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Tag Archives: Marketing

Upcoming Webinar: Using Dynamics 365 to Empower your Marketing and Sales Teams with Digital Automation

January 22, 2021   Microsoft Dynamics CRM
crmnav Upcoming Webinar: Using Dynamics 365 to Empower your Marketing and Sales Teams with Digital Automation

See first-hand how your sales and marketing teams can automate their manual processes, which take up valuable time and energy, using tools in Dynamics 365 like lead scoring and automated email campaigns.

When: Tuesday, February 16th at 11 AM CST

Register Now

In this webinar you’ll learn:

  • Target your leads most likely to close with behavior-based and targeted email marketing
  • Use automatic lead scoring models that grade leads based on their interaction with your marketing content
  • Discuss questions with Dynamics 365 Marketing Consultants with a Live Q&A

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation tools take marketing processes that are traditionally done manually and makes them easier and more targeted. For example, instead of guessing how interested your leads are, create complex scoring models that rate them based on their previous interactions with your website and marketing content.

In Dynamics 365, you can utilize marketing automation to automate processes like sending an email to a contact that clicked a link in a previous email or upgrade a lead score when they visit your website.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Marketing

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Soci raises $80 million to power data-driven localized marketing for enterprises

January 22, 2021   Big Data

The 2021 digital toolkit – How small businesses are taking charge

Learn how small businesses are improving customer experience, accelerating quote-to-cash, and increasing security.

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Soci, a platform that helps brick-and-mortar businesses deploy localized marketing campaigns, has raised $ 80 million in a series D round of funding led by JMI Equity.

The raise comes at a crucial time for businesses, with retailers across the spectrum having to rapidly embrace ecommerce due to the pandemic. However, businesses with local brick-and-mortar stores will still be around in a post-pandemic world. By focusing on their “local” presence, including offering local pages (e.g. Facebook) and reviews (e.g. Google and Yelp), businesses can lure customers away from Amazon and its ilk. This is where Soci comes into play.

Founded in 2012, San Diego-based Soci claims hundreds of enterprise-scale clients, such as Hertz and Ace Hardware, which use the Soci platform to manage local search, reviews, and content across their individual business locations. It’s all about ensuring that companies maintain accurate and consistent location-specific information, which can be particularly challenging for businesses with thousands of outlets.

“For multi-location enterprises, the ability to connect with local audiences across the most influential marketing networks like Google, Yelp, and Facebook was critical to keeping their local businesses afloat through the pandemic,” Soci cofounder and CEO Afif Khoury told VentureBeat.

Moreover, Soci offers analytics that can help determine which locations are performing best in terms of social reach and engagement, integrating with all the usual touchpoints where businesses typically connect to customers, such as Facebook, Yelp, and Google.

“Soci is now housing and analyzing all of the most critical marketing data from every significant local marketing channel, such as search, social, reviews, and ads,” Khoury continued.

Above: Soci: Local marketing data

Soci had previously raised around $ 35 million, and with its latest cash injection the company plans to double down on sales and M&A activity. Its lead investor hints at the direction Soci is taking, given that JMI Equity is largely focused on enterprise software companies like financial planning platform Adaptive Insights, which Workday acquired a few years ago for more than $ 1.5 billion.

Looking to the future, Soci said it plans to enhance its data integrations, spanning all the common business tools used by enterprises, to build a more complete picture that meshes data from the physical and virtual worlds.

“As Soci continues to integrate with other important ecosystems and technologies such as CRM, point-of-sale, and rewards programs, it will begin to effectively combine online and offline data and deliver an extremely robust customer profile that will enrich the insights we provide and enable much more effective marketing and customer service strategies,” Khoury said.

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Managing and Marketing Microsoft Teams Live Events – Part 2

January 13, 2021   CRM News and Info

xwebinar blog 625x417.jpeg.pagespeed.ic.y2Z27Z3biC Managing and Marketing Microsoft Teams Live Events – Part 2

In part one of our 2 part blog series on Microsoft Teams we told you what Microsoft Teams Live Events are and we showed you how is simple to create and market a Teams Live Event. There are 3 simple steps to follow when holding a Microsoft Teams Live Event: planning and set up, marketing, and post event wrap up. In this second part, we will cover marketing your Teams Live event – as well as post event wrap up.

Step three: Marketing your Microsoft Teams Live Event

This may be one of the most important steps in holding your live event. You need to ask yourself who it is that you want to attend your webinar. Do you want primarily new customers, existing customers, or a mix? If you are primarily marketing to existing customers, you may want to do something like add a note to your email signature or send emails to existing customers or prospects.  When engaging new prospects, you may want to do something such as creating a blog about your topic and post it on social media. Don’t forget #hashtags! You may also want to consider joining and posting in LinkedIn groups related to your topic and creating LinkedIn Lead Generation forms to capture sign ups from LinkedIn.

Our marketing automation tool of choice is ClickDimensions. ClickDimensions was made exclusively for and is natively built in Microsoft Dynamics 365. Using ClickDimensions, we built a campaign automation when planning the marketing of our webinar. Campaign automations allow you to set up dynamics paths for a contact or lead based on certain actions. In our fast paced world, campaign automations help simplify and automate daily processes. Campaign automations turn manual processes into automated ones. Campaign automations are not only simple to set up, but extremely beneficial. Not only do they give you piece of mind,  campaign automations increase productivity – freeing you up to focus on other things. Below is an example of our campaign automation.

xTeams la 6 campaign automation 625x361.png.pagespeed.ic.8Gqnaiu QP Managing and Marketing Microsoft Teams Live Events – Part 2

Step four: Post event wrap up of your Microsoft Teams Live Event

After your Microsoft Teams Live Event is over, you still have a few tasks to perform. You can make your job easier by simply prebuilding many of these assets and finishing them after the webinar is completed. For us, we like to upload all of our webinar videos to YouTube. We also save our PowerPoint presentation to a pdf and download both the pdf and the video to our website. You will also want to send an email to all who registered (not just attendees) – thanking them for attending and attaching links to the webinar recording on YouTube and the PowerPoint notes.

Don’t take down the webinar landing page you built for registrations. Use it to continue generating leads. Update the sign up form so that people can watch the video on demand.

In Conclusion

Webinars are among the best marketing platforms. Webinars establish you as an authority in the field and allow you direct contact with your target group. Holding webinars actually saves time and money, as they allow you a global audience without having to travel. Webinars allow you to reach a large amount of people at once. Remember, the hardest thing about doing webinars is just getting started. Decide you want to do it and just get started. You won’t be perfect. You will evolve with time and practice.

Get started today – happy planning!

How Can We Help?

If you have any questions on getting started with Microsoft Teams Live events or if we can help you with any of your Dynamics 365 needs, don’t hesitate to contact us. We would be more than happy to assist you. enCloud9 is a recognized expert in helping organizations like yours get the most out of their Dynamics 365 system.

Watch for details of our upcoming webinars in 2021. Topics to be announced soon and registration will be available on our website, as well as on our Facebook page.

Visit our YouTube channel for other informative webinars or our blog for the most current and up to date information.

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Managing and Marketing Teams Live Events – Part 1

January 9, 2021   CRM News and Info

What are Microsoft Teams Live Events?

So, you’ve likely used Microsoft Teams for chat, messages, and meetings, but did you also know that you can also host webinars in Teams? Microsoft Teams Live Events are an extension of Teams meetings – enabling users to broadcast video and meeting content to a large online audience. Teams Live Events are meant for one-to-many communications where the host of the event is leading the interactions and audience participation is primarily to view the content shared by host. It is simple to create and market a Teams Live Event. There are 4 simple steps to follow when holding a Microsoft Teams Live Event: brainstorming, marketing, preparation/performance, and post event wrap up. This blog is part of a two part series. Part one will cover what Teams Live events are – as well as planning setting up your Teams Live Event. Part 2 will cover marketing your Teams Live event – as well as post event wrap up.

With so with so many options for webinar hosting services, why would someone choose to use Microsoft Teams as their platform for hosting webinars?

There are many reasons someone would choose to host webinars in Microsoft Teams using Live Events.

  • Cost – This is a very significant factor in choosing webinar hosting services.  If you are already using Teams, why pay for another service when you already have the functionality?  Getting started with Teams live events is not difficult. Initially, you may have more work to set things up, but once you have it running, the benefits simply outweigh any additional work you may have to do.
  • More Control – This is where Microsoft Teams Live events shines bright. When it comes to moderating a webinar, it is vital to be in full control.  One of the ways Microsoft Teams Live Events allows you to be more in control is in the recording of the webinar. YOU choose when you begin and end the recording, something that is not an option in many other webinar software tools. To start the recording in a Teams live event, simply click on the 3 ellipses in the meeting panel and select Start Recording. When ending the call, it is suggested to end the call for all attendees, so that attendees don’t linger. You also have control over what attendees see. You can choose to show your whole desktop or just a specific window. You can choose to put your camera on or leave it off. Another thing you have control over is the roles of the participants. There are 3 roles – presenter, producer, and attendees.
  • Easy Editing – Once you have your Live Event set up, you can edit the details in Meeting Options.  Here you have control over such things as who can enter the call, who needs to wait in the lobby until they are admitted, or who can present content within the meeting.
  • Attendees access – Attendees will have access to the recording, as well as your PowerPoint presentation – if you choose. Attendees can easily share your content or refer to it at a later time.

Step one: Planning and Set up of your Microsoft Teams Live Event

When planning a webinar you must first make an outline for your webinar. Consider the amount of time you have and what you want to cover in that time. The basic format we follow for our webinars is as follows:

  • Introduction (first five minutes or so) – during this time, we introduce who we are, state the topic of our webinar, let people know that we will be recording the webinar, and covering any rules for the webinar (i.e. – questions at end).
  • Demo (the majority of the time) – Walk through your topic in a meaningful way to engage your viewers. Everyone is busy. We want people to feel that attending our webinar was a good use of their time. Make sure not to focus to much on the technical side of things – focus on the benefits!
  • Wrap up – Now is the time to review questions from your audience. (You may want to have a couple questions ready to go just in case)! Let attendees know that they will be getting an email with follow ups from the webinar.

At the beginning stage of the planning for your webinar is brainstorming.  You must first decide how often you want to do webinars. Will your webinar be a one-off event or part of a continual series? Another question you may want to ask yourself is how long your webinar will last. EnCloud9 holds a monthly 30 minute webinar. Everyone is busy and we felt that for our audience, 30 minutes was appropriate.

The next thing you need to decide on is a topic. It is important to consider your audience. Think about what is new in your industry and what your audience wants to hear about. Look at the analytics of past social media posts and blogs. What has generated the most interest? Look at what your competitors are blogging about and doing webinars on. What is the best way to share your expertise? Will you have a co-presenter or will you bring in an external expert?

And of course giving yourself adequate time to prepare is key. Make sure you have enough time to perform all the work required. Practicing and doing a few trial runs is a good idea.

After deciding on a topic, it is now time to create your live event in Microsoft Teams. Simply go to your calendar and in the upper right corner, next to new meeting, click on the down arrow and choose Live Event.

xset up teams la 1 625x374.png.pagespeed.ic.BD4P9xftNA Managing and Marketing Teams Live Events – Part 1

It is now time to fill in details for your webinar.

When you scroll down, you will see more options, such as whether you want a Q&A session or an attendee engagement report.

*Important to note that when you invite people to your event, you have to chose the role you wish them to have. There are 3 roles: producer, presenter, and attendee. It is important in assigning roles that you understand exactly what each role can and can’t do.

  • Producer – There should only be one producer. The producer is in charge on controlling the live event. The producer sends the event live and also finishes the event. The producer can share their content or that of the presenter. Once the live Q&A session has been switched on, presenters can also act as moderators.
  • Presenter – There can be multiple presenters on your live event. Each presenter can share their audio, live video, or content on a screen sharing – as well as content from other presenters (if you have more than one).
  • Attendee –  Depending on how you set your live event up (public or private), attendees can be external or internal. Attendees can either join the live event by using their invitation link or they can choose to view the event in their web browser of Teams app.

In Conclusion

Webinars are among the best marketing platforms. Webinars establish you as an authority in the field and allow you direct contact with your target group. Holding webinars actually saves time and money, as they allow you a global audience without having to travel. Webinars allow you to reach a large amount of people at once. Remember, the hardest thing about doing webinars is just getting started. Decide you want to do it and just get started. You won’t be perfect. You will evolve with time and practice.

Get started today – happy planning!

How Can We Help?

If you have any questions on getting started with Teams Live events or if we can help you with any of your Dynamics 365 needs, don’t hesitate to contact us. We would be more than happy to assist you. enCloud9 is a recognized expert in helping organizations like yours get the most out of their Dynamics 365 system.

Join our January 2021 webinar about The New Search Experience in Dynamics 365. Topics for future webinars will be announced soon and registration will be available on our website, as well as on our Facebook page.

Visit our YouTube channel for other informative webinars or our blog for the most current and up to date information.

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

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Kenshoo acquires Signals Analytics to supplement its AI-powered marketing platform

December 23, 2020   Big Data
 Kenshoo acquires Signals Analytics to supplement its AI powered marketing platform

Kenshoo, a provider of a platform for managing marketing campaigns, yesterday announced its intent to acquire Signals Analytics, which provides a service for collecting unstructured consumer data that allows marketers to model campaigns using AI technologies. Signals Analytics counts organizations including Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, Roche, and Mars as its customers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The Signal Analytics service optimizes marketing campaign designs using consumer data from external sources such as social media feeds and normalizes it for customers. That capability allows marketers to employ machine learning algorithms to reach specific types of consumers without necessarily having to rely on a digital marketing agency, said Signals Analytics co-founder and CEO Gil Sadeh.

All the data loading and preparation activities are automated using AI tools the company provides for that purpose, he noted. He said that there’s no need for organizations to construct a massive data lake of their own to analyze consumer data.

Going forward, the combined entity will further enable the automated marketing campaign execution based on the models customers create using the Signals Analytics service. “Our outputs will become their inputs,” said Sadeh. “We’re going to create the first full lifecycle knowledge graph built for marketers.”

Other providers of market and customer intelligence platforms include Stravito and Precima. Marketing departments also employ an array of analytics applications that have been customized to analyze data stored in various types of data lakes that IT teams typically construct in the cloud on their behalf.

As organizations look to engage consumers online in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re typically faced with a stark choice: Either invest dollars in building their own marketing platforms on top of a data lake or opt to employ a service that continuously collects and normalizes consumer data on their behalf. It would take most IT organizations several years to acquire, build, and deploy a platform that collects consumer data from multiple sources at a level of scale Signal Analytics has already achieved.

Once built, that data lake also needs to be maintained, otherwise it will potentially turn into a data swamp. Signals Analytics not only collects and normalizes massive amounts of data, it also classifies that data in a way that makes it possible to search and query it using natural language processing (NLP) tools.

What enterprise IT organizations are investing is customer data platforms (CDPs) that enable them to better engage their existing customers. SAP, for example, acquired Emarsys last fall to provide such a platform. At the beginning of the year, Salesforce acquired Evergage. Other providers of CDP platforms include Oracle, Adobe, Arm Treasure Data, and QuickPivot.

The level of investment being made in these classes of platforms tends to vary widely depending on the impact the pandemic has had on a vertical industry. However, with many organizations prioritizing digital customer engagements, the need for platforms that employ AI to sort and analyze massive amounts of data have become more profound.

Of course, collecting customer data is only the first step. Organizations will also need to invest time and resources integrating analytics tools with the marketing automation platforms they have deployed. The combined entity that Kenshoo will create once the deal is completed will provide organizations with a pre-integrated platform.

It’s not clear to what degree the convergence of marketing intelligence and automation platforms is imminent. However, give the urgency to launch market campaigns faster at a lower total cost to the organization, chances are good that more mergers among these platform providers is imminent.

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FSI Blog Series, Part II: Sales and Marketing Collaboration

December 9, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Welcome to Part II of our blog series exploring the partnership that exists between HCL-PowerObjects, Microsoft, and Seismic – the world’s most powerful storytelling platform. Our three businesses together provide a unique set of partnership benefits for our customers that includes execution deployment, data analytics, and customized content. This series focuses on the power of this triumvirate…

Source

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A Hybrid Marketing Automation Option for Microsoft Dynamics Users

December 1, 2020   CRM News and Info
crmnav A Hybrid Marketing Automation Option for Microsoft Dynamics Users

A hybrid marketing automation platform solution for Microsoft Dynamics merges two best-in-breed solutions to deliver outstanding performance, usability and flexibility. In this case, the emfluence Marketing Platform, a robust, mature marketing automation stack is merged with Microsoft Dynamics 365. The result is a dream solution that leverages the best of both worlds.

How they are connected.

The emfluence Marketing Platform is a SaaS platform that operates independently of third-party solutions. This means marketers can log directly into the system to create, deploy, and track multi-channel online marketing campaigns through email, landing pages, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online surveys and forms. In addition, marketers can create custom workflows and track interactions across channels to better market to their customers and prospects. Through the use of standard connectors and built in APIs, the emfluence Marketing Platform can be connected to systems that support third-party connectivity. The emfluence Marketing Platform excels at creating, deploying, and tracking marketing campaigns, but it isn’t designed to be a full CRM.

The counterpart to the emfluence Marketing Platform in this hybrid solution is Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a robust and powerful solution for managing customer relationships. Microsoft Dynamics excels at customizability and management of customer data but doesn’t provide the core functions that marketers demand to create, deploy, and track campaigns designed to engage with customers and prospects.

A hybrid solution leverages the advantages of both systems and creates seamless connectivity. In the case of the emfluence Marketing Platform solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the integration embeds the entire emfluence user experience into Microsoft Dynamics and allows for single sign on while consuming only a single application user license. Users never need to leave their familiar CRM environment to fully leverage the power of an advanced marketing automation platform. Staying true to the promise of a hybrid solution, users can also access the emfluence Marketing Platform directly through the standard SaaS web platform.

Within CRM, only the table structures necessary to fulfil the promise of a seamless integration are created when the solution is installed. This means very little data redundancy. In addition, it helps control consumption where appropriate. Deploying millions of emails over time can result in significant data usage. Optionally, and also staying true to the promise of a hybrid solution, CRM instances can be configured to create table structure and collect data for activity and engagement data that may be necessary for running queries, segmenting data and creating downstream actions via Flows created in Power Apps. Much of this functionality can be accomplished from within the emfluence Marketing Platform, so the optional creation of the duplicate data set becomes a business decision on how an individual organization would prefer to operate.

Organizations that leverage this hybrid solution also realize the value of a user licensing advantage. There does not need to be a one to one relationship between users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the emfluence Marketing Platform. In most cases, user-based licensing in the emfluence Marketing Platform is not part of the fee structure. That means that there can be active users of the emfluence Marketing Platform that do not need Microsoft user licenses. This can be a significant cost consideration when establishing how your Marketing team will best execute important strategies and tactics.

For years, Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers have been limited to the choice of either a completely native solution or an independent solution with loose connectivity to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With the emfluence Marketing Platform solution the best of breed worlds come together in an elegant and powerful application.

For more information or for a demo, reach out to us at here or learn more about our integration to Microsoft Dynamics here.

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Facebook acquires messaging marketing automation startup Kustomer

November 30, 2020   Big Data
 Facebook acquires messaging marketing automation startup Kustomer

When it comes to customer expectations, the pandemic has changed everything

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Facebook today announced it will acquire Kustomer, a New York-based customer relationship management startup, for an undisclosed amount. When the deal closes, Facebook says it will natively integrate Kustomer’s tools with its messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and Messenger, to allow businesses and partners to better manage their communications with users.

For most brands, guiding and tracking customers through every step of their journeys is of critical operational importance. According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report, the number of companies investing in omnichannel experiences has jumped from 20% to 80%, and an Adobe study found that those with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies enjoy 10% year-over-year growth on average and a 25% increase in close rates.

“We’ve witnessed this shift firsthand as every day more than 175 million people contact businesses via WhatsApp. This number is growing because messaging provides a better overall customer experience and drives sales for businesses,” Facebook VP of ads and business products Dan Levy and WhatsApp COO Matt Idema wrote in a blog post. “As businesses adjust to an evolving digital environment, they’re seeking solutions that place people at the center, especially when it comes to communication. Any business knows that when the phone rings, they need to answer it. Increasingly, texts and messages have become just as important as that phone call — and businesses need to adapt.”

AOL and Salesforce veterans Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel founded Kustomer in 2015, which went on to attract customers including Sweetgreen, Ring, Glossier, Rent the Runway, Away, and Glovo. The company’s platform let clients search, display, and report out-of-the-box on objects like “customers” and “companies,” with tweakable attributes such as orders, feedback scores, shipping, tracking, web events, and more. On the AI side of the equation, Kustomer offered a conversational assistant that collects customer information for human agents and auto-routes conversations.

Kustomer’s workflow and business logic engines supported the creation of conditional, multi-branch flows that enabled each step to use the output of any previous step and to trigger responses based on defined events from internal or third-party systems. From a dashboard, managers could view which agents are working in real time and launch customer satisfaction surveys (or view the results of recent surveys). The dashboard also exposed sentiment to provide a metric for overall customer service effectiveness, and it enabled admins to customize Kustomer’s self-service, customer-facing knowledge base with articles, tutorials, and rich media including videos, PDFs, and other formats.

Last year saw the launch of KustomerIQ, which allowed companies to train AI models to address their unique business needs. The models in question could automatically classify conversations and customer attributes, reading messages between customers and agents using natural language processing techniques.

Prior to the Facebook acquisition, Kustomer raised $ 173.5 million across six fundraising rounds. Earlier this morning, The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal announced today could value the startup at more than $ 1 billion.

Birnbaum, Suriel, and the rest of the Kustomer team will join Facebook once the transaction is approved. Facebook says that Kustomer businesses will continue to own the data that comes from interactions with their customers, but that it eventually expects to host Kustomer data on its infrastructure.

“Once the acquisition closes, we look forward to working closely with Facebook, where we will continue to serve our customers and work with our partners as part of the Facebook family,” Birnbaum wrote in a blog post. “With our complementary capabilities, we will be able to help more people benefit from customer service that is faster, richer and available whenever and however they need it — via phone, email, text, web chat or messaging. In particular, we look forward to enhancing the messaging experience which is one of the fastest growing ways for people and businesses to engage.”

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Ditch the Integration Between Dynamics 365 and 3rd Party Marketing Applications

November 20, 2020   CRM News and Info

Digital marketers and salespeople understand the importance of having a database with correct and up-to-date information. Sending an email to an invalid inbox or calling a phone that is no longer associated with a prospect can waste valuable time and even hurt your domain sender score in the case of sending to inactive emails.

Traditionally, CRM and marketing applications have stayed separate making it difficult to manage data effectively between systems and teams. Sure, integrations can be built to allow sales and marketing systems to speak to one another, but these integrations are often patched together and sync limited amounts of information. By utilizing Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Sales together, all data is stored in the same database meaning no integration is necessary.

Unified Contact Data

The contact entity in Dynamics 365 is accessible and editable from both Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Sales. This means if a salesperson updates a contact’s address in Dynamics 365 Sales, that address change can be seen from the contact record in Dynamics 365 Marketing. Shared data between Sales and Marketing is especially helpful for marketers that need to maintain marketing lists. Typically, marketers will need to export contact lists from their CRM system into whichever marketing application they are using to send emails or other campaigns.

The issue with this process is that unsubscribes, bounces, opens, link clicks, and other analytical data never sync back to their associated contact records in CRM. Having a system that can conduct all digital marketing campaigns while also maintaining contact data for sales and marketing is a game changer.

In Dynamics 365, the contact record stores all consent information related to marketing activities conducted from Dynamics 365 Marketing. When a contact unsubscribes via the subscription center page, the “Email: Do Not Allow” field on the contact record is updated to reflect that they no longer want to receive emails.

Tracking Marketing Insights

Marketing analytics should be used by both marketing and sales teams, but frequently that data is unavailable to salespeople in CRM. Dynamics 365 stores marketing analytics within the Dynamics 365 Marketing app, but also showcases marketing data related to individual contacts right on the contact record. The contact Insights tab of the contact record includes tables for email interactions, website interactions, event interactions, form interactions, and even email open times. Below is an example of the high-level insights breakdown chart included for each contact.

This data is useful to salespeople who need to see how engaged their prospects are with the company. If a salesperson sees that a prospect they have been speaking with opens every email campaign and visits the website once a week, they know that the prospect may be in a good place to convert to a sale. A sales team can also easily implement a lead scoring model in Dynamics 365 Marketing that tracks contact engagement with marketing efforts and assigns scores based on interactions. Learn more about creating lead scoring models in Dynamics 365 Marketing here.  For marketers, tracking contact preferences like unsubscribes means they no longer need to tediously check their marketing list before each email send.

Get started with Dynamics 365 Marketing

Not sure where to start with Dynamics 365 Marketing? Our team can work with you to develop a step-by-step implementation plan to get started quickly, but not overwhelm your team. If you have contact data stored in a 3rd party system that you would like to sync with Dynamics 365 contacts, we can build an integration to sync that data and ensure it is clean moving forward.

Schedule a call with our Dynamics 365 Marketing team.  

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7 Reasons to choose Microsoft Dynamics Marketing

October 28, 2020   CRM News and Info
crmnav 7 Reasons to choose Microsoft Dynamics Marketing

The importance of Marketing to your operation can’t be stressed enough. Without attracting the right attention at the right time, your business can stall.

Even with the best sales professionals and processes, you need the right tools on the Marketing side to attract high-quality leads and help convert more opportunities to sales.

There is where CRM Dynamics and Microsoft can help.

Over the last few years, Microsoft has invested a great deal of research and development to enhance its Marketing offerings. The result – Microsoft Marketing for Dynamics 365 – is a robust and powerful Marketing tool that can fully integrate with the rest of your Microsoft business software.

With Microsoft Marketing for Dynamics 365 you can:

  1. Create Dynamic Emails

With intuitive drag and drop controls, you can create engaging and effective email templates. Text, picture, button, event and other modules are available to be manipulated to meet your exact needs for each campaign or outreach – all fully customizable if required.

  1. Create Better Landing Pages and Forms

With a multitude of templates available, you can easily, quickly, and efficiently create landing pages or forms to meet any need. These pages can be used to enhance your paid advertising campaigns or to capture valuable information through your compelling gated content.

  1. Target Your Outreaches

By effectively using the search option, you can have Microsoft Marketing for Dynamics 365 create target groups to send specific messaging to. Do you have a product designed to serve clients in the construction industry? Microsoft Marketing for Dynamics 365 can help you reach them. Do you want to drill down into a very specific subsection of a vertical? The solution can help you there too!

  1. Create Effective Drip Campaigns

Not everyone is ready to buy when they reach out to you. The reality is that potential customers can contact you at all points along the customer journey. Microsoft Marketing allows you to nurture those contacts until they are ready for purchase. You can create multiple nurture campaigns that are specifically targeted to different types of leads. By tailoring Marketing campaigns to specific opportunities, you are equipping your Sales professionals with the tools they need to win more deals.

  1. Lead Scoring

Microsoft Marketing for Dynamics 365 can qualify leads based on demographic data or other data tied into a contact’s behaviour. This is expressed in an overall prospect score and it helps Sales professionals better prioritize their time and resources.

  1. Run Better Events

If you also utilize a Dynamics 365 portal, Microsoft Marketing can help you plan and run more successful events. After utilizing one of the many templates available to create a registration page, you can publicize your event and gather registrants, track expenses, and communicate to attendees throughout the process.

  1. Synergy Between Sales and Marketing 

Sales and Marketing are like Strawberries and Cream, Peanut Butter and Jelly or Sonny and Cher – OK alone, but better when working together!  Microsoft Marketing for Dynamics 365 helps support better cooperation between Marketing and Sales by easily sharing data; this allows both to better understand the customer and their role in helping foster a productive and lucrative relationship with said customer.

If you are still utilizing third party marketing software, ask yourself why? Microsoft Marketing is an all-in-one solution that easily integrates with your existing Microsoft solutions.

Give our Marketing experts a call today to learn more about how his powerful solution can help drive your business’ success.

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

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