Social Media and Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Social looks set to stay, but how many of us our embracing it into our business processes or engagement strategies? The radio took 38 years to reach 50m users – Facebook took less than 9 months to reach 100m users. The sheer size of social networks means that now millions of people are connected, talking to each other, sharing ideas and reviews.
Social media is a key business enabler. It helps to increase revenue, drive customer loyalty and can identify new business opportunities. Social media will help to revolutionise your sales, marketing and customer service efforts.
According to Microsoft there are 6 key points to consider when pulling together your social media strategy:
- Listen – find out what your customers are saying. Are there key trends, influencing people or factors?
- Engage – participate in conversations with key stakeholders giving you strategic communication and empowerment.
- Collaborate – to connect with people fairly easily and with speed.
- Awareness – to get your messages, services, products and brand out!
- Solve – to help your customers, or your prospective customers, solve problems.
- Innovate – Take action on ideas.
- Analyse – to use your Big Data for real-time feedback, and to find innovative ways to use the information.
People communicate in different ways and they have a preferred manner. Today there are more businesses and consumers that are using social media to get questions answered, share ideas, complain, compliment or endorse. It will be critical to ensure that Social Media and Microsoft Dynamics CRM are entwined.
Your social media strategy needs to be planned carefully and managed with care.
Big Data is such a large part of our lives – both in business and our personal lives. Using this data can be the key to improve your social media strategy; by listening, engaging, reacting and managing these social streams. Embracing social media strategies into your business processes is where you can use it to see exciting results. But this all takes time to set up and manage, which is why more and more marketers are turning to technology to improve their efficiency. Indeed Gartner say “Marketing is now a fundamental driver of IT purchasing.”
Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Social Media
Microsoft purchased Netbreeze, a Swiss company in March 2013. Netbreeze supports 28 languages and you can monitor Facebook, YouTube, Twitter as well as 6k online news websites, 18m blogs and 500,000 message boards. This will be integrated with powerful Microsoft Dynamics CRM. As soon as we know more we will update our blog.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Marketing Pilot
Late 2012 / early 2013 Microsoft acquired Marketing Pilot. Marketing Pilot manages your marketing resources and collaborates information bringing the marketing team together. Marketing Pilot helps to manage all your marketing needs and will really add value to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Here are a few of the features to give you a taste of what it includes.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Activity Feeds – What’s New?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has a feature called “What’s New.” This is an activity wall. It keeps everyone connected with what you are working on. You can follow people, accounts or opportunities. Materials for campaigns are in one place and everyone can access it directly – such as sales proposals, contracts, customer references…
Activity feeds can automatically post when certain topics ‘happen’ – like a new opportunity is created. From any area in CRM you can follow or un-follow records to bring what you are interested in, into your what’s new area in CRM.
Yammer
Yammer is a collaborative solution to bring together your teams and your business. See my earlier blog post. You can also bring chosen external people into your conversation. See the video.
InsideView
“Social and mobile connections intelligently.”
From Microsoft Dynamics CRM you can find out information about organisations. Using InsideView will bring in ‘fields’ reducing your typing time – such as phone, fax, website, addresses etc.. You can see the contacts who work at that organisation and you can also see what they are doing socially; so you can connect with them on Linked In or Twitter directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
InsideView brings a company overview into CRM – information such as industry, their news and updates.
Moxie Software
Moxie partnered with Microsoft in 2012.
This optimises customer experiences, reducing SLA’s and increasing customer satisfaction. Knowledgebase helps users on web self-service or your customer service teams.
Moxie software provides:
- Knowledgebase
- Web self-service
- Chat online support
- Co-browse screen share for support
- Social media compatibility to listen and proactive monitor and respond.
Parrot WebFortis
Parrot is a social CRM solution which is fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
This covers Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all in one place and within powerful CRM.
You can post and publish to all 3 social media types in one go from Microsoft CRM, and you can take action in CRM. You can convert posts to cases or other types such as leads or opportunities.
Social Media and Microsoft Dynamics CRM – now ESPs
dotMailer
dotMailer is a direct mail platform. It’s easy to use – what you see is what you get (WYSI WYG) drag and drop functionality really makes it stand out from the crowd.
It’s fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and really does save so much time and effort especially with suppression lists and taking action on click throughs.
When you work with dotMailer you have a dedicated account manager there to help not just with the software, but to share their expertise of what does and doesn’t work.
Caltech partnered with dotMailer in 2012 and we have several customers using it. Caltech adds value by creating workflows and other automation in Microsoft CRM to align to your needs.
dotMailer “is all about social.” You can drag and drop trackable social sharing within your emails. See the overview here.
Not only does it offer unrivalled direct marketing expertise it also has a survey function. dotSurvey is very powerful – again fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM you can send out your survey and get responses directly into the right place in CRM. You can also chase no responses easily.
dotMailer also comes with powerful tracking.
- To see a demonstration of dotMailer and Microsoft CRM integration call Caltech CRM 01924507280.
Conclusion
Having all your data in once place is a fundamental part of a great social media strategy. With such fantastic comprehensive solutions available for marketers it’s no wonder that ‘Marketing is a fundamental driver of IT purchase.” and why Social Media and Microsoft Dynamics CRM need to be joined up. Doing more for less and working efficiently has to be a key goal for all marketers to keep the plates spinning in today’s social bounty.
To find out more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM or any of these add on solutions, contact us on 01924 507 280.
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