Today we continue our series of blogs giving you a sneak peak into some of the planned new functionality in our Winter Feature Release and once again we shine the spotlight on our Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce integrations. Last week we discussed Driving CRM activity from our program builder. Now we are going to reverse this concept and highlight some new functionality that allows any Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics CRM user (with the adequate permissions of course!) to initiate full blown marketing automation programs.
What does the feature do?
If you are not already up to speed on the options we give to enroll a prospect or customer into an automated marketing program it might be worth giving this a read. Our new functionality allows a CRM user to enrol contacts on-demand.
In a nutshell, it allows for a lead or contact to be added on an ad-hoc basis to an existing, pre-built dotmailer automation program. The beauty being that this is done from within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce record itself meaning the person initiating the action doesn’t need to leave the CRM environment or learn a new system to do so.
A record could be enrolled into specifically designed automated marketing programs based on a conversation, for example:
- A prospect is in contract with a competitor for another six months.
- A prospect wants to place an order but won’t be able to for four weeks.
- A customer is reviewing alternative suppliers.
- A customer is interested in a product/service and has requested more information.
What does this mean to:
A marketer?
As much as possible, we recommend you enroll leads/contacts into dotmailer automation programs based on their status. Use cases do exist however for on-demand programs waiting to be ‘fed’ a new lead or contact. With this functionality, marketing retains full control over the intricacies of their automated programs (creative, frequency, timing, channel) while empowering prospect and customer facing staff to initiate them. Best of all,marketing gets full reporting inside CRM allowing for detailed conversation tracking and refinement of programs over time.
A salesperson?
No matter how well designed and developed an organizations marketing automation programs are, there is going to be a time when a salesperson needs to pass a lead back over to marketing. This new functionality makes that process quick and easy. If you’re in business development, imagine having a predesigned list of multichannel automated marketing programs that you could add a prospect to at the click of a button? Marketing design the program, sales decide when a contact should be enrolled in that program. It’s the best of both worlds. Like marketing, sales will get full automation program reporting data at a lead/contact level within their CRM. So, when it’s time to open up a conversation again, the salesperson has all the info they need to make sure it’s a well-informed one.
A system admin?
Nothing. In that a system admin doesn’t need to be involved in the process so has nothing to administer! As the whole set up is user facing, drag & drop and clicks not code, it can be a process driven purely by sales and marketing. There may be additional dashboards and sales reports requested to assess the effectiveness of different automated programs but, given an admin doesn’t need to get bogged down on the creation and activation of the programs themselves, they should have loads of spare time from this!
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Enabling CRM Users To Initiate Multichannel Automated Marketing Programs
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