Available on the o365 platform Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM) is an end-to-end marketing tool that allows Marketers to Plan, Execute and Measure their activities. In this blog I’ll give you an overview of these areas.
Across these three areas are four critical functional groups:
1. Marketing Resource Management
2. Media Buying and Planning
3. Campaign Management
4. Spend Management
Planning
Asset Management
Digital – A repository to store and work on collateral linked to the specific Campaigns they’re being used in, this functionality allows you to create a draft, store multiple versions until you have a finished article then if necessary route that file for approval by other users.
Physical – Add your Physical marketing assets to the system e.g. Catalogues, Samples etc, to allow users to request these to use/send out, this allows you to keep a running total of what you have left in stock, where they are stored and receive alerts when they have run out, you can also set an expiry date for when that material will no longer be relevant and will need updating.
Campaign Planning
Marketing Lists – Create numerous Marketing lists either Static (set list of Contacts) or Dynamic (setup criteria for which Contacts should be on the list which is refreshed with new Contacts that meet that criteria each time it is used). Contacts also have the ability to unsubscribe from messages but also subscribe to other lists that you may have. An example of this is you may have a list for each product or service you provide and the Contacts can review these and subscribe to the ones that they are interested in.
Tasks – When you setup a Campaign you may have multiple tasks that need to be completed to meet your goal or to get the Campaign started, MDM allows you to create Tasks for other users for them to complete which will show in their list of things to do, these Tasks can be in a ‘workflow’ so that when one user completes theirs another users Task becomes Active for them to look at.
Templates – Create templates for the main marketing areas in the system so that if you have a type of Campaign you run regularly or if you would like users to stick to a particular format the Template will already be setup in the system containing set information and steps (Tasks) that the user will need to take as part of the Campaign. Email message templates can also be created to allow users to build on top of a set format or to ensure they stay on-message.
Marketing Calendar – View an overview of you marketing activities in a calendar view and allow you sales teams to access this view to give them an idea what is coming up. This also helps with planning resources.
Execution
Campaign Automation Flowchart – This allows you to easily setup and visualize your Campaign, at the beginning you will add a Marketing list of the contacts you will be reaching out to, from there you can Schedule multiple actions and branches of actions based on the Contacts interaction with the Campaign. Some examples of how this can be used:
- When a prospect requests more information on a Landing Page, send the prospect a series of four email messages, each scheduled ten days apart. Once the four email messages have been sent, create a Task for the Sales Rep whose territory the prospect is in to call the prospect by phone and then, a week later create a Task to have an information package sent via the Postal Service to the prospect.
- An email is sent to a prospect. It contains a hyperlink labelled ‘have a rep give me a call’ which takes the recipient to a page where they can request a call. If the prospect clicks on the button, a Task is created to have a Sales Rep call the Contact.
- If an existing client visits your web site and clicks on the Products page, assign a task to the Sales Rep assigned to the client to contact the client about Microsoft Dynamics Marketing’s Campaign Automation functions.
Sync Leads to CRM – Setup rules within MDM to automatically sync leads with your CRM system when they reach a certain stage for your Sales team to follow up on, if these leads are converted to an Opportunity this information is fed back to MDM to allow you to analyse the ROI.
Events – MDM allows you to create Events that you can invite contacts to, track registrations then acknowledge attendees and follow-up if necessary. This allows you to manage the event and also track ROI on attendees, there is also additional functionality around the management of events.
Measure
Financials – Setup Budgets to track your Marketing Expenses against, these can be related to specific Campaigns or an all up Budget for the year. These can give further analysis on Campaign Performance by giving a cost-per-lead breakdown. You can also track spend by item that has been purchased and vendor that it was purchased from.
Time – Users can log their time against a Campaign to give you an all-up view of the time users have spent on a specific Campaign, you can also break this down further by viewing time spent on a specific Task or a view of the amount of time that is spent doing a specific Service overall (e.g. time spent doing Designs across all campaigns)
Dashboards – Each user has the ability to setup their own personalized Dashboard that shows information that is relevant to them for quick access and analysis, an example of some of the built-in graphs you can show are Email Deliverability, Lead Performance, Budget Usage, Campaign Performance, you can also link into Power BI graphs to help analyse the data further, here are some examples of Power BI:
This shows Revenue by Marketing Outlet (Online, Event etc.) by Campaign above Cost by Campaign and Territory
This shows the Budget Usage by campaign above the Leads by Campaign.
Summary
Dynamics Marketing is a functionally extremely rich solution designed for companies who have advanced marketing requirements. The integration with Dynamics CRM gives a unified approach to Marketing and allows the marketing team to grow sales leads and opportunities then pass them onto the Sales team to convert.
MDM allows you to deliver marketing via social channels as well as traditional channels, and supports multi-channel campaigns, allowing the business to promote their products and brands via multiple channels, with full control to be able to track the value and positive revenue gained from each campaign, and from each element of a channel based campaign approach.
This gives a brief overview of some of the functionality available within Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, feel free to get in touch if you would like some more information.
