How to Automate Email Campaigns Using Customer Data in Dynamics 365
Data entered in Dynamics 365 can be a powerful trigger for automated email campaigns that send timely messages to convert, up-sell, educate and reward your customers.
By connecting Dynamics with specialist marketing automation services such as ClickDimensions and Dynamics 365 for Marketing, smarter email marketing is immediately at your fingertips.
If you are only using email marketing to send newsletters, or if you aren’t doing any emarketing, you are most definitely missing a trick!
Through automated email campaign builders, Dynamics 365 data can be the trigger for delivering personalized, timely emails when customer actions occur. Rather than individually attempting to identify and react to these events, achieve scale by configuring rules in Dynamics 365 that will automatically send contextual messages.
Here are six examples that demonstrate how organizations of all sizes are using integrated marketing automation for Dynamics 365 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, D365 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?
ClickDimensions and Dynamics 365 for Marketing track each email interaction and reports these events in Dynamics 365. Using a D365 workflow, these actions can be rolled up to a contact field. For example, ‘Date Last Email Open’ or ‘Date Last Email Click’.
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 enroll matching contacts in a re-engagement campaign that sends 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. Survey & form tools can record survey engagements in Dynamics 365 and enable you to reward responders with premium ‘insider’ content and time-limited offer codes via email.
Designed to update and engage customers, these type of automated campaigns make customers increasingly ‘sticky’, reduce churn and help to increase account revenue.
4. Converting prospects
When a contact first engages with your organization, 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 Dynamics 365 to track these initial sales engagements and use integrated marketing automation to automatically enroll prospects in a suitable campaign.
In-built email reporting through D365 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 further content that is contextual to this.
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.
Using integrated marketing automation, new customers can be enrolled in nurture campaigns that are relevant to the product / service ordered, promoting greater engagement during this lifecycle.
6. Remarketing campaigns
Known and anonymous web visitors can be tracked through your site with each click reported 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, an email click URL could be used as a trigger to populate a dynamic marketing list. In this scenario, new list members will be enrolled into a remarketing campaign that will sends a sequence of emails with content relevant to this URL.