10 Marketing Tips from CRM Experts

At the recent Marketing with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Idea Conference, a group of industry experts shared their marketing success stories. The entire conference was full of great ideas, but we’ve assembled a few of the best tips to fuel your marketing creativity.  Click the link with each tip to listen to the full presentation and get even more great ideas!

1. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Use sales and marketing metrics to take snapshots of your performance over time. Watch the trends, understand what they mean, and respond accordingly to these trends as they emerge in your reporting. Get more marketing strategy insight from John Gravely, CEO of ClickDimensions.

2. Go beyond “opt-outs” on your subscription management page.

Not only allow a recipient to change their email preferences, but use your subscription management page to strategically gather marketing data. Use surveys to get customer feedback or use a web form to collect support requests. Learn how animal health company Merial did this from Courtney Carter their Sales and Marketing Business Partner. 

3. Don’t limit your nurture programs to email communication only.

As part of your nurture campaign, include a phone calls from the salesperson. From within the nurture, trigger a CRM workflow that creates a reminder for your salesperson to place a follow-up call to the lead being nurtured.  Learn more about nurture marketing strategies from Brad Burks, Director of Sales at ClickDimensions. 

4. Sales and marketing must work together to achieve results.

With tools like Microsoft CRM and ClickDimensions, sales and marketing can use the same database to nurture prospects, score leads, and measure the results. Learn how to achieve “SMarketing” success from Rob Triggs, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CRM Dynamics.

5. Simplify your email marketing using dynamic content.

Don’t create dozens of different email templates to communicate the same message to different audiences. Build one template and use dynamic content to create a custom experience for each recipient. Learn how to do this from Steve Pestillo, President and Owner of P2 Automation.

6. Combined with CRM, use marketing automation tools to manage your live events.

Use web forms to collect registrations, email marketing to send “save the date” and other reminders, or connect CRM with Eventbrite to gather even more data about your event. Steven Foster, who works in CRM Product Marketing and Management at Intergen, shares the details about their Dynamics Day event.

7. Marketing automation is not just for marketing anymore!

Use the same marketing automation tools that you use to communicate with your leads to send regular touches to your existing customers. Create customer “advocates” by keeping them engaged with your product or service.  Click here for more customer service tips from Matt Wittemann, ClickDimensions’ Chief Customer Officer.

8. Expand the power of your marketing automation tools with CRM workflows.

For example, evaluate your survey answers and forward negative responses to the appropriate person in your organization using a custom CRM workflow. Learn how to do this from Mark Purnell, Principal Microsoft CRM Consultant at Newdesic.

9. Don’t just use social media to communicate with your customers; collect social data, analyze it and use it.

Use CRM to collect social data and match it with your other sales and marketing information in order to better understand your customer. Social data can provide insights to improve the way you market to, sell to, and serve your customers. Click here to learn more about social CRM from Ryan Teeples, Marketing/CRM Consultant at Foundation xRM. 

10. Think through your business to generate the best marketing ideas.

What are your customers looking for? Use Google Analytics to find out. Don’t have the time or money to spend on content marketing? Look inside your company for resources or expertise that is already available. You don’t need a giant marketing machine to be effective; just think through your existing business processes to find ways to reach your audience in a meaningful way. ClickDimensions CEO John Gravley shares how his company did exactly this.

 

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