Marketing in a fully digitized world with natively integrated marketing technology
The continuation of the digital trend, due in part to the Corona pandemic, continues in 2021. As marketers, we must accept that the world has changed - and it will not return to the way it was before. Digital is the present and the future!
What do you need now as a marketer to be successful in a time of social distancing?
The digital marketing strategy
To increase sales and business success, digital marketing has become inevitable; buyers have changed their behavior, which means that sales and marketing must also change - towards virtual interaction.
Many marketers already have digital marketing approaches and tactics. But these are not enough to reflect our changed world as it looks post-pandemic - a cohesively documented strategy is needed! There are four key elements to consider:
- Define your goals
- Analyze yourself and others
- Determine your means
- Procure marketing technology natively integrated with CRM
We would like to go into more detail on the 4th point in this blog post.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 and digital marketing
CRM solutions used to be primarily tools for sales. This has changed fundamentally: Today, marketers want to handle marketing lists, workflows, mailings, campaigns, and much more in the same tool or on the same database. The reduction of interfaces and the complexity of system landscapes enables a whole new dimension in data-driven marketing. Microsoft Dynamics 365 contains a wide range of functionalities that are essential for the execution of digital marketing tactics and campaigns.
A marketing automation platform is an extension to your CRM and therefore it should be well integrated with Dynamics 365 - natively at best. This will result in businesses seeing the greatest digital marketing results. New processes and services can be established and interdisciplinary collaboration is encouraged (Marketing & Sales / Marketing & Service). End2end based customer experiences and targeted customer journeys can be developed.
According to a recent ClickDimensions survey, marketing automation natively integrated with Microsoft Dynamics is very or somewhat important to 96% of respondents.
The top three benefits companies identify are the ability to create more personalized marketing (54%), sales and marketing alignment (50%) and increased productivity (50%).
What does natively integrated mean?
There is a significant difference between a marketing solution that is only connected to Microsoft Dynamics 365 via an interface and one that is natively integrated with Dynamics 365!
Advantages of a natively integrated marketing technology:
- Built natively in the Microsoft Power platform
- Single data source, no silos, no conflicting KPIs and no synchronization of leads and contacts, no interfaces
- Unification of sales and marketing by using the same system with the same user interface, KPIs and terminology
- A true 360-degree view of all sales and marketing activities that is constantly available to all sales, marketing, and IT personnel
But the term "native integration" is often used to somewhat mislead consumers into capitalizing on this pressing need. Platforms such as Acoustic, Act-On, Marketo, Mautic, Oracle Eloqua and Sugar Market are touted as native. But in reality, only ClickDimensions' solution is natively integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 (alongside the Dynamics 365 Marketing solution)!
The ClickDimensions platform and its benefits for future-oriented digital marketing
Unification of sales and marketing
The concept of integrated sales and marketing organizations using an identical solution and database is the number one success factor.
- Having all sales and marketing activities in the same system provides complete visibility into the impact each activity has on a lead, contact or account. No more arguments about who contributed what.
- Sales and marketing in a single system means every touchpoint and activity is visible in the lead, contact and account record. Your sales team knows exactly what to say in the next call or email because they know exactly what the lead is interested in and what they just engaged with.
- A single source of truth means there are no more discussions about two conflicting sets of KPIs or results.
- New future-oriented processes and solutions can be implemented by marketing for sales but also for service (Voice of Customer).
Effective marketing campaigns
Create effective marketing campaigns that drive growth and engagement.
- Create hyper-personalized campaigns with instant access to all CRM and Dataverse data.
- Create multichannel marketing campaigns with a single tool that captures and measures customer interactions across all channels in a single database.
Sales increase
Understand and prove marketing's impact on revenue by being able to link all marketing activities directly to the sales pipeline and revenue.
Stronger and more personalized marketing
Consumers today expect personalized targeting and experiences. Native marketing technology has access to all data in CRM, enabling advanced targeting and personalization. Users can leverage the entire Power Platform ecosystem to strengthen, extend, customize marketing initiatives and create workflows (Power Automate, Power Apps, etc.).
Results despite limited resources and budget
Data silos, moving data between two systems, disparate and disjointed systems and processes - not to mention long integration projects, data reconciliation projects, and costly software upgrade initiatives; one of the most frustrating challenges for modern marketers!
Today, marketing teams can benefit from the robust capabilities of natively integrated marketing technology like ClickDimensions:
- They save time, suffer less stress, and avoid unnecessary additional costs.
- If you use Dynamics, you'll already be familiar with ClickDimensions.
- It's faster to implement, easier to use, requires no integration time or cost, and has a lower total cost of ownership than a non-native solution.
Change has long been a part of marketers' lives, but never to the degree it has since the pandemic outbreak, when marketing plans, or even our entire lives, were turned upside down overnight. Although certain elements of pre-pandemic life, such as live events, will return over time, digital will continue to dominate all of our lives. Smart companies will adapt to this change and use marketing technologies that create experiences that buyers expect today and will demand tomorrow.
ClickDimensions Webinar recordings and product videos
ClickDimensions Marketing Automation Suite (german)
ClickDimensions Social Media Marketing (german)
Further information
Are you interested in this topic? I would be pleased to answer any queries you have.
Christian Schipp, Chief Business Development Officer
christian.schipp@!ambit-group.com
+41 79 954 17 09
