Automate email campaigns using Dynamics CRM data

Your CRM should be a hub of your relationship detail and business processes. By connecting Dotdigital with these data points, smarter email marketing is immediately at your fingertips.

Using a single customer view that reflects your relationships, processes, and email data, compelling conversations can be created when events occur.

If you are only using email marketing to send newsletters, or if you aren’t doing any email marketing, you are most definitely missing a trick!

Thanks to Dotdigital’s automation Program Builder, CRM data is the basis for delivering personalized, timely emails that are relevant to customer events.

Rather than individually attempting to identify and react to these events, achieve scale by configuring rules in CRMs such as Microsoft Dynamics and Dotdigital, which automatically send messages that are contextual to each contact’s position in the customer lifecycle.

Here are six examples that demonstrate how organizations of all sizes are using Dotdigital’s integration for Microsoft Dynamics to implement smart processes that engage customers.

1. Welcome emails

When new contacts join your mailing list it is the perfect opportunity to send one or more welcome emails, because these new subscribers will be at their most receptive.

Using integrated web forms, CRM is updated when new subscribers are posted. This can include automatically updating a field status or placing the contact in a mailing list which in turn triggers a welcome campaign.

This can be one, or a series, of emails. Examples often include a combination of a link to a PDF resource, introductory videos, links to popular posts, a welcome offer, or another clear call to action.

Welcome emails can also be used to direct recipients to a preference page that will capture more customer information. This added data will then be used to better develop each customer view and improve the personalization of future messages.

2. Re-engagement emails

Inevitably, there will be contacts in your mailing list who aren’t interacting with your email. Who are these individuals, and how do you re-engage them?

Dotdigital tracks each email interaction and reports these events in Microsoft Dynamics CRM / 365. Using a CRM workflow, these actions can be rolled up to a contact field. For example, ‘Date Last Email Open’ or ‘Date Last Email Click’.

CRM rules can be set using this field to route contacts to a marketing list where no recent email interactions have been tracked. This triggered action could also enrol matching contacts in a re-engagement campaign that send messages which are designed to get them clicking back to your website.

3. Loyalty campaigns

Having a clear visibility of your most valuable accounts enables a series of automated emails to be sent to this audience. Promoting feedback surveys to these VIPs can check the pulse of each client relationship. The Dotdigital surveys & forms tool can record survey engagements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and enable you to reward responses with premium ‘insider’ content and time-limited offer codes via email.

Designed to update and engage customers, these automated campaigns will make customers increasingly ‘sticky’, reduce churn and help to increase account revenue.

4. Converting prospects

When a contact first engages with your organisation, nurture emails fill the gap until they are ready to order.

These events might include a prospect downloading a whitepaper, leaving their business card after visiting a trade stand or attending a webinar.

If these are early-stage interactions, an automated nurture campaign will expose the prospect to your brand, content and product over several weeks or months, depending on your sales lifecycle. When they are ready to make a purchasing decision you will be ideally positioned to capitalize thanks to the informative and promotional content shared in these emails.

Configure your CRM system to track these initial sales events and use Dotdigital integration to automatically enrol prospects in a suitable campaign.

In-built Dotdigital reporting through Microsoft Dynamics CRM will alert you when individuals respond to your emails. Recipients’ actions can also be used to adjust message by switching prospect to a different campaign. For example, when prospects download a brochure this event will move them to a new nurture campaign that promotes additional related content.

5. Post-sale campaigns 

Once customers have placed an order, another type of email campaign will nurture them through the client lifecycle and grow these relationships.

Depending on the product or service ordered, these messages may include event briefings, recommendations for maximizing usage of the service ordered and making cross-sell recommendations.

Utilizing Dotdigital’s integration for Microsoft Dynamics workflows, new customers can be enrolled in nurture campaigns which are relevant to the product / service ordered, promoting greater engagement.

6. Remarketing campaigns

Dotdigital tracks web visitors through your site and reports each click in Microsoft Dynamics.

Gaining insight about what type of content an individual consumes creates an opportunity to send responsive messages that promote related content. For example, using an email click URL as a trigger to populate a CRM dynamic marketing list. New list members will be enrolled into remarketing campaign that sends a series of emails containing content relevant to this URL.

This post is by Warren Butler of Preact.