www.preact.co.uk

31 Examples of how Microsoft Dynamics

CRM Integrates with Marketing Automation

— Manage Email Campaigns In-House —

1. Quickly Design Emails

Save time creating marketing emails using drag and drop template editors with integrated marketing

automation solutions like dotmailer and Click Dimensions.

Quickly create smart templates for newsletters, events, promotions, product launches and other email

messages.

You can create a fully customised template from scratch, or personalize suggested templates with your own

branding to create an email library.

2. Schedule Email Campaigns in CRM

Use email reporting to understand when your audience are most receptive to your marketing communications

and use integrated marketing automation to schedule messages that are timed for the best day and time.

3. Real-Time Campaign Reporting

Email data begins flowing into CRM as soon as email marketing messages are sent so you can

immediately understand the impact of each message and identify which contacts and leads are engaging

with your message.

4. Email Marketing Calls Lists in CRM

Specialist providers like dotmailer and Click Dimensions track every email open and click in CRM. As a

result the top prospects from each email campaign are easily identifiable in Microsoft Dynamics so follow

up calls can be scheduled to target the hottest prospects.

5. CRM Email Marketing Dashboards

Integrated marketing automation solutions track each email action which can be monitored in CRM

dashboards.

Consistent with Dynamics CRM dashboard these are customised to suit individual preferences. Individual

dashboard displays can include: recent email clicks, latest unsubscribes, emarketing campaign charts, hard

bounce responses and recent email actions that exceed a defined lead score.

6. ROI Analysis

Connect tracked email actions to your web site analytics, web conversions, campaign responses and sales

opportunities to measure and report the return on investment from your email marketing activity.

— Lead Generation —

7. Send Promotional Messages

Give your sales pipeline an immediate boost by sending timely emails that communicate new offers and

promotions to your target audience.

8. Run Cross-Sell & Upgrade Campaigns

Build CRM marketing lists that target customers by order history, recent enquiries or known products of

use to send targeted emails that promote upgrades, alternative products or additional services that will

increase account values.

9. Embedded Sign-Up Web Forms

Embed marketing automation sign-up forms within your company website to discover new leads and add

more prospects to your CRM database.

www.preact.co.uk

10. Event Registration

Send emails to promote your next event and drive attendance with links to your registration page.

Click Dimensions works with leading event platforms GoToWebinar and Eventbrite to import events and

registrants into CRM that automatically tracks which contacts or leads are registered for each event.

11. Lead Scoring

Click Dimensions is one example of a marketing automation service that automatically applies a weighted

value for every email action to calculate a total lead score which means that the hottest campaign

prospects are immediately identified in CRM.

— Customer Engagement —

12. Customer Feedback Surveys

Whether your focus is sales, marketing or customer service integrated survey tools give you the answers

you need in CRM to develop strategy and make informed decisions.

For example, Click Dimensions enables surveys to be created in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for customer

satisfaction, post event feedback, market research, cancellation surveys, project feedback and any other

example with the aim of gathering feedback, answers and opinions.

Each survey response is tracked in CRM and can trigger automated actions including auto responder emails

and follow up activities when an individual survey is posted.

13. Email Newsletters

Newsletters are one of the most important communications in your marketing schedule. Create email

newsletter templates from CRM to share your best content including topics such as company and industry

news, best practice ideas, upcoming events, and latest offers.

Manage newsletter recipients using CRM marketing lists and schedule regular newsletters that inform,

educate and drive customer engagement.

14. Client Lifecycle Campaigns

Formulate a series of emails to automatically send CRM contacts contextual lifecycle messages that increase

engagement, on-board new customers, reactivate contacts and earn trust.

Depending on your products and services lifecycle campaigns can be triggered by CRM data to send:

welcome messages, convert trial accounts, cross-sell offers, survey requests, inactivity emails, new features

introductions, renewal notifications and other messages which reflect an individual’s place in your lifecycle.

www.preact.co.uk

15. Drive Web Site Traffic

Use email marketing templates to promote your blogs, PDF guides and other digital content to drive

increased levels of traffic to your website and use tracking tools like Google Analytics to measure the impact

of your email marketing.

Each URL click is tracked and reported in CRM to understand which pages, and what type of content, was

most popular, and by which audience segment.

16. Split A/B Testing

Configure Split A/B tests for email marketing campaigns that are sent from CRM to maximise open and click

through rates.

Split tests can evaluate different email senders, templates and email subject lines to assess which variation

resonates best with your audience.

CRM data can be applied to each test. For example, prefix a subject title with a recipient’s first name by

applying the relevant CRM field. Or, test dynamic content with personalised text and images that reflect

demographic, location or other CRM driven data.

Each split test result is shown in CRM to understand how different segments of your audience react to your

messages.

17. Social Sharing

Marketing automation packages like dotmailer and Click Dimensions include social sharing tools enabling

recipients to easily share and promote email content on their social networks including Twitter and LinkedIn.

Each social share is tracked and reporting in CRM.

— Email Personalisation —

18. Personalised Email Sender Name

Rather than applying a single generic email sender name to every campaign message CRM data can be used

to personalise individual emails by dynamically applying the record owner or account manager specific to

each record.

As a result, your audience will receive emails from an individual within your organisation who they already

know, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will engage with your message.

19. Customising Email Templates with CRM Data

Personalise the body of each email template with any data from CRM. This can include salutation, full name,

email address, mailing address lines, user name, serial key, dates and any other contact, lead and account

fields.

www.preact.co.uk

20. Personalising Email Subjects

Email subject lines can also be personalised with CRM data from contact or lead records. An obvious example

is to prefix an email subject with a recipient’s first name.

Adding a person’s first name to an email header might not be appropriate for every business but as we’ve

highlighted this is an email component that can be evaluated in a split A/B test.

Other subject line personalisation examples can include adding an email address, company name or even a

specific date, for example an expiry date.

21. Dynamic Email Content

Dynamic email content is where you use what you know about your customers and prospects to promote

content that is personalized for them.

Whereas classic email personalisation inserts the exact data into an email, dynamic content takes it further by

using that information held in CRM to display different content to different people.

By making content more relevant to individual recipients this will grab attention and increase engagement.

For example, if you are tracking job roles in CRM this data can be used as the basis for dynamic content. This

could mean that any contacts in your marketing list who work in an IT role would see a technical topic as the

lead article in a newsletter whereas a sales contact in the same marketing list would instead see content

specific to their role.

Dynamic content can also be determined by gender, location, product and any other data in CRM.

22. Targeted Marketing Lists

Regular Microsoft Dynamics marketing lists can be used to segment your audience using any criteria that is

specific to your business and is tracked in CRM.

In addition to demographic or location data marketing lists can be targeted using behaviour data including

tracked email opens and clicks from earlier campaigns, or using order history and transactional data.

— Email Automation —

23. Nurture Campaigns

Place CRM leads and contacts who aren’t yet ready to buy into marketing automation nurture programs.

Each recipient will be fed a stream of relevant messages and sales will be notified as people respond to your

messaging.

www.preact.co.uk

24. CRM Triggered Campaigns

Create email marketing automation programs in minutes that are triggered by CRM data and events to

increase productivity and drive up revenue.

One each example of a trigger could be when an email recipient clicks through to a specific URL they will be

placed into a campaign that will send a sequence of messages specific to this topic. Other campaign triggers

could include a date field in CRM, changes to a status field or other CRM segmentation rules.

25. Subscription Management

Marketing automation services work with CRM to handle global unsubscribe instructions by automatically

updating contact and lead records which removes the need to manually supress email addresses.

Personalised email subscriptions are also handled automatically between these solutions enabling recipients

to control which type of messages they receive.

These preferences are stored in CRM and applied to marketing campaigns which ensures that recipients

receive the messages they’ve opted in for.

26. Multi-Channel Campaigns

Marketing automation services like Click Dimensions integrate with CRM to go beyond email marketing to

support multi-channel automated campaigns. Send SMS messages, instruct your warehouse to re-stock a

product, tell your printers to send a brochure and create contacts and follow-up tasks in Dynamics CRM.

— Audience Insight —

27. Tracking Every Email Action

Every email send, open, click and social share is tracked by marketing automation services and reported in

CRM. Dotmailer extends even further by highlighting which recipients have forwarded your message, and how

many people they’ve shared it with.

28. Email Campaign Reporting in CRM

Full campaign details are reported in CRM including email opens, click rates, unsubscribes, emails delivered

and email bounce statistics to assess the results of individual campaigns, identify trends and determine which

campaigns have worked best.

Click here for 18 examples of how dotmailer and Microsoft Dynamics CRM answer campaign reporting

questions

www.preact.co.uk

29. Email Marketing Engagement History

Each email action is linked to an associated CRM lead or contact record. As a result, marketers and account

managers are able to view the recent email engagement history view for each customer and prospect in a

single CRM list.

30. Click Path Analysis

In addition to reporting every email landing page click integrated marketing automation services will also

track visitors when they view other pages on your website. All this data is reported in CRM so each click path

journey through your website can be followed and understood.

31. Email Bounce Reporting

By using a marketing automation service to send your message email bounce data is clearly visible in CRM

making this easy to follow up. For example, review hard bounces to identify invalid email addresses and

contacts who are no longer working for a company to correct spelling mistakes, discover replacement

contacts and protect delivery rates.

Soft bounce data can even be used to resend messages to recipients who were out of the office when the

original email was communicated.

About Preact

Preact have been implementing CRM solutions for sales teams since 1993 and with low staff

turnover our team is one of the most experienced in the UK.

Our CRM services include requirements scoping, database customisation, project management,

CRM integration, training and user support.

We offer you the reassurance of strong customer reference sites in many industry sectors who

advocate our services.

Our Microsoft Gold Competency in CRM marks the fact that we are one of a select group of

partners who have met Microsoft’s stringent criteria to earn these highest competencies and

confirms Preact's status as one of the leading CRM partners in the UK. Our marketing automation

solutions including Click Dimensions and dotmailer.

Contact us to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and receive advice from our

consultants.

www.preact.co.uk

Tel: 0800 381 1000 or +44(0)1628 661810

Vandervell House, Vanwall Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 4UB