The Three Pillars of Dynamics Marketing

I’ve been blogging extensively about Dynamics Marketing and the  2014 Dynamics CRM Spring Wave.  As a marketer, it’s exciting to know that Encore Business Solutions will be selling and implementing a piece of software that interests me in a way that no other solution can.  It’s even more exciting to see such a high quality product hit the market.

A while ago, I took some stabs in the dark towards what the acquisition of MarketingPilot would mean for Dynamics Marketing, but now, resources are being made available that allow a peek at Dynamics Marketing features.  These are the three pillars upon which Dynamics Marketing is built: Resource Management, Campaign Management, and Performance Management.

1. Resource Management: Planning and Operations

Resource management is a key strength of Dynamics Marketing.  It is a key differentiator and a dimension to the product which allows you to plan and execute like no other solution.

• Strategy and Planning
• Budgeting Management
• Digital Asset Management
• Project and Vendor Management

2. Campaign Management: Multi-Channel Customer Engagement

Creating, changing, and tracking your campaigns in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing is meant to be easy and intuitive.  This is why the minds behind Dynamics Marketing have created a single campaign “view”.  In this view, you will use a drag and drop interface to sequentially plan out the events and actions that will occur throughout  your marketing Campaigns.

Without ever leaving this view, you will specify and segment the marketing list you wish to include in this campaign;  then create and schedule the actions that you want to take to communicate with your list.  How and when these actions occur is dependent on schedules and triggers (i.e. a landing page conversion or a two week break) that are defined by you.

Included actions

These are the communication channels you can schedule into your campaign.  Hopefully this list will grow in size as new releases come out. (When will I be able to add a Dynamics Marketing contact to an AdWords Remarketing List, follow them on Instagram, and then send them inMail?)  Regardless, the actions, triggers, and sequences available to you make for some very impressive automation capabilities.

• Email – Send an email.  Email marketing has been designed to for scalability (deliverable to millions or dozens), and personalized with dynamic content.
• Landing Page – More of a visual reminder that a landing page is present; usually followed by a trigger (did they convert or not?)
• Task – Create a task that is synchronized with your Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  For instance, assign a “call” task to your salesperson.
• Scoring – When the customer reaches a certain point in your campaign/completes a certain stage, adjust their lead score.  Leads are registered, nurtured, and scored in Dynamics Marketing; these details are passed on to CRM for your sales team to execute on (use tasks!).
• Social Media – I’m not certain how specific these actions are, but I believe that they are limited to posting on Facebook and Twitter.
• Edit Marketing List – When the customer reaches a certain point in your campaign, adjust their status on a marketing list.
• Printed Mail
• Event – As in an in person, attended event.

3. Performance Management: Analytics and Evaluation

The analysis tools within Dynamics Marketing have been designed to allow you to tap into the data held by the solution and do three things in particular, whether you are on the ground running the campaigns or at the management level:

• Get a 360 degree view of your customer – Who are they? How and where do they interact with you?
• Analyze budget and cost – Using the planning functionality, you can build out your budgets in the solution, and then understand where your money is going, and whether or not it is contributing to a positive ROI.
• Assess campaign effectiveness – How well are your efforts working? Are you meeting the goals you have set for your Campaigns? Why not?

Use the out of the box tools to measure the results of your campaigns in real-time, and make use of the PowerBI and PowerQuery (Excel) support to explore your sales and Marketing data in one system. Or perhaps this would be an opportunity to make use of  a solution such as Tableau?

Did you know Microsoft aims to send 2 billion emails every single day?  That sounds like the kind of operation that needs a super solid marketing automation platform like Dynamics Marketing.