Marketing is about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. Effective marketing along with Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s ability to segment and selectively target the right people can drive better quality leads and opportunities, reducing the cost of sales and potentially shortening the sales cycle.
How can you ensure you are following this guiding principle? When we consult with new customers during , we ask a lot of questions. Here are five things to consider in your marketing efforts:
- Priority # 1 is having data that allows you to segment and selectively target your customers and prospects. Simply put, utilize your Account and Contact fields for Industry, territory, company size, revenue, job title, website address, and more. These out of the box fields are a great selling point of a CRM tool, but if your sales and marketing teams don’t put them to use, they collect dust bunnies on the shelf.
- Based on the segmentation strategy, develop unique marketing messages to those segments, to include a value proposition with which they can identify. Turn these segments into dynamic marketing lists, a new feature with . They will continually be updated with new customers/prospects as you grow your database, yet require no work from you to maintain.
- Personalize your marketing messages, using first name, last name, job titles, or salutations, to initiate relationship building right from the start. Remember that your audience doesn’t know how many people to whom you sent the message, they just care about whether or not you know who they are. This type of personalization can be done with CRM templates.
- Measure your message response rate quantitatively. Sending out a marketing piece that looks great is only part of the equation. You need to understand how many people took the time to read it and take action on it. This is most easily done with email messages or website advertising because of the tools available to capture response. Quantify the deliverability rate, the open rate, and the click-through rate of each message you send.
- Evaluate yourself honestly. Did you hit your expected open rate? Did you generate the number of leads you estimated? With quantitative response information, you can analyze your success or failure and make adjustments as needed. One tool to utilize in this evaluation is the CRM campaign performance report.
While this might seem like a simplistic list, it will help you get to your guiding principle – target the right people with the right message to provide your sales team with high quality leads. And who wouldn’t want that? I know that my does.
by Ledgeview Partners,
