In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can create use email as your communication medium to your potential or actual customers in either Quick or normal Campaign Activities. Vizola's eMarketing Add-in is closely integrated with these existing facilities but enhances them in several significant ways:
These extra capabilities transform the usefulness of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in email marketing. You can immediately start to measure the reaction of your target audience and adapt your communications appropriately. You can begin to really harness the effectiveness of email marketing in a cost-effective manner.
Use Email Templates with Email Campaigns and Quick Campaigns
Microsoft Dynamics CRM features Email Templates to assist users in sending standardised emails to customers or prospects, but normally these cannot be used within Campaign Activities. VEM adds this capability by using a special 'merge-engine' for out-bound processing of emails.
VEM templates are just like standard GLOBAL email templates, with the same syntax for recipient datafields. They are only differentiated by their name starting with 'VEM' which enables extra features in the VEM template editor.
Using the VEM template editor, you can also save other custom VEM datafield types like monitored hyperlinks and subscription status indicators, and even use the same template for addressing account, contact or lead recipients by 'coalescing mutliple entity datafield definitions.
You can use the VEM template editor 'on-the-fly' within the Compose Email screen of the Quick Campaign wizard (or Campaign Distribute Activity screen). Within the template selection dialog, you can optionally choose to edit / delete an existing template, or even create a new one. Alternatively, you can use the VEM editor via the standard route within Settings > Email Templates.
Works with Email Quick Campaigns and Email Campaign Activities based on an email template. Using the VEM Template Editor you can 'associate' attachments with email templates. VEM transparently creates a '*** Reserved for template xxx' email for each template which you choose to edit and presents you with an Attachments tab in the editor to which you can add/remove attachments. At the point you use the 'Insert template' function to populate your compose email screen (no matter if you change the content afterward) VEM marks this activity for adding attachments during its processing of out-bound emails.
It is suggested that this facility is only used for permission-subscribed lists, otherwise you may alienate the audience you are seeking to appeal to.
You should also be aware of the possible implications of storing multiple copies (one per email) of attachments within the database - it could grow large quite quickly! To offset this potential problem VEM also includes a user-configurable custom workflow activity which may be run periodically to delete attachment bodies from the associated records without affecting the filename field.
VEM uses standard Microsoft Dynamics CRM email datafields as merge replaceables in email campaign activities, whether embedded in a selected template or directly entered in the compose email. VEM provides access to the standard datafield editing dialog in order to add or edit datafields.
Datafields are not limited to names - most attributes of contact, account and lead entities are available for merging. Datafields can be multi-part, and may have a simple default in case no proceding dynamic parts yield a result. Datafields allow you to personalise your communication.
In contrast to the standard 'Request Read Receipt', VEM on outgoing emails. However, you would never do this in an Email Campaign Activity because it is simply unacceptable in this context and woud annoy a great many of those you are targeting as potential customers. Never-the-less, you would still really like to know how many of your emails are getting read and by whom and when.
VEM allows you to do this with reasonable accuracy in a non-intrusive fashion, by embedding a very small image in the email and monitoring HTTP requests for this. As MS CRM v4 sends emails in Base64 Encoded format makes this even more unobtrusive. The result is that each of your outgoing email activities has a 'last read' attribute that is updated as your recipient opens and reads the email.
It should be noted that most HTML email clients now prompt for image download, so your recipients must make a conscious choice - embedding material information in images can encourage them to do this.
Whereas you can embed normal hyperlinks in outgoing communications, you gain no information once your recipient clicks through to find out more. It's obvious that having knowledge of your recipient's behaviour would be valuable.
VEM allows you to do this - you can set up any number of destination Email Links and use these within your email communication. The VEM merge-engine translates this into a redirect via your monitoring website, so all behaviour is recorded in the CRM system.
The VEM merge-engine can also render subscription status checkboxes according to recipient membership of specific marketing lists. To complement this, VEM inbound email processing on amended replies can provide unassisted membership updating.
Use the VEM toolbar dropdown to select which lists you wish to use as subscription lists. You can even save these within an email template in order that you can easily ask subscribers to periodically re-confirm their subscription preferences.
VEM inbound email processing can also provide unassisted updating of recipient personal information on suitable tagged datafield-merged reply fields, whilst logging the change in an associated note. This means that you can also provide a service for your customers to be able to confirm or correct their own address, telephone, email etc. details.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM does a good job of identifying replies to outgoing email activities and creating appropriate Campaign Responses, and also handles UNSUBSCRIBE requests, but 'bounce-backs' are not handled and this can create a considerable manual burden in trying to 'clean' your marketing lists. VEM assists you by identifying bounce-backs and raising Error type Campaign Responses for emails that could not be delivered.
VEM checks incoming emails, using both native and custom matching techniques to link them with an originating activity, but most often bounce-backs are in the form of a DSN (Delivery Status Notification) from a mail server and cannot be directly matched. In these cases VEM can parse attachments of DSN messages in order to attempt matching and subsequent raising of error responses.
It should be noted that VEM does NOT require that tracking tokens are turned on, but can improve upon the standard fuzzy matching capabilities.
VEM adds reports to assist you making sense of the data from your Email Campaign Activities. At the top level there are statistical summaries, breaking down categories of response type (e.g. Out-of-office, Undelivered, Unsubscribe, Read, Replies etc).
Drill-through these to retrieve detail on specific emails and recipient behaviours including monitored link clicking. And open records directly back into the CRM system to facilitate creating follow-up activities, address corrections etc.
VEM includes a customizable sample contactus webform that is out-of-the-box functional. This is co-located with the VEM monitoring page and easily can be placed (within IFRAME) on your website Contact Us page. It is already configured on installation using the installing user's credentials for lead creation. All aspects of this may be customized including layout, fields and CRM API code.