Source Code assignments fall into three basic categories:
■ Codes assigned to outgoing marketing efforts to track the incoming responses to the effort that recruited the support
■ Generic codes that are assigned to ongoing 'passive' ways in which a customer can support an organization, such as web transactions, general acknowledgement responses, pass-to-a-friend, catalogs, or cards
■ Unknown codes that are assigned to capture responses when the actual source code is not known
Assign source codes to outgoing marketing efforts to be able to track how contacts respond. A source code is assigned to each segment within an outgoing marketing effort and is printed on a reply device (the form the customer returns to the organization). Printing the source code on the information the contact receives allows for it to be data entered easily when an incoming transaction is received. Essentially, source codes should exist at any time that a contact is presented with a project to support. This opportunity is a call to action.
Source code tracking is important. To maintain the highest possible accuracy in recording the actual source code assigned to a contact's response, key processes have to be highlighted. Data entry staff need to know the importance of accurate data entry and, in a customer-focused closed-loop model, quick and accurate acknowledgements should be sent to the contact, thanking them for their response.
Entering the correct source code on incoming transactions is important for thanking the contact properly. An error might result in a complaint to your customer service staff or it might convince the contact to stop supporting your organization.
What feeds source codes into Campaign Management?
Campaign Management: The 'source' for the Campaign is your source code. The source code is your list of members/prospects that a campaign/appeal/solicitation is targeted to and the output is generated for. This list of members for a specific source code comes from a segmentation job or definition, a query or a group of solicitation responses.
Segmentation: When you generate a segmentation job consisting of 1 or more segment definitions you are creating a source list for your campaign/appeal/solicitation. A source code in Campaign Management can pull from the whole job or just one of the segment definitions.
RFM Analytics: You can use RFM analysis to generate queries to use in Segmentation to help create the segments. In this way, RFM helps create the segment definition that is used as a source list for a source code in Campaign Management.
Process Management: When you create a new opportunity, on the Definition you can select a Source Code. This is more informational than functional in that it lets you record which Source Code for a specific campaign/appeal/solicitation may have generated the opportunity.