List management used to be a chore. It was like a ball and chain around the ankle of every marketer. Now it’s pure magic, except that you don’t even have to wave a magic wand or twitch your nose like Samantha in the old TV sitcom Bewitched. It just happens automatically. I’m talking about dynamically updated marketing lists in – every marketer’s dream come true.
Here’s how it works. Let’s say that over the course of 2014 you want to send out 6 nurture emails to prospects in the distribution industry. You run a quick advanced find search for Relationship Type = Prospect and Industry = Distribution and you come up with 600 contacts at 240 companies.
Now before you go any further, save that Advanced Find and then set it up as a Dynamic Marketing List. For the sake of simplicity go ahead and name them both Distribution Prospects.
In January you sent out your first email to those 600 contacts. The second email is scheduled to go out in March. Between January and March, every new entry in CRM that shares the original Advanced Find parameters of Relationship Type = Prospect and Industry = Distribution has automatically been added to the Dynamic Marketing List that you named Distribution Prospects.
In March you send out your second nurture email using the Dynamic Marketing List called Distribution Prospects that you set up in January. It goes out to 620 contacts at 248 companies. This means that your business development team has added 20 new contacts at 8 companies! Pat their backs.
In May you send out your third nurture email using the Dynamic Marketing List called Distribution Prospects that you set up in January. It goes out to 615 contacts at 246 companies. Huh? What just happened here? Why did your numbers go down? The most likely scenario is that your business development team closed two accounts. In so doing, they changed Relationship Type to Customer instead of Prospect. So those two distribution companies were automatically removed from the Dynamic Marketing List called Distribution Prospects. And if you also have a Dynamic Marketing List called Distribution Customers, those two companies were already added to that list.
sure is smart! So if you’ve misplaced your magic wand or lost your witchy powers, no worry. Microsoft Dynamics CRM will save the day.
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By Marcia Nita Doron Altico Advisors, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner serving Massachusetts (MA) and beyond.
