usually assembled based on certain criteria, such as customers that previously bought a particular product or used a particular service.
Analyze campaign responses to the campaign activities.

The following table compares campaigns and quick campaigns:

Feature	Campaign	Quick Campaign
Campaign activities	A campaign may include different marketing activities. Some activities, such as tasks, are assigned to team members to perform specific tasks, for example, preparing a marketing list or printing sales literature. Other activities, such as emails, faxes, or letters are distributed through multiple campaign activities represented by the campaign activity entity (CampaignActivity). Each campaign activity is used to distribute one type of activity that specifies a recipient: phone call, appointment, letter, letter vial mail merge, fax, fax via mail merge, email, email via mail merge. The activities can be distributed over a period of time and at different times.	A quick campaign distributes one type of activity that specifies a recipient: phone call, appointment, letter, letter vial mail merge, fax, fax via mail merge, email, email via mail merge. The activities are distributed to recipients at one point in time.
Marketing lists	You can distribute a campaign to the members of different marketing lists. Each campaign activity (CampaignActivity) may contain multiple lists. A marketing list contains the records of one type, such as accounts or leads. To distribute a campaign to accounts and leads, you must create two separate marketing lists.	A quick campaign can be distributed to the members of one marketing list, or to the accounts, contacts, or leads selected by a query.
Campaign response	A reply to a campaign activity can be captured in the campaign response (CampaignResponse) and converted to an opportunity, lead, order, or quote.	The results of a quick campaign are captured in the quick campaign log (BulkOperationLog).
Entities	Use the campaign (Campaign) entity, the campaign activity (CampaignActivity) entity and the campaign response (CampaignResponse) entity to distribute a campaign.	Use the bulk operation (quick campaign) (BulkOperation) entity and the bulk operation log (quick campaign log) (BulkOperationLog) entity to distribute a quick campaign.
Distribute Activities	Use the DistributeCampaignActivityRequest message to distribute a campaign activity (CampaignActivity) to the members of a marketing list.	Use the PropagateByExpressionRequest message to distribute an activity, such as email or fax, to the accounts, contacts, or leads selected by the query. Use the CreateActivitiesListRequest message to distribute an activity, such as email or fax, to the members of a marketing list.

Campaign entities

Campaigns and Quick Campaigns

See Also

Additional resources