Marketing Automation - A critical segment of CRM

Every business defines a marketing system, either manual or automated. Some emerge as giants, while others, either give up on business or constantly struggle to keep their heads above the water. So, what are the variables that make or mar the success of an organization?

The successful enterprises have the capacity to address the market needs by using right marketing automation tools and analytics, which enact as time and money saving mechanisms and help in making good business decisions.

Marketing automation, an integral component of customer relationship management (CRM) involves using a software application to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI) and campaign management. Marketing automation allows manual processes to be performed much more efficiently and conceiving some new ones.

It's Functions

Most companies have taken to marketing automation tools in order to tune their customer marketing efforts to acquiring and retaining customers and generating new sources of revenue. Marketing-automation application allows you to: -

1.Perform critical, real-time market analysis that lets businesses gauge the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. 2.Build, execute and measure their marketing campaigns. 3.Update information on customer segments and profiles based on the constant input of new data. This information can come from click stream analysis of customer behavior on a Web site or from response patterns across multiple campaigns such as direct mail, conferences and training initiatives. 4.Collect, analyze, disseminate and act on a wide range of data, with greater speed without greasing your elbows.

The core of this technology lets you streamline your data as per categories such as - which information goes where, which messages are sent to whom and likewise. From the very first step, marketing automation allows you to carefully segment your in-house list. Accordingly, no entry can be made without being classified. Thereon, every single action taken by an individual, from every clickable link to slightest piece of information, all gets recorded under one central database. Whether you're sending out your first email or fifteenth, every person's record is updated instantly.

Knowing the Answers

By analyzing the volume of data (open rates, clickthroughs, form completions, expressed and implied preferences...) accumulated by your data marketing automation system, you as a marketer, can find answers to some of your most persistent queries such as:

1.By the designated category, which prospects are the most and least active responders? 2.What has been your response rate over the past 6 months for one email type communication versus another? 3.What number of prospects responded to the current month's product promotion compared to the one executed 2 months ago?

Knowing your Prospects

You can better understand your prospects by letting them choose the type and level of communications they do / don't want to receive from your end. Such communications might include:

1.Product announcements 2.Corporate press releases 3.Event announcements 4.Broad informational resources

Once your prospects have expressed their preferences, the information gets stored in the centralized database, supported by your marketing automation, which further lets you capture your prospect/s professional interests.

Advantages

With marketing automation application, you enjoy a number of benefits:

1.You spend more time on the tasks that you like to do, which usually are those that got you into the business in the first place. 2.Instead of you having to chase clients, they come to you already knowing about your products / services. 3.While you are occupied entertaining existing clients, you're still getting the word out about your services allowing you make informed decisions about your company' 4.You get the leverage to accelerate your business growth.

Most marketing-automation applications let users design, schedule, execute and evaluate multi-channel marketing campaigns. Major components to be considered under marketing-automation are: -

1.Marketing analytics is important for companies that do not have a sophisticated data-management infrastructure. Companies that are new to data analytics might want a marketing-automation tool that can generate data models. 2.Campaign management is another key piece of marketing automation that supports campaign design, scheduling and execution capabilities across multiple channels, including direct mail, E-mail, Web, phone, fax and events. 3.Real-time decision support helps marketing managers track campaigns and make tweaks on the fly in response to customer activities. 4.Learning algorithms track and predict customer behavior. 5.Finally, response management and reporting lets business managers review the results of their campaigns.

Any major marketing automation project must be initiated with a strategy and process evaluation. Many companies attempt to redesign processes in the middle of an automation effort. This is can significantly increase costs and induce delays. Strategy, process and automation - in that order - deliver the best and most predictable results.

Selecting the best product is often a matter of aligning with a company's CRM infrastructure or selecting the most viable software vendor. While functionality is important, products should offer maximum support for most marketing processes. A number of CRM vendors offer marketing automation as part of larger offerings that may include sales-force automation or customer-service capabilities.

Get winning results with Salesforce.com

As a global leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), Salesforce.com provides closed-loop marketing automation application. Understanding the importance of integrated sales and marketing, Salesforce Marketing Automation helps you advocate multi-channel campaigns. Real-time analytics and reporting tools help marketers to evaluate campaign results and make necessary tweaks to enhance their performance.

Salesforce.com's comprehensive on-demand marketing automation offers you: -
Integrated marketing and sales application with automated lead conversion. Real-time analytics to measure and optimize campaigns for positive results. Multi-channel campaign management and analysis. Simple-to-use and rapid deployment encouraging better and faster user experience.

Want to get quality results? Choose Salesforce.com for award-winning functionality, proven integration, point-and-click customization, global capabilities and more. Free Trial & Demo - Apply Today!

For more information contact us at: Sales Force

Microsoft CRM Data Migration ? Overview For Consultant Developer

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 is now parading and triggering Microsoft CRM installation, implementation, customization, data conversion, upgrade and migration interest. We often see the questions on data import and massage options to Microsoft CRM from such systems as ACT!, custom Oracle, DB2, MS SQL Server databases, in all these cases IT departments should do their homework and understand their options, up to the point of making data massaging through Microsoft CRM SDK C# or VB.Net programming (if they have resources or could afford contract programmers)

? Built-in Migration tool. You can only import master records, such as leads and contacts. Please, be advised not to rely on this migration, if you are looking to migrate your ACT! history (activities, transactions, etc.)

? Scribe. Well ? we have to admit that these folks are experts and their tools are excellent (the best you could find). Scribe itself however may require to have experienced IT people in staff. In our experience ? customers are asking for help in deploying scribe migration, especially integration with Microsoft Great Plains/Dynamics GP 9.0 or 8.0. Scribe is catching up with migration tool, you may see natural delays with such features as duplication recognition (when you already have the lead, account, contact with similar phone number, email, contact name, etc.)

? Microsoft CRM SDK Programming. Technically ? this way can resolve all your issues, however the price and learning curve may be negative factor. Typically, as our experience indicates ? developer should have 2-3 MS CRM SDK mid-size customization projects under his/her belt to do the job seamlessly.

? ACT! SDK Programming. Normally Scribe can do the job, however in some exotic cases when customer is using newest version of ACT! (and Scribe is not ready with its scripts) ? you can deploy ACT! SDK to get access to ACT data and create automatic migration script (in concert with MS CRM 3.0/1.2 SDK Programming)

? Microsoft CRM Upgrade. Usually from 1.0 or 1.2 to 3.0. Please check with us if you have issues. Microsoft CRM 3.0 has multiple redesigned structures. We plan to publish dedicated to MS Dynamics CRM 3.0 upgrade article

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com http://www.greatplains.com.mx http://www.enterlogix.com.br ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner

What is a Successful Customer Relationship Management CRM

What is a Successful Customer Relationship Management CRM

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By S. Maurer

In today's competitive business environment, a successful Customer Relationship Management CRM strategy cannot be implemented by only installing and integrating software packages designed to support CRM processes.

Over the past few years, many companies have implemented operational customer relationship management - CRM - systems, and these companies are now analyzing customer behavior to plan and optimize marketing tactics and improve customer service programs.

Small and midsize companies have been able to implement more complete Customer Relationship Management CRM systems because they may not operate globally and may be newer organizations that have fewer business processes to contend with.

It's also worth noting that CRM used to focus on the telephone as the primary means of contact, with little attention paid to e-mail or the Web. However, electronic messaging is overtaking voice as the most common form of communication. Corporate call centers aren't going out of business, but they need new people and equipment to deal with e-mail and Internet inquiries.

In the hunt for the right CRM tool, be diligent in the vendor evaluation process. If you don't understand the vendor's CRM solution in its entirety, you might wind up with no solution at all.

Across every sector and industry, effective Customer Relationship Management CRM is a strategic imperative action for corporate growth and survival.

S. Maurer is a 53-years old college graduated IT professional, with 30 years of experience in the computer & technology business. Now is the Correspondence Courses Director of the Abet Open University: http://distance-learning-mba-online-mba-program-executive-jobs.net and http://mba-open-university.net

Defining CRM

Customer Relationship Management, also known as CRM, has been around for quite some time. It all started back several years ago when someone decided that combining both Sales & Marketing with Service & Support, would be a great idea, and it was. According to many accounts, Tom Siebel is the mastermind behind CRM. He extensively developed and marketed CRM until it became a well used "tool of the trade" so to speak.

Another related industry application, Sales Force Automation (SFA), is one of the earliest players in the CRM field, as is customer support. SFA is used to support the sales process of a company or organization, and it offers Lead Management, Opportunity Management, Account & Contact Management, Sales Pipeline Management, Sales Forecasting, Sales Analytics, as well as many other features, depending on the application.

Corporations have learned that by utilizing technology in their day to day processes, they can automate virtually their entire sales force teams and save countless hours that would otherwise be wasted. CRM and SFA are becoming more popular with time, and even Microsoft has expanded to include CRM in their list of many bells and whistles. CRM includes all aspects of interaction a company has with its customer, whether it be sales or service related.

It is certain, new technology has changed the way businesses and organizations approach their CRM strategy, and this has paved the way for new trends and customer growth. Businesses are able to customize their customers' experiences and therefore grow at a steady rate. CRM is a vital part of any business plan, and the technology just keeps getting better.

http://www.emaximation.com

Microsoft CRM Customization if you give up overview for consultant

Microsoft CRM is designed to be customizable. However this is new system and you could be not comfortable to do it on your own. In this small article well try to reassure you if you can do it or point to the right direction if you would like to subcontract it to professionals. Lets begin

Microsoft CRM is CRM answer from Microsoft Business Solutions to traditional CRM vendors, such as Siebel, Onyx. Microsoft CRM customization techniques are very diversified and based on the whole spectrum of recent Microsoft technologies. The main terms you should know are: Microsoft CRM SDK 1.2 and Visual Studio.Net 2003. And of course you should be familiar with all the legacy internet technologies, such as HTML, XML, XSLT, JavaScript and be good C#/VB/Net developer.

If you are developer who is asked: how do we customize Microsoft CRM read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

1. Microsoft CRM SDK this is software development kit with C# and partly VB.net examples it is supported by Microsoft Business Solutions technical support. It is all web services based calls, if you are C# .NET developer you are excellently positioned to do this type of customizations. This is the preferred customization scenarios and this should be easily upgradeable customization.

2. Legacy SQL Data integration. This is also easy and safe. If you have SQL database, sitting on the same or linked SQL Server you can create ASPX .Net application and simply integrate it into CRM. You can place it on the navigation bar or menu in isv.config please refer to MS CRM SDK

3. Legacy ASP integration this is somewhat more sophisticated. You have to deploy HTTP handler to be a middle party between CRM which is .Net based and ASP which is legacy IIS. The trick is you have to have INI file with security settings to penetrate into MS CRM with proper credentials, calling web service.

4. Microsoft Exchange Programming. Microsoft CRM has Exchange connector which moves CRM incoming email to MS if it has GUID in its subject. You can alter this logic (for instance - move email to CRM if it doesnt have GUID but it is from the sender who is contact or account in MS CRM). Refer to MS Exchange SDK onsyncsave event handling. Then simply apply some MS CRM SDK programming

5. Direct SQL touch in #4 above I described you the scenario with MS Exchange handlers this would be ideal world if MS CRM SDK does the job. But in real world this is not always true you have to do direct flags correction in CRM database (like making Activity closed, moving email attachments/octet streams, etc). This is not supported by MBS technical support but you can rescue to this technique if you have to make job done.

6. MS CRM Customization tool you can feel free to use this this is rather end-user tool and we dont describe it here read the manual. Weve described above the options to use when this tool doesnt do the job

Happy customizing! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Germany ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.akarasev@albaspectrum.com