Channels, Email, and Call-to-Actions are marketing features of Service Minder.
Channels and Campaigns
Overview
When you add a contact, you have to select a Channel. Serviceminder provides several generic default options, but you'll want to add more. For example, you might get leads from your website, banner advertising, or Google keywords. These are all Internet types of campaigns, so you could group them all under the Internet Channel. If you advertise in print publications like magazines or other periodicals, you can create a Channel called Print. Same for Direct Mail.
Lead Sources
Within these Channels, you can create specific Campaigns to track precisely where leads came from, such as particular print ads or certain direct mail programs. You may not get enough lead activity from a given Campaign, but by grouping them by Channel, you'll now have a better chance of having enough activity to compare how different marketing channels perform against each other.
As a best practice, list your Channels and which campaigns should be active under each list. Work from there.
https://serviceminder.io/support/index/29
https://serviceminder.io/support/index/117
So, to summarize, Channels contain Campaigns. Every contact has to have a Channel, and a contact may also have a campaign (contained by the selected Channel).
You can also set budgets for your campaigns. To access your campaign budget, click the Budget... button in the Channel and Campaigns settings panel. Campaign Budgeting
Email.
The Email tab of the Campaigns menu provides summary data of all email campaigns for the past 7 to 28 days. The lower section provides detailed data for each campaign.
Email campaigns may be launched against groups of contacts, proposals, invoices, or appointments. These are messages sent in bulk. Data regarding opens and clicks helps target future efforts to generate business.
Call-to-Actions
CTA's from the HELP section of SM are:
3.2.1 - Call-to-Actions
A call to action is a common marketing term used to describe what you want the viewer to do. In the case of your proposals, the call to action is to view the proposal. If it's an invoice, then the call to action is to get them to view it and ultimately pay it.
But how do you handle other scenarios? For example, say you want to collect a list of clients interested in a new product or service. Or you may have a special offer you'd like to make available to a limited number of initial responders.
You've probably handled these situations with a directive for the client to call you. So they'd call, and you could write their name down, add a tag, or update a custom field. Those are all excellent options, except for you being in the loop and having to answer the phone.
Serviceminder's call-to-action feature allows you to create as many call-to-actions as you'd like and then send them to any contacts through email campaigns or pretty much any email or text message you send out.
A call-to-action is a unique web page on which we record who viewed it (and how many times) and who followed through and said "yes!" Determining a call-to-action is as simple as coming up with a page title and the content (in Markdown format, the same as we use for your Terms and Conditions content). You can include any contact shortcodes in the generated contact, so when the client clicks the link to respond, you can greet them by name.
To create a call-to-action, go to Campaigns, then click on the Call-to-Actions tab. From there, click Add to create a new one or Edit to modify an existing one. You can set an expiration date—clients who respond after that date will be presented with an expiration notice.
Each call-to-action generates a unique link. To view the URL for the page, click on the details page for the call-to-action. The Shortcode field includes the URL and an embedded shortcode for the contact's globally unique identifier. That will be replaced with a unique value for each recipient when the message is sent out. Note that the standard "test message" functions won't populate this shortcode, so to test the behavior of your call-to-action thoroughly, you'll need to test it in an ad hoc template and then use the contact Email function to send the ad hoc to that contact (which should have your email address so you'll get the email).
SM tracks total views, unique views, and conversions (the unique number of contacts that have hit Submit on the page). You'll receive an in-app and email notification when someone converts.
For in-app notifications, you must have Entry Added via API enabled (the following example does not):
If you're part of a brand that launches campaigns on your behalf, you'll see any call-to-actions they created, and any of your contacts that respond will show up in your stats.
Note for CTA's: the success Url a field is currently optional and unused.
When someone "converts," you'll get an in-app notification. You can also view all of them by going to the call-to-action details page, and we'll show a list when you click the View link on the conversions counter.