Several of the ISV partners at Extreme2010 presented educational sessions to the audience of Microsoft Dynamics CRM partners. I attended “Marketing Automation Solutions, Trends and Best Practices” by John Gravely of ClickDimensions. For those of you that were not there you can watch this short video clip to get a preview of ClickDimensions which provides marketing automation tools embedded in Microsoft Dynamics CRM:
provides to help you track your prospects from first click to close. Including email marketing, web tracking, lead scoring, social media tracking and form capture functionality to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Discover who is interested in your products, quantify their interest level then take the right action and track the results.
As a marketer that uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM there are many ways I could use the ClickDimensions tools. I am using a tool now that tracks my website visitors. I can see what keyword phrase and referring site brought them to my website, and what pages they look at. From there I can contact the company to identify if they are thinking of upgrading their accounting software (and if they want to talk about Microsoft Dynamics GP). We have gotten several great leads since we started using this website visitor information. (I call it my spy tool).
Now, I will admit that I am not using the ClickDimensions tool to do this, but I wish I was! Because ClickDimensions pulls all that information directly into CRM. This would give me aggregate reporting capabilities and would eliminate double entry. ClickDimensions pricing starts at just $300 per month, which is more than I pay now, BUT it provides so much more functionality beyond just website tracking, like mass email blasts and form capture, that it is hard to even compare. (And did I mention it would mean no more double entry!)
Another benefit of using these tools is that you can finally prove the ROI of using tools like Twitter for marketing – something I have always found difficult to justify. Because I can track exactly how many people found my website from a Tweet and then score that visitor based on information pulled into the CRM system.
A phrase that John used that really stuck with me about social media tracking is that it can “tell us what people we care are about are saying about things we care about.” I think we are right in the beginning of this trend now, but soon it will be a marketing requirement to pay attention to social media. It is good to know that the tools are already out there to make this possible.
So if you are evaluating CRM Software, or you are already using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, check out the ClickDimensions marketing automation tools.
Also, a special congratulations to John Gravely of ClickDimensions who was chosen for the . (Microsoft BizSpark One is a unique, invite-only program, seeks to accelerate the growth of high potential startups). Quite an accomplishment for a young entrepreneur.
By Anya Ciecierski, CRM Software Blog Manager
