There is a big change in Zoho Campaigns (basically a new version!) and even though the migration to the new version is fairly straightforward, there is a significant difference in its functionality.

Introducing Topic Management

Topic Management is mandatory for all organisations using Zoho Campaigns, and support for the existing system will stop September 20, 2022, so best crack on with it, and here are a few important points and links to help you along.

What is Topic Management?

Thus far, Zoho Campaigns have been displaying your mailing lists to Subscribers, which to be honest, has limited their joining preferences. The ability to create 'Topics' will enable your Subscribers to select subjects and areas of interest (Topics) that are relevant to them. This in turn should reduce your Opt-outs, as Subscribers have greater control on what they receive and will not quite feel the need to unsubscribe completely.

How does it work?

There are two hierarchy types to choose from, depending on your business model:

BRAND-TOPIC -> If you offer one main product/service and want to send out newsletters, promotions and updates to represent your Brand, then this is one to select.

BRAND-PRODUCT-TOPIC -> If you have multiple products/services and want to send out campaigns specific to each, then select this option to manage your Topics.

Both options work with all three forms of email marketing; permission-based, consent-based or GDPR compliant.

Each and every Contact needs to be associated with a Topic(s), so read the link below and get assigning!

Associating a Contact

What about my existing Lists?

It is important to understand the differences between your existing Lists and the new Topics, which I have highlighted below.

Here is a useful link for you to get to grips with Topic Management, and please contact me if you need help setting this up, integrating with Zoho CRM, or indeed, outsourcing it completely.

Topic Management - An Overview

We are excited to announce our integration between two well-respected world-class solutions, Zoho CRM and Constant Contact.

Quick introductions before we get into the functionality provided.

Constant Contact is a purpose-built Campaign Management platform and is very popular for Email Marketing, with the ability to share posts to FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Zoho CRM is one of the 50+ Apps in the Zoho ecosystem and provides modules to manage Leads, Contacts, Deals, Invoices, Cases etc. with workflows to automate your Sales, Marketing, Support and other operations.

Both products are from different Vendors, both are cloud based and can be subscribed to, with trial versions being offered below:

Constant Contact Trial
Zoho CRM Trial

We have successfully developed and implemented a bi-directional integration between Constant Contact and Zoho CRM with the following feature set:

List management

1. Creating a List

Constant Contact has multiple Lists, each of which can have subscribed Contacts. Our integration enables these Lists and subscribed Contacts to be created from within Zoho CRM! Simply specify a Custom View in the Leads or Contacts module, map the fields required (First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Account Name etc.) and hit the ‘Create List’ button – refresh your Constant Contact page and you will see the Custom View as a List with subscribed Contacts!

All steps are illustrated below starting with a custom view called Internal Team in Zoho CRM with four contacts and the new Create List button:

Give the List a meaningful name that you can relate to, select a View (All Contacts/Leads or a Custom View), and map the required fields from Zoho CRM to Constant Contact, which will be automatically saved:

You can then see the List in Constant Contact along with the subscribed contacts:

2. Updating a List

Any contacts added to (or removed from) the same Zoho CRM custom view will be automatically added (or removed from) to the associated Constant Contact List based on a time interval specified in our scheduler. Your mapped fields have been saved so you can be assured of data consistency as the same information will be uploaded! You can of course choose to update immediately by clicking the ‘Update CC List Now’ button for that Campaign (from our new Constant Contact List module in Zoho CRM – please see Pt 4 below).

3. Managing an existing List(s)

You may already be using Constant Contact and consequently have existing Lists with subscribed Contacts. In the Settings button of our integration, you will have the ability to import these Lists from Constant Contact to Zoho CRM, and create the Subscribers in either the Leads or Contacts Module.

4. Constant Contact Lists

We have provided a new module in Zoho CRM called Constant Contact Lists, which clearly shows all your Lists and can be filtered and sorted, as illustrated below. Clicking on a List will take you into the Details and show you the associated Leads or Contacts.

Campaign Management

1. Get New Campaign

In the Zoho CRM Campaign module you will find a new button ‘Get New Campaign’ which when clicked will download summary information of your Constant Contact Campaigns. There is also an automated scheduler that will do this for you based on a specific time interval.

This provides a list view of only those Constant Contact Campaigns initiated through Zoho CRM. Drill down into each Campaign Summary, where there are two Tabs for Details and Report .

The Details Tab will give you an overview of the Campaign as shown below:

The Report Tab will show you the Constant Contact analytics with Open Rates, Clicks, Bounces, Did Not Open etc. all from within Zoho CRM, so users don’t have to toggle between the two applications!

2. Update Subscriber Status

With any Constant Contact Campaign, the engagement refreshes over time and therefore there is a need to update the subscriber status, so you have the latest analytics in Zoho CRM. The CC Subscriber Status button will enable you to update at your convenience, or you can leave it to our scheduler to automatically fetch and update your CRM.

The above integration has been well tested and we are presently onboarding customers individually, so we can cater for any specific change requests.

Please email me on ravi@mercerlal.com or call/message on +44 7747599294 to get this integration working for you.

• A Layout designer with a media library that makes it easy to create stunning emails quickly
• The ability to schedule or send all emails immediately - all at once, not one at a time
• Powerful analytics on Open rates, Click-Throughs, Opt-outs, Bounce Backs and more
• All analytics are synchronised back into Goldmine which then enables intelligent follow up
• Cleaning up of Goldmine email addresses based on Bounce Backs