Email Marketing in Netsuite – PHD Required (Part III)

OK, now that Netsuite and DNS are configured properly.  We need to create some web forms that allow the user to OPT-IN to our subscription.   There are 2 different methods for doing this and I’m going to do one of each:

1.) embedding a Netsuite form in an IFRAME within a page on my site.

2.) creating a form using an HTML template which is hosted by Netsuite; but, looks like my site.

This post is going to focus on #1.

Embedded Form.

We are going to create a newsletter signup for as an embedded form.  We will link to this page from our home page.

Step 1: Create Online Customer Form (Setup -> Marketing -> Online Customer Forms)

Click on the  “New” Button.  A pop-up window will appear asking if you wish to create a default form OR custom HTML form.  Select Default.

Our form will be fairly basic.  Give it a title, description and select the fields you wish to appear on the form.

OnlineCustomerForm

A couple of things to note, specifically on the “fields”.

“SEARCH” indicates whether or not the form will look for duplicates (and if so, what fields it will SEARCH on).  On the Workflow tab, you can decide how to handle duplicates that are found using this “SEARCH”.

You should also note that I have 2 hidden fields: Customer Category and Lead Source.  I will be passing this information to the form via Querystring parameters.

On the workflow tab, I’m going to give some instructions on how I wish this form to be processed:

Workflow Settings

A couple of things to note…

I am setting the lead status to “unqualified”.  I am NOT setting the lead source (this will be passed in) BUT I am allowing it to be updated.  I am redirecting back to a Thank You page on my site. I am defining how to handle duplicate records AND in this case I am NOT assigning the lead to a Sales Rep.

I am now going to SAVE this form.  And then view the form, and select the “External” tab, to get my URL: “Publishable form URL”.

STEP 2: Create the Newsletter Page for your site.

I’m going to create a page: Newsletter.asp.

It will have the same look and feel of the rest of my site, but, where the content usually goes, I will place an iframe.

Here is the code for my iFrame:

<iframe src ="<%=strsource%>" width="100%" frameborder="0" height="300">

Note: strsource is a .asp variable that I will set in a script that runs on the page load.  This script will determine the customer category and leadsource and append those two parameters on the form URL copied in the previous step.

My URL looks something like this:
https://forms.netsuite.com/app/site/crm/externalleadpage.nl?compid=xxxxxxx&formid=3&h=ea262cd89578c72bc4ec&category=yyy&leadsource=zzz

Save and upload your page to the website.

Step 3: Create the Thank You page.

I have created a thank you page, the page that gets redirected to upon form submittal from the Workflow tab in step 1.  The trick here is that this page has essentially NO style to it, as it will open in the IFRAME from step #2.

Save and upload the page to your website.

Step 4: Test

You should now be able to visit your Newsletter page on your site, and see the embedded Newsletter form from Netsuite and create a lead with a newsletter subscription!

Email Marketing in Netsuite – PHD Required (Part II)

So, now your domain and DKIM are setup.  Let’s confirm the basic marketing settings in Netsuite.

1.) “unsubscribe to marketing” (Setup -> Marketing Preferences)

Ensure this is NOT checked.

2.) customize messages. (Setup -> Marketing Preferences)

Modify the “opt-in invitation message” and “opt-in confirmation message” as appropriate.

3.) Campaign Subscriptions.  If you wish to have multiple subscriptions (ie. deals and newsletter), you must enable this.  (Setup -> Company -> Enable Features)

Go to the CRM Tab. Under Marketing, ensure Campaign Subscriptions is enabled.

4.) If you enable Campaign Subscriptions, you must now set up your categories. (Setup -> Marketing -> Campaign Subscriptions)

You will need a category for each type of mailing that the customer/prospective customer can subscribe to.  For example, we are going to start with a monthly newsletter and a deals alert. There are by default 5 categories: Marketing, Billing Communications, Surveys, Newsletters, and Product Updates.  If you do NOT wish to use one of these, you must edit it and mark it “inactive” or it will show up on your contact / newsletter forms.

Also, all of these are subscribed to by “default”, which means that when adding a new lead or customer, they will automatically be subscribed to this category.  I have changed this, so the user actually must subscribe to a particular category to receive it.

I modified “Newsletters” by making in not default subscribed to and added an external name and description, which will show up on our forms.

I also added a new category “Deal Alerts”.

5.) Setup your email addresses for your Campaigns (Setup -> Marketing -> Email Addresses)

Add an email address for each of the campaign categories you set up.  These email addresses will need to be validated.  Netsuite will send an email to the address and you will need to confirm it, in order for these email addresses to become active.

Now, we’re ready to start creating our web forms!  (Next Post)

Email Marketing in Netsuite – PHD required! (Part I)

Well, maybe not a PHD; but,you better be pretty technical.  This is the first in a series of posts explaining how to set-up your site and Netsuite for email marketing.  (NOTE: This assumes your website is NOT hosted by Netsuite. It may be easier for those of you who use Netsuite’s web capabilities; but, our website needs are beyond what they can handle.)

This first post addresses the system set up requirements: Domain/DNS/DKIM Setup.

Step 1 – Setting up the Domain.

A.) Go to your DNS Management Tool.  We use ZoneEdit.  I’m setting up “newsletter.xxx.com”, where xxx is my domain.  Set up  a CNAME (or alias) record for “newsletter.xxx.com” which points to “shopping.netsuite.com”.

B.) Set up this domain in Netsuite.  (Setup -> Website -> Domains)

Add the domain with your domain name from above and select “Email Campaign” in the “hosted as” column.

Step 2 – Setting up the DKIM (Domain key identified mail).

Note: DKIM is necessary to ensure that your email is NOT considered spam by most ISPs. Basically by setting up a DKIM on your DNS Server, you are authorizing  Netsuite to send these emails on your behalf.

A.) Setup your DKIM (Setup -> Company -> Print/Fax/Email)

Go to the Email Tab.  Select Add DKIM to Mass Messages.

Enter Domain Selector: selector1

Enter Domain Name: same as above, newsletter.xxx.com.

Click on Generate Pair Key and Save.

Copy the “DNS Entry” field to your clipboard.

B.) Add your DKIM key to your Domain in DNS.

Go to your DNS tool and set up a TXT Pointer for the following domain:

selector1._domainkey.<<insert domain name here>>

So, in my case, selector1._domainkey.newsletter.xxx.com

In the Text Entry field, enter the “DNS Entry” field from your clipboard and SAVE.

C.) Confirm your DKIM in Netsuite.  (Setup -> Company -> Print/Fax/Email)

Go to Email Tab. Click Verify DNS Entry.

Also, send test DKIM email to your email address, just to ensure it is working properly.

If you did the test send, you will receive an email back.  You are looking for a message that states “DKIM signature confirmed GOOD” somewhere in the body of the message.  If you do not receive this, you did something wrong while setting up your DKIM.

Hello world!

This blog has been started out of frustration!

While Netsuite is fairly easy to use, customizing it via SuiteScripts or SuiteTalk is NOT.

Anytime we decide to try to automate another piece of our business, I spend days researching how to do it in Netsuite.  And that’s just not right.

It is my intent to use this blog to give you ideas/scripts and code, to automate your Netsuite processes.