CLICK DIMENSIONS OR MICROSOFT MARKETING MODULE? WHAT TO DO, WHAT TO DO? CLICKDIMENSIONS VS. MICROSOFT MARKETING MODULE

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1 CLICK DIMENSIONS OR MICROSOFT MARKETING MODULE? WHAT TO DO, WHAT TO DO? CLICKDIMENSIONS VS. MICROSOFT MARKETING MODULE 1

2 AS A MARKETING PROFESSIONAL... I know the importance of staying up-to-date on the latest trends, tools and strategies available to me. Truth told it s crucial to keep up on these topics. With constant updates to software and every time you turn around there s a new channel available to reach customers or your organization doubles in size, (which we always hope for), every tool you use and approach you ve learned can become outdated in two or three years. That is why it is important to continually revise applications with useful updates, or reevaluate your approach. A 2015 State of Inbound report, surveyed 4,000 marketing and sales professionals, asking what they felt were their top marketing challenges. The survey revealed that one of the top five challenges marketers faced was deciding on the right technology that met their needs. To me, the choice is easy. Our firm specializes in information technology, specifically Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Available in the Dynamics CRM environment, are two modules that can transform your marketing department into a vigorous campaign creating machine. Microsoft has their own Marketing Module, and ClickDimensions has created an marketing and marketing automation tool, that natively integrates into the CRM system and is ONLY available to Dynamics CRM users. If you make the great decision that a Microsoft product is right for you, the following compare and contrast editorial should help you with your decision. 2

3 MICROSOFT MARKETING MODULE How they Differ Microsoft Marketing Module One of the three main components to Dynamics CRM, Microsoft s Marketing Module allows you to maintain all of your marketing activities within the same application shared by your sales and customer care departments. This marketing area grants access to resources that will give campaigns an advantage. Microsoft s Marketing Module is also great at running the backend of the marketing business processes. The marketing module from Microsoft would be a great resource for a marketing agency, where it is more of a challenge to manage multiple clients budgets, digital assets, event management, invoicing and media buying and planning. Resource Management Account & Contact: tracking internal/external communications and profiles of clients and vendors. Workflow: create and assign tasks within your organization based on category: Programs, Events, Campaigns, etc. Event: outline every detail such as venue, facilities, session, speakers, etc. Invite and registration tracking, and the ability to attach a marketing list directly into the event record. 3

4 MICROSOFT MARKETING MODULE Digital Asset: internal and external access to digital files either in development or completed. The feature includes a configurable review and approval process. Media Buying and Planning: manage a campaigns entire media buying and planning process under one account roof. Track your media vendors, outlets, markets and segments, manage vendor rate cards, build and track your media orders, and execute your media plan. 4

5 MICROSOFT MARKETING MODULE Budgeting & Timesheets: use this tool to process invoices, track expense and internal/external billable hours per account. You can also develop a Request for Proposal method alerting you to bids released by vendors. Marketing Analytics: fairly straight forward feature, tracks your return on investment (ROI); however, with Microsoft you can quickly judge performance with analytical dashboards using Power BI. 5

6 CLICKDIMENSIONS The ClickDimensions product has been rated the highest marketing solution on Microsoft's Dynamics Marketplace. With ClickDimensions, organizations can learn more about their prospects by seeing who is interested in their products, quantify their level of interest and then take the appropriate actions. We use ClickDimensions in our marketing department, and it is a great tool for inhouse marketers who promote their company through inbound marketing. Web Forms: as easy to set up as an template (which I will discuss later on), use the same drag and drop feature to build forms you embed in your web page. Data submitted via the form is captured into the CRM record or create new records from the data that is not already present in your CRM. 6

7 CLICKDIMENSIONS Surveys: Surveys are a useful tool for getting your leads to interact and ClickDimensions form survey editor is incredibly easy. Create a survey requesting feedback surrounding your services or an event you just hosted. Drag and drop what information you want to obtain from your leads, clients, etc. pop your survey onto your website, or send it out in a bulk and voila! The information submitted is recorded and tied to the contact in your CRM. Event Management: ClickDimensions integrates with GoToWebinar, WebEx, and Eventbrite capturing event registration and attendee information automatically into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 7

8 CLICKDIMENSIONS SMS Text Messaging: I get texts from my favorite stores letting me know of an awesome sale that is going on. If you market with Text Messaging, use SMS to send bulk text messages from your Dynamics CRM workflows. ClickDimensions SMS Messaging will provide your clients with the option of opting out. Campaign Tracking: ClickDimensions is embedded inside Dynamics CRM, allowing you to effectively track your marketing efforts by creating links between Microsoft Dynamics CRM campaign records and ClickDimensions s, web forms and landing pages. Making the connection is as easy as point-and-click and allows you to track everything back to the CRM campaign. 8

9 HOW THEY COMPARE Marketing Both products are going to offer you the same features: bulk ing that tracks all sends, opens, clicks and bounces in a marketing list, and also tracks individual recipient activity. You can set up these sends to deploy with triggers and timers, etc. The one thing that ClickDimensions will beat Microsoft over is the variety of ways to set up an template. You can use the Drag and Drop, or Block editor, referred to as the wizarddriven way, or if you re HTML savvy, take more control with the freestyle editor or the custom HTML coding. Campaign Automation ClickDimensions calls it Nurture Marketing, or putting your prospects on auto-pilot, Microsoft calls it Multichannel. Automate your campaign in a single visual campaign designer. Set up triggers and timers, drag and drop your , social media, direct mail and event content. Create an automational roadmap that keeps campaign messaging in front of prospects. At this point, one solution is not better than the other, you ll get the same features with either add-on. 9

10 HOW THEY COMPARE Landing Pages I haven t used either add-on to create landing pages, but both allow you to create and embed them within Dynamics CRM. They both come with a drag and drop feature; you can decide what criteria you want to include, what content is required and add CAPTCHA s to make sure you re not shelled with spam responses. Responses are automatically tracked and captured into CRM. Lead Scoring Both products track lead behavior from all sources and these interactions trigger a score based on a default value for a particular market segment. When the lead reaches a sales ready, score, they are transferred to the sales team where they can apply their magic. The sales team can offer lead status feedback that the marketing department can use to improve the next campaign launch. Microsoft Marketing Module may have ClickDimensions beat on this one. Aside from tracking activity from your website, Microsoft can also track and score non-digital activity such as event registrations. 10

11 HOW THEY COMPARE Sales Collaboration Alternatively, web intelligence, as ClickDimensions refers to it, will help your sales and marketing departments align. With a well-oiled sales and marketing collaboration machine, an organization can convert leads faster and at a higher rate. In preparation for a call, the sales department can view all of the interaction with the client to gain awesome insights. With marketing activity recorded in the account, the sales team will see these insights and know which page the lead visited, forms they filled out and s they interacted with. Social Whether you call it social marketing or social discovery, both products have a tool to amplify your content. Microsoft teams up your multichannel campaign with social media posts all from the same platform. This combination allows you to measure campaign impact and sentiment from all channels, including tracking buzzwords that created impact in different geographical markets. ClickDimensions, on the other hand, uses social discovery techniques that seek and finds publicly available information from social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. These insights are retrieved and viewable in their ClickDimensions profiles or embed these social accounts in the CRM record. 11

12 PRICING Each add-ons pricing module is different. Each solution lacks key features that the other has, but it really depends on what your needs are. If you need a system that has a little bit of everything, such as back-end backup, Microsoft s module will be a good fit for you. Microsoft Marketing is $125 per user, per month, but, you can use it as a stand-alone product, or as a system integrated into Dynamics CRM. ClickDimensions will be a good fit for a marketing department whose strategy is heavily dependent on inbound marketing. Pricing is built by how many s are sent per year. Based on how many s you anticipate sending, you will find your monthly pricing block and each level comes with unlimited users. Awesome addition: ClickDimensions will be adding new features to their nurture campaign builder in November. They have only released a sneak peak, so if you would like to know more, contact us, and we can walk you through it. Trovare Business Solutions team members are certified partners with ClickDimensions and offer the service as part of our solutions. In anticipation of the release, from November 15 December 31, 2015, ClickDimensions is offering a Promotion of % discount for annual prepayment, or, 15% more s when you sign up. Talk with us today and see how we can get you set up with a better marketing automation solution. 12