Set up marketing campaigns in Pearl to match your real life campaigns. For example, if you run a Google Adwords programme you should create a campaign in Pearl so that you can track the number of contacts/leads created or the number of sales made as a direct result of the Adwords programme.

Click Setup->Marketing Campaigns from the main menu. Each campaign is given a numerical ID. This should be added to any link that directs a potential customer to your website, for example to link a visitor to campaign 3, use http://www.yourwebsite.com/?cid=3

Any visitor arriving at your website by clicking this URL will have a cookie placed on their computer that will last for 30 days. If at any point in the next 30 days they register or place an order, their contact information and the order will be tagged as being referred by that campaign. Once a contact has been tagged with a campaign it cannot be changed.

In a similar fashion, users clicking to your site from a link within an email sent using the Pearl mail merge tool will be tracked. Each link within the email will be appended with the campaign (if chosen) and the mail merge ID. Mail merge cookies will overwrite previous mail merge cookies, but once a campaign cookie has been set it will not be overwritten.

Your website is set up as default with two pages into which visitors enter information; a contact page and a registration page. These are customisable so that you can define the information captured from your website users.

Click Website->Contact Pages from the main menu to take you to the contact page edit screen.

Each contact page can be configured to send an automated email response and/or create a contact in your database as well as sending the results of the form to a specified email address.

Bear in mind that if you choose to create a contact in your database from a “contact” page rather than a registration page, the user will not know that their details are being stored and may be surprised when they later come to register on your site and find that their email address is already on your records.

You should enter some information to show the user before and after the form is displayed. Note that you can enter javascript into the boxes so that you can use tracking tools such as Google analytics to view a conversion rate or goal achievement rate.

You can set up any number of custom fields for customers and/or suppliers to allow you to store or capture information beyond what Pearl provides as default. These custom fields can be added to your registration and contact pages, as well as showing in a customers account for editing if required.

Click Contacts->Custom Fields from the main menu.