GDS Marketing & Reporting Module

Due to Covid-19, we have made the marketing module free to all customers for a limited time, it will be free to any customer who has an active support agreement with us. To access, you will need to update to the latest version of GDS, and it should appear under the GDS menu on the top left of the program. During this time, SMS credits are at reduced rate of 5p per text, regardless of bundle size. We will let customers know when this offer expires.

The GDS Marketing Module allows you to create campaigns that allows you to mail shot your customers.

GDS > GDS Marketing Module

1. On opening of the module, you can either open an existing campaign or create a new one.

2. When starting a new campaign, you will see a list of queries for either a customer campaign or a vehicle campaign. Selecting one will make the right hand side of the window will change to give you more options for the query you have selected. 

3. Entering information into the fields will filter the total database and select the data with the matching information.

Clicking the 'Next >' button will continue onto the next step. 

4. You can filter the total records even more to get the desired target market for the purpose of the campaign. You can filter the total records based on the type of customer, their enquiry source, mileage of their vehicle, year of manufacture and vehicle model.  There is also an option to include Opted Out customers.

Clicking the 'Next >' button will continue onto the next step. 

5. The next screen will show you the records that match your criteria. You can select the method of approach for each customers, via SMS, Email and Letters. Once you have selected the send method from the dropdowns, click the Set Send methods button to tick the boxes on the customer record at the top. You can also exclude customers by not ticking any of the methods of approach. There are also options to Export the results to an Microsoft Excel file or physically print the results out.

 Clicking the 'Next >' button will continue onto the next step. 

6. After you have selected how you are going to approach the customers, you will be brought to a template screen. On this screen, you either load pre-existing templates or create new ones. You can create a template for the letters, emails and text messages. There is an 'Examples' tab which will help you set out the template and also has place markers that will automatically change to suit the customers details.  There is also a button to preview the email or SMS before sending, to make sure everything looks ok. Once everything is set on this screen, click on the 5th tab 'Process Results' at the top.

7. The final screen is to generate the letters, emails and SMS'. Clicking the buttons process in the middle will generate them, and pressing the 'Run Marketing Campaign' will process everything. 

8. You can also save the current campaign and use it at a later date by pressing the 'Save Campaign' button. You can name the campaign and give it a description to make it easier to find against other similar campaigns.  There are also tabs to edit existing campaigns and check the campaign history on the system.

If you have any problems or questions regarding using the Marketing and Reporting Module, please call our support team on 01482 330739.