Questions to Ask Before Implementing the Marketing Module in Dynamics CRM
Once your organization has entered all of its accounts and contacts into Dynamics CRM, it is time to leverage the capabilities of this system to learn more about the buying habits of your clients and prospects to ensure that your CRM application doesn’t just become a fancy rolodex.
The marketing module has a variety of different functionalities such as building and segmenting lists, tracking campaign efforts, managing products and price lists, so before you start implementing the marketing module in Dynamics CRM, here are some questions that you should ask your team so that you may be able to pinpoint your priorities and where you should put your efforts to start:
1. What key information do you use to segment your customers and prospects?
List all the information you need to record about each customer and prospect in order to properly segment them into targeted marketing lists. This is important so that you know right away if there are any additional fields that you may need to include in your contact or prospect forms in order to capture these details. You may even want to consider making some fields mandatory – this way, you are certain that all the information you require will be entered when a new contact is created.
2. How do you evaluate your marketing efforts?
Does your organization measure their marketing success based on:
- Where a lead originates from
- The number of leads that were converted into opportunities
- The number of leads that were converted into sales
- The number of leads that were accepted by sales
Regardless of which metrics you use to calculate your marketing success, in order to get the information you need to analyze, you must ensure that you are actually recording it. Having a better understanding of what you want to measure makes it easier to know what specific details need to be entered into the system. With the right information available to track your key performance indicators and generate reports, you will be able to more accurately evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing activities.
3. What types of marketing activities do you do?
Outline the different types of activities that the marketing team manages, and see if you could track them using campaign templates, especially if your activities tend to be similar across multiple campaigns. You may also leverage some of the basic functionalities that already exist within Dynamics CRM to fulfill some of the tasks, such as schedule follow-up appointments, phone calls or other tasks for the sales team.
4. How are you managing your marketing campaigns?
Analyze your current process for marketing campaigns, and see if you would be able to streamline it using checklists for your team. This could give you a better overview of the workload, all active campaigns and upcoming activities so that everyone is your organization is aware of what may be coming down the pipeline.
5. Do you want to send emails and track them within your CRM?
If you are looking to do mass email blasts, we do not recommend you do this natively through your Dynamics CRM system. Although there is a functionality to send emails within Dynamics CRM, it was designed for sending personalized emails that you would like to track on an individual basis. To ensure that you remain compliant with email marketing rules, you should look into third party solutions that have been designed for this specific purpose. Many of the solutions that exist on the market are fully integrated to Dynamics CRM and can therefore provide you with additional insights regarding email open and click-through rates, as well as the ability to score your prospects.
6. What is your handoff process between marketing and sales?
By clearly defining this process, you can pinpoint the best moment at which the lead should be handed over to the sales team. With a well-planned marketing module and with the help of third-party applications, you are able to capture and track valuable information such as all communications sent and received, the documentation provided or the website pages recently visited. Identify which information will give you the details you need to identify the lead’s current level of interest and this will help clarify what next steps or actions should be taken.
The marketing module is the key to guiding your prospects and customers towards a buying decision. Just as the sales module helps you assist your clients in their purchasing cycle and gives you a better idea of the revenue they will be generating, the marketing module helps you determine what it took to get them to that stage. By carefully planning its implementation, you will acquire the right tools to not only better carry out your marketing activities but also accurately measure their effectiveness. With a solid foundation to manage your business, everyone in your organization will be able to benefit from having all of your client information in one place and get the insight they need.
By JOVACO Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM marketing module specialist in Quebec