EMail Marketing Question

Question

Hello,
As a first-time user/admin of email marketing On Demand, I wanted to pose a question for the group.
It's apparent that you can only load "Contacts" as recipients of email campaigns, but what if you wanted to load "Leads" instead? I realize that Segmentation Wizard is the quick answer, but let me explain further.
Our organization attends a lot of trade shows, and in advance, we receive lists to which we can send pre-conference emails to a large pool of contacts/leads we've never been in contact with. Given the fact they're unqualified, I consider them a "lead."
However, there's no single field value to which I'd filter these leads by in Segmentation wizard. Essentially the easiest thing to do was import a list of recipients to a campaign. However, as I mentioned earlier, this isn't possible because they have to be contacts (our organization doesn't consider someone a contact until they're qualified in order to cut down on bad names being converted/added to the system).
Are there any best practices out there for helping me solve the issue about how to upload large numbers of leads who don't share a common segment (other than they are attending the same conference)?
Thank You!

Answer 1

I think Oracle doesn't look at it the same way you do. We're in a similar position. We would add new Leads, then create the Contacts and Accounts when we converted to Opportunites. Contacts did not play a significant role for us. (Our contacts and leads have a 1-to-1 relationship as a practical matter.)
So, I guess I would ask you how you're adding the new names (as Leads). If you're importing them, just import them as Contacts first. If you give them an External Unique ID, you can easily add associate them when you import them as Leads.
It's not ideal, but I have found a different solution without using the Contacts.