Marketing: List Management and Marketing Automation with Microsoft CRM 4.0

http://www.metisc.com.au/



Last week I covered sales and the way that Microsoft CRM can help the end user – the Sales Professional – in doing his or her job better.

This week I would like to cover one of the coolest things in Microsoft CRM, the Marketing capabilities of Microsoft CRM 4.0.

Marketing professionals everywhere generally look after one or more of the following things:
*Advertising (online and off-line)
*List Management (opt-in lists or bought lead lists), and
*Campaign Management (running and coordinating campaigns and measuring their effectiveness)

Microsoft CRM 4.0 can help Marketing Professionals in these areas and help them develop a system of generating a steady stream of incoming leads so that the sales guys and girls have plenty of leads to chase, pitch to, and close. This is the job of the Marketing Department: It is to generate potential customers. Marketing Professionals generate leads for Sales Professionals to follow up and close.

Many Marketing Professionals these days have a “moral stance” towards either online or off-line marketing. Online marketing has it's advantages in every industry as do the standard varieties of advertising – Radio, TV, Print and Direct. The advantage with online marketing is that it's completely traceable and you can use Microsoft CRM to log this data right down to the contacts level.

When you advertise online you can track where your leads are coming from through splash pages or custom pages for the advertising that you are doing. This gives your advertisements the ability to tell you where your marketing dollars are best spent. If you are a long serving marketing pro, then you will know that tracking your ads can tell you whether to spend more on Google Adsense, or Yahoo! Trusted Feed, or Optimization. Once you are getting leads or buyers through your site and tracking this in CRM, you gain the easy advantage of great reporting capabilities so that you can tell your CFO that you want more budget for a particular stream of advertising, because it works and will benefit the business. You can present this information as accurate and get what you need as a result.

For the small to medium business owners out there, you should have some different priorities. It's all about getting the advertising stream right from the beginning. This is a result of smaller budgets and higher impact of the advertising on the business; albeit positive or negative. Whether you are choosing TV, Radio or Online, you can use CRM to ensure that you know whether a particular stream of advertising is working for your company. All it takes is to ask the question: “and where did you hear about us?” This information can be stored in your central data repository (Microsoft CRM 4.0) and then once a campaign is over, you run a quick report and see how it did. If it paid for itself, you do it again. If it didn't, you try something else. At least this way, as a business, you get to learn from your mistakes. So many businesses are making the same mistakes over and over again without even knowing it by using non-traceable and broad media techniques and not asking the customer for any information when they are contacted as a result of the advertising in question.

Imagine if you could have the same marketing effectiveness by spending half the money! Would your CFO, CEO, Partner, Wife love you all the more???

So how does Microsoft CRM 4.0 help in this situation? What good is CRM in this scenario?
Microsoft CRM 4.0 (and 3.0 before it) has a dedicated Marketing module. This part of CRM is dedicated to the generation of new leads. Where the Sales module concentrates on the conversion of leads to opportunities; the Marketing module is used to create leads and opportunities from lists, campaigns and old data.

Using the Advanced Find function, you can generate lists, attach these lists to campaigns and then track your campaign success. This tracking goes from the Campaign, to the Account, to the Contact and you can even see whether they called, emailed or replied using an online form if your Certified Microsoft Partner has set it up right – and given you the appropriate training.
What is great about this situation, is that you can start tracking buying practices of your client base. As time goes on, your clients become a part of more and more campaigns. Do they buy from more than one style of campaign or do they only buy online? Do they reply to email marketing or call from a Radio advertisement? Ultimately – WHAT DO THEY BUY???
Can you see where I am going here?

Once you know what your customers respond to, and what they buy... what is left to do? ADVERTISE THAT PRODUCT TO THEM IN THEIR FAVORITE MEDIUM!!!

Once you start gleaning this type of information and using it to your advantage, then you have the edge over your competitors: you spend less on advertising and make more revenue as a result.

Information is what makes Marketing Professionals drool in todays business world. Going in blind is a thing of the past, because these days you just don't have to. You have the option of getting information to use in the long term. You have the option of learning from your mistakes. You have the option of being better at what you do.

Now this probably sounds like a lot of work for anyone who hasn't used a Customer Relationship Management system before...

We can Automate this for you through the use of Work Flow; automation of various functions using Microsoft CRM 4.0.

Let have a look at a typical work flow or two which can be done using CRM:

Online Advertising Scenario
*Ad on Google Adsense
*Potential Customer clicks on Ad
*Click information is stored in Google's Dashboard and you are charged for it
*“Splash Page” comes up with product information and contact form
*Customer uses contact form to send you an email
*The customer submits name, company, email, phone and query
*Lead is automatically created in CRM with Name, Company, Email and Phone number
*Sales Execs grab the lead then goes through the sales process

In this scenario, you have your clicks information stored in Google and your customer source information being submitted to you from the web form – because only leads from this ad are directed to this form.

Once the sales pro's sell something they will close the opportunities with either a Won or Lost reason.

At the end of the month you can have a look at all of the Opportunities that were closed as Won as a result of that advertisement. You can then export this information to Excel – import your click costs from Google and then you have a Campaign effectiveness report. You have how much the ad cost and how much it made. Simple.

Another scenario that you can use is the Print Media favorite – the voucher.
*Place an Ad
*Include a voucher in the advertisement for discount “Something”
*When customers redeem this voucher you can take one of two tacts
*Collect information
*Use voucher as information
*The campaign will have a voucher code attached to it

The number of vouchers redeemed will generally give you a hit-rate and value of the campaign – vouchers are generally attached to a particular product or dollar value.

Here the campaign is generally dollar driven as converse to leads driven. The campaign reporting uses the same information as before, just from different sources. You want the number of vouchers presented – this gives you a campaign penetration report. The dollar value of the vouchers gives you a campaign profitability report.

Microsoft CRM 4.0 has the engines in place to help your business advertise more effectively – decreasing your advertising costs and maximizing revenues generated by campaign efforts.
You should speak with your local CRM Specialist, or go to http://www.metisc.com.au/ and make a call.
Alternatively, just email me from this page and I will point you in the right direction.

The point of this blog is to get you more leads, close more sales and get more customers... Now what happens once you have them? CRM can help with that too. Customer Service in Microsoft CRM 4.0 next week at http://www.crmman.blogspot.com/.

Ciao :)

Sales: Microsoft CRM in Small to Medium Enterprises (CRM in SME’s)

www.metisc.com.au

There is so much competition out in the business landscape today that Business Development Managers and Sales Consultants need some help in their everyday business – finding, nurturing and converting leads into sales.

Whether you sell products and services to the public or B2B (Business to Business), you will find that knowing your customers is always going to help in making the sale, up-selling, return business or referral clients. This is easy in a shop, because generally the customers come to you and your marketing is broad reached and localized by geography and demographic only.

What about businesses that do not have a shop-front? What about businesses which sell services on a website, or businesses which sell products wholesale?

In the business landscape today Potential Clients are precious: They are to be nurtured and serviced to the best of your ability. Aren’t leads are also very different when you are selling B2B or to the end user? No. It’s the way that you come about these leads which differs from retail to wholesale. Once you have them they are the same; they are people, a user or a decision maker, which needs to be serviced to the best of your ability.

This is where Microsoft CRM 4.0 can help you.

Microsoft CRM 4.0 has the ability to capture leads through your website, through list imports or through email-to-lead conversion so that nothing slips through the cracks in your business. You may think that you can remember everything, however how many times has your boss (or your business partner) asked you if you have completed something and your response been “no, not yet – I’m swamped”??? This is where CRM helps you – it does the thinking and prioritizing for you. So you can run your business, or wine and dine your best customer tonight.

The way that Microsoft CRM handles information is Dynamic. It works with information the way you do, so you don’t have to adapt to the software, the software adapts to you. Through the Workflow engine, you can automate the simpler tasks, ensure that all leads are followed up, make sure service cases are finished on time, and ensure that your POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS are happy!

Gone are the days when customers are not contacted because a staff member is sick – if that happens, CRM can send them an email informing them that they will be contacted in due course, keeping those lines of communication going so that your customers and POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS are not neglected because Johnny got the flu.

Now let’s look at the Sales Cycle and how Microsoft CRM 4.0 can help you win more business.

Generally a sales cycle will look like this:

Lead comes in through phone, website, walk-in, or referral
Sales person speaks to the lead
Lead displays pains they are experiencing
Sales Person suggests a way that your business can help
Lead requests to see your product or service (Demo or reference)
Once the lead is happy with your service – they ask for a Proposal or Quote
Sales Person creates and presents the quote
Lead may take other quotes on the same product
Sales Person follows up with Lead
Lead comes to a decision
Sale is either won (Champagne) or lost (Cold Calling)


Now in this simple scenario there are loads of ways that CRM can help.

First with the lead coming in:

CRM can help you determine the right sales person to speak with the prospective client. This can make or break the sales from the outset, because the lead may want a bicycle, and your rep specializes in Harley Davidson’s.

CRM can channel the request to the correct sales person through some simple steps so that your bicycle guy is talking to a potential bicycle client.

Microsoft CRM 4.0 can also help with your information, converting a lead to an Account, Contact and Opportunity simultaneously with the click of a button.

Solutions:

CRM has a knowledge base which can help your sales people come up with great solutions for your clients through your own internal network of intellectual property. It consolidates all of your data and makes it searchable, so that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time you have a customer. This sees less Business Development time spent on each customers, higher conversion rates and return business. In short, lower costs and much larger revenues.

Proposals:

Microsoft CRM 4.0 can load templates to help your Sales Consultants provide more accurate quotes and proposals quicker than ever.

How many times have you been proofing a Proposal and seen another clients name mentioned, or incorrect versions, or the wrong date, or spelling mistakes? These scenarios can become a thing of the past when all your guys have to do is choose the solution from a list and put some quantities next to it. The rest is done by Microsoft CRM 4.0.

Also, you know that your Proposals are being sent out in a format that has been proven within your business time and time again. You have a standard company branding policy which is conveyed through your proposals, the company information is controllable and correct, and you can ensure that your format for all future proposals is one that has worked before.

In short – All of your sales team is sending out the best proposal – not just your best sales guy.

Following up Proposals:

How many times have you had a mountain of proposals to get out and when you have finished, not seen or heard any response from them?

Microsoft CRM 4.0 can provide you with the ability to get reminders in your email, or in your Outlook tasks to follow up proposals a set number of days after they have been sent out. This way you can ensure your POTENTIAL CLIENTS are all getting the best chance at becoming an existing client.

REPORTING:

How well are your sales guys going? Is someone in your team all talk? Who is getting the real ($) numbers on the board?

The reporting functionality in Microsoft CRM 4.0 is second to none. You can see who is meeting their targets over a month, a quarter or a year. Who is the most consistent, and who lands the biggest deals. Channel your sales representatives to the sales that they are best at closing.

Are there some sales reps that close every deal, whilst others just close the big sales? Check your win/loss ratios and drill down into each opportunity.

And once you have done that… export it to Excel, make some nice graphs and go and brag to your boss or business partner that told you “software wont help sales”. Tell him he was wrong, and that he may need some help in marketing now…

Next week: Marketing with Microsoft CRM and Metisc.