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Why Using Dynamics CRM with Sitecore Makes Good Sense

If you manage a website, you probably use a content management system, or CMS. If you want to run an efficient sales operation, you better take advantage of a quality customer relationship management (CRM) solution. But too often, the two don’t connect well enough for you to make the most out of either’s functionalities. Fortunately, Sitecore and Dynamics are here to change that. CRM and CMS, Explained Frequent readers of this space know about the benefits of a CRM, and particularly Microsoft Dynamics, to optimize your sales processes. It allows you to keep track of each potential and current customer, providing you with more in-depth information on them as they move through the sales funnel. A CMS, on the other hand, improves your website management ability. It offers you the opportunity to streamline, edit, and manage any content on your website, helping you build a website presence designed to gain brand awareness and audience attention. Rather than having to build the content directly in HTML, you get easy editors designed to create beautiful web pages. Today, almost 50% of the top 1 million most-visited website worldwide use a CMS. 5 Benefits of Integrating Dynamics CRM With Sitecore On their surfaces, CMS and CRM solutions may seem like they don’t have much in common, or that your business is perfectly fine using only one but not the other. But if you dig a little deeper, using Dynamics CRM with Sitecore actually comes with a number of tangible benefits for your target audience. 1. Build Targeted Content Based on Contact Information Personalized web content is becoming more and more important to impress and convert your website visitors. In fact, three quarters of consumers get frustrated when the content they encounter is not personalized to them. Of course, you need your visitors to convert in order to have a chance of turning them into customers, and frustration is not a great motivator to accomplish that. Given that statistic, imagine being able to leverage the information you gather about each of your CRM contact into more relevant website content. That’s exactly what Sitecore integration can provide. Now, you can show each one of your contacts information tailored specifically to their needs as soon as they visit your website and contemplate whether they should become customers. 2. Automate Lead Generation Stream into CRM As beneficial as a CRM can be for your sales efforts, it can be frustrating on the marketing side. Too often, there is no easily automated way to feed new leads into the software that then automatically assign to the relevant sales agents and territories. But what if you could build your lead generation web forms in Sitecore, and transfer them over to Dynamics automatically? Now, an otherwise manual process becomes easily automated. In addition, you can even configure Sitecore to capture information from partially filled forms, increasing your insights into your target audience and web visitors. 3. Improve Your Email Marketing Efforts Despite constant efforts to push it off its throne, email marketing […]

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How ClickDimensions Can Enhance the Success of Your Dynamics CRM

In today’s digital environment, even small and medium businesses can benefit significantly from customer relationship management software. Find the right CRM, and you can grow your business by more efficiently reaching out to potential and current customers, enhancing both your customer acquisition and retention efforts as a result. No less than 74% of businesses now use a CRM, and that number increases to 91% when only counting businesses above 11 employees. The increasing data availability, along with the fact that simply integrating the software into your business processes can raise your productivity by 30%, accounts for that adoption rate. Still, simply installing CRM software may not be enough. If you don’t connect it with a marketing automation solution, you may be missing out on a significant opportunity. That’s why ClickDimensions is such a perfect partner product to a powerful CRM like Microsoft Dynamics. ClickDimensions: An Overview ClickDimensions, at its core, is a marketing automation tool. In other words, it’s a software solution that helps you automate your marketing processes, saving both time and resources in the process. The software accomplishes this feat through a number of individual features that range from email marketing to reporting. Combined, they help businesses of all sizes create a more comprehensive and consistent marketing strategy designed to get prospects into and through the sales funnel. But unlike most other marketing automation tools, this one does not operate in isolation. Instead, it integrates directly with your Dynamics CRM solution, helping you take advantage of the sales data and processes you have already established for more personalized, effective marketing. The Marketing Features of ClickDimensions To accomplish its goals, ClickDimensions offers a number of individual features that are worthy of discussion. Each of them is related directly to marketing and marketing automation: Email marketing. Through a native email tool within Dynamics CRM, you can create beautiful marketing emails with a simple drag and drop system. Email data, such as open and click rates, is reported both on a comprehensive and individual level within Dynamics. Marketing automation. Dynamics uses workflows to help you create a set of automated emails. In ClickDimensions, the process is even easier. Create visual communication flows with multiple branches, sending automated email series based on actions that your visitors and leads are taking on your website. Landing pages and web forms. Any business focused on lead generation needs effective web forms to capture these contacts. Within ClickDimensions, you can create these forms, along with the landing pages on which they’ll live, using a similar drag and drop system as email creation. Data is dynamically filtered back into Dynamics for more comprehensive lead profiles. Integrated event management. Does you company rely on events or webinars to generate leads and convert customers? If so, you’ll love the integration with software like GoToWebinar and WebEx, helping you manage each registrant and recording information  related to their attendance. Reporting and Surveys. Naturally, the tool helps you improve your marketing reporting abilities. It also allows you to create surveys, which help you […]

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10 Ways Your Sales Effort Can Benefit From a CRM

If the ultimate goal of your business is to earn revenue and grow, looking for ways to improve both your business processes and sales efforts should be a constant effort. As we’ve detailed in this space, a CRM can help you in accomplishing both. At the same time, simply stating that ‘Customer Relationship Management software will benefit your business’ is vague. So allow us to go one step further, with ten very specific reasons your sales efforts can benefit from a CRM, based on an awesome infographic by Cloudswave.  After reviewing this list, hopefully you will have a better idea of the types of tangible benefits CRM can provide to your small or medium-sized business. 10 Reasons Why CRM Systems Are Popular in Sales In this infographic, Cloudswave cites numerous studies in coming up with data-based reasons to implement a CRM system. These statistics are particularly compelling in understanding the benefits of this software solution: When asked why they use a CRM, 61% of sales distributors responded that it allows for key access to customer information and data. In addition, 75% of sales managers say that using a CRM helps to drive and increase sales. On average, a CRM provides a $5.60 return for every $1.00 spent, an ROI of more than 50%. A CRM helps nurture leads that are not ready to become customers yet, but 75% of companies have no lead nurturing process in place.  This means that simply nurturing your leads can often catapult your company above your competitors. Customers of companies who use CRMs to engage with them spend between 20% and 40% more compared with those customers who only experience manual sales outreach. That’s because CRMs generate a positive customer experience — and as it turns out, 70% of customers with positive brand experiences will refer your product or service to their peers. Your sales representatives love the software because it helps them reach their goals: CRMs increase revenue per sales rep by 41%. Similarly, sales conversion rates for your sales efforts will rise by up to 300%. Customer retention also matters, as CRMs have led to retention rates of more than 25%. Given all of these reasons, it’s no surprise that implementing a CRM will increase your profit margin by more than 2%. Change is difficult, so you may encounter initial resistance in your sales department to changing ‘the way we’ve always done things.’ That’s where these statistics can be so beneficial. Not only do the above reasons provide leadership with a clear view of the potential of a CRM, but they can also help convince your individual sales representatives that after an initial transition period, they will be set up for success. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: because your sales team knows about these statistics, they will be more motivated (and more likely) to accomplish them. Thinking Beyond Your Sales Department toward BPA Of course, one thing that the above infographic does not highlight is the ability of CRM software to benefit your business beyond sales processes. […]

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5 Reasons Integrating Dynamics CRM Can Enhance Your MailChimp Success

In many ways, MailChimp is the ideal email marketing solution for small businesses and startups. Its pricing model is reasonable, while building emails is both simple and effective. Designing attractive emails is possible even for novices in digital marketing. But at the same time, using the software in isolation may cause you to lose out on some significant opportunities. MailChimp, at its core, is an email marketing tool. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive marketing approach, you may want to consider combining it with Customer Relationship Management software. Here are 5 reasons your business benefits from this type MailChimp and Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration. 1. Build Beautiful Emails for a Relevant Audience The intuitive and simple email design tool may be MailChimp’s biggest selling feature. Through a simple drag and drop mechanism and a variety of existing templates, users can build completely custom marketing emails designed uniquely for their audience. The wide variety of examples online today showcase just some of the possibilities of the design tool. Unfortunately, using the software in isolation may mean beautiful emails that never quite reach the intended audience. MailChimp’s contact management system is basic, allowing for some list segmentation but generally limiting itself to uploading lists and sending one-off or scheduled emails. Integrating with Dynamics allows you to take advantage of MailChimp’s strength while eliminating its weakness. Now, you can use the same design tool while also making sure that your emails will reach a relevant audience at the right time. 2. Collect Lead and Customer Information for More Targeted Marketing Wouldn’t you love to know which of your potential and current customers, open, click, and maybe even convert on your emails? MailChimp can record all of that information. But if you use it in isolation, it’s difficult to actually take advantage of the data you collect. Microsoft Dynamics, on the other hand, strives on data integration. It collects relevant actions by your audience in their lead and customer records, allowing you to build targeted marketing campaigns. For example, you can build an email campaign designed specifically for users who have clicked on another, relevant email in the recent past. MailChimp collects the information, while Dynamics allows you to put it to sound marketing use. 3. Combine the Simplicity of MailChimp With the Power of Dynamics MailChimp continues to outpace the email marketing software landscape significantly, with almost 50% in market share among businesses. The reason, as mentioned above, tends to come back to its simplicity, allowing even marketing novices to build beautiful and convincing emails. And yet, an email marketing tool is far from possessing the same power as a CRM. Microsoft Dynamics, for example, allows marketers to perform actions that range from response tracking and lead scoring to conditional, branch and child workflows. If you’re ready to advance your marketing from simple one-off emails to complex workflows designed to engage your audience, you need a CRM. Similarly, if you want to optimize your lead to customer conversions, you better have a system in […]

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How Business Process Automation Can Benefit Small and Medium Businesses

As your business grows, business process automation (BPA) becomes increasingly important. While it’s relatively simple to manually manage and enter your business processes as they occur with just a few customers, the same cannot be said for a growing business managing an increasing number of both customers and processes. The key, then, is finding a software solution that allows you to automate the process. Keep reading to learn how business process automation can benefit both small and medium-sized businesses, along with the functions a reliable system should include to maximize these benefits. 6 Undeniable Benefits of Business Process Automation 1. Increased efficiency Naturally, automating your business processes will increase the efficiency with which you can run your business. If you know that a number of essential functions will be taken care of in the background, you can focus your attention on marketing and other activities that help to grow your business. As this collection of case studies shows, BPA consistently increased efficiency for businesses who embrace the concept. Everyday tasks require less human touches, which can be better focused elsewhere. 2. Reduced Labor and Time Commitment Automating your business processes will take time initially. But after the transition, it will save both the labor and the time (and, ultimately, your budget) required for these tasks. If, for example, you decide to automate your sales flow from lead to customer, your marketing and sales team can spend their time focusing on actual customer outreach instead of having to calculate lead qualifications to determine which contacts they should reach out to. 3. Customer-Centric Advantages Ultimately, thanks to the above shift in priorities, BPA helps improve your ability to reach out and interact with your customers. That, in turn, will result in greater satisfaction by your audience, who will appreciate a more personal approach that is customized to their needs. 4. Cross-Departmental Benefits Too often, BPA software like a Customer Relationship Management solution is viewed with limited scope. It is ultimately a sales tool, helping you automate and personalize your outreach. But in reality, a number of other department and areas within your business can benefit as well. Marketing automation, for example, reduces the need to send emails to new and existing leads. Software like Microsoft Dynamics CRM can also help you track HR processes, collect and sort documents, and manage orders from your suppliers. In short, it can benefit a number of departments within your growing business. 5. Consistency When relying on manual business processes, consistency is almost impossible. Each employee will work on and complete these processes a little different from the other, making it difficult to come up with a set of universal rules and guidelines that apply to everyone in the process. With BPA, that problem doesn’t exist. Every aspect of the automated process is identical to the ones preceding and following it. If you set up a singular lead scoring process, for example, each lead will be evaluated for its sales-readiness in the exact same way. Compare that to manual lead scoring, in which inexact […]

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