The new Microsoft Marketing tool will help marketers take the next leap toward touchpoint marketing, a must-have for the most successful organizations in the omnichannel age. We’re happy to give you a sneak peek at how you can get more bang for your buck.
Microsoft Marketing is part of the Dynamics 365 product family and a good choice for anyone who already has or is planning to adopt the CRM system in the same family. The Marketing tool offers all of the most-used marketing automation functions, such as lead nurturing, digital campaign management and implementation, event management and reporting. And it seamlessly uses the contact information of the same family’s CRM, enabling B2B marketing automation as part of sales.
Employing both the Dynamics 365 Sales (CRM) and Marketing tools yields multiple benefits:
- Similar user interfaces increase work efficiency and facilitate more diverse utilization.
- A shared data model enables access to all marketing and sales information on contacts at once.
- When marketing and sales personnel share the same tools, their cooperation and communication improve.
- The same information is immediately available to marketing and sales, which establishes a comprehensive understanding of your customers, improves customer communications and thus enhances the customer experience.
Even though Microsoft Marketing is a brand-new tool, it already incorporates all the basic functions:
- Email marketing
- Campaign landing page and forms
- Target group management
- Customer care models or customer journeys
- Lead scoring
- Events
Email tool
The system provides email templates and a convenient drag-and-drop function for editing content. Several ready-made text, picture, button, event and other modules can be cloned, edited and placed according to your specific needs. Or you can create fully tailored email templates when necessary.
Campaign landing pages and forms
Take advantage of various page templates for your campaign landing site that can be edited using the drag-and-drop function. In addition to pictures, text, links and other such components, your campaign landing page can also include forms.
Enhance paid advertising campaigns and boost lead acquisition by creating tailored campaign landing pages. You can direct users from ads that pique their interest to landing sites. Those sites also can be used to offer access to so-called gated content, which is available only after users submit specific information about themselves through a form.
Target group management
Search various target groups from your contacts using designated segments such as “sales contacts,” “industry contacts” or “signed up to the event.” Microsoft Marketing lets you create target groups using a dynamic search function that updates target groups automatically according to specified contact criteria. For example, if the criteria are associated with downloaded web content, new contacts will be added to the target group based on their online behavior. The search feature uses both marketing and sales contacts in the creation of target groups.
Nurturing models
The sending of all emails is based on a so-called nurturing model — the customer journey. This means that the monthly newsletter is also a nurturing contact, a step in the customer journey, albeit a brief one. A lead nurturing model can be complex and long in cases where the journey is realized according to the actions taken by the contact as well as predefined criteria and events.
The visual construction of a customer journey makes use of ready-made elements. For example: Start a customer journey by selecting a target group or segment, then send an email with a link to the campaign landing site where, based on the filling of a form, the customer can receive an automated offer. The rules or triggers of a customer journey can determine how the journey proceeds based on the contact’s actions. Contacts who fill in a form on the campaign landing page will receive individualized content, while subscribers to the monthly newsletter may receive content of a different kind.
Marketing campaigns and different kinds of nurturing models help you and your sales department refine leads into sales opportunities.
Lead scoring
Dynamics 365 Marketing supports lead qualification and scoring based on, for example, demographic data or information related to the contact’s online behavior. The contact is given points based on each criterion and, when a certain score is reached, marketing considers the lead qualified and transfers it to sales for processing.
Events
The tool supports event management and the processing of registrations, but requires portal adoption in addition to marketing automation. Events are publicized with the aid of a Dynamics 365 portal, which offers event templates for use. The event page collects registration information and distributes the event agenda and background information on its speakers, for example.
The event can be a webinar, training session, seminar or any other type of activity you want to publicize and gather registrations for. The tool provides support over the entire duration of the event’s life span, helping you handle event management —the agenda, speakers, venues and expenses, registrations and post-event communications to participants.
Connect with LinkedIn
For an additional fee, you can connect Dynamics 365 with LinkedIn, which gives marketing and sales departments easy access to leads generated by LinkedIn campaigns.
Align marketing and sales, take full advantage of your data and act with greater effectiveness
Establish one outlook on your customer
A single shared information source on contacts, leads and customers supports mutual activities between marketing and sales and improves the customer experience throughout the customer journey. Monitor the effectiveness of your measures with ready-made reports or expand by using the PowerBI reporting system, among other options.
Track sales projects over their entire life span
A shared work environment and use of the same data support better cooperation between marketing and sales. Sharing data help foster a better understanding of the customer and lets you provide more meaningful and personal communications to your contacts.
Seamless cooperation with regard to both processes and information makes it possible for marketing and sales to react jointly to changes in the market. MS Marketing supports this by providing a comprehensive overview of the customer relationship as well as a shared work environment for marketing and sales.
Boost productivity
A uniform user experience and a shared data model promote effective working. Through the same user interface, sales can access marketing data while marketing can monitor the progress of sales. A shared data model improves the quality of information and broadens the visibility of sales projects in both sales and marketing. Take advantage of the system’s intelligence and functions such as dynamic segmentation in target group determination or lead scoring and message personalization.
