Marketing with Microsoft Dynamics CRM - ClickDimensions Blog

Introducing the ClickDimenions Nurture Program Builder

ClickDimensions is pleased to introduce the latest addition to our ever growing marketing automation feature set; ClickDimenions Nurture Program Builder. Our Nurture Program Builder provides our users a simple drag-and-drop tree interface where they can quickly and easily build automated nurture programs.

The concept is simple; you have a prospect (lead or contact) that is not quite ready to be contacted by a sales person (i.e. not 'sales-ready'). But, you want to keep your message in front of the prospect and then let the appropriate sales person know when the prospect begins to respond.

To handle this scenario you build a nurture program and associate it with one of more CRM marketing lists. When a lead or contact is added to the marketing list the program initiates and sends emails at intervals you specify. The program can also notify sales, or take other action, when the prospect starts to show interest by opening and clicking your emails.

Below we've created a new nurture program in the ClickDimensions settings area…

And then we used the simple drag-and-drop designer to set up the steps we want to occur…

Nurture generally starts by sending an email template and then waiting a few days while monitoring for a response (i.e. a click or open). This allows a sales person to put the prospect on 'auto-pilot' so he/she can spend time on sales-ready prospects and be notified as nurtured prospects come alive.

The nurture program builder can be used for common marketing scenarios such as:

• Following up with prospects after a trade show
• Following up with prospects after they have downloaded a marketing asset from your web site (i.e. white paper, eBook, etc.)
• Keeping a steady stream of relevant messages in front of a prospect that has asked for you to 'keep in touch'

Of course, as with all ClickDimensions emails, you can easily personalize your templates so that your messages will be addressed to your prospect by name and come from the right sales person.

With simple automation you can do more with less. Happy marketing!

2 minute video of the ClickDimensions Block Editor

Frustrated with the process of creating marketing emails? Our block editor is the tool for the rest of us. It allows anyone to create a great looking email without having to know HTML. Watch the video to see how it works.

Tips and Resources for Maintaining and Optimizing CRM Performance

Microsoft CRM is an amazing system that makes use of an incredible combination of software and hardware – everything from Windows Server, SQL Server, IIS, the .NET Framework, DNS, ADFS (for CRM 2011), Outlook, Office and SharePoint. If your not using CRM Online, it can sometimes require a lot of skill and expertise to keep all these pieces humming along like a well-oiled machine. ClickDimensions makes full use of the range of CRM’s capabilities in order to bring an astounding level of analytical intelligence to your marketing efforts. But tracking your website traffic and email delivery statistics means bringing a lot of data into your CRM. Here are some resources and tips that can be helpful in optimizing CRM's performance and maintaining your data. These tips don't only apply to ClickDimensions, but to CRM in general.

1. Optimization whitepapers from Microsoft: These whitepapers cover a lot of territory. ClickDimensions makes use of just about every piece of the CRM application, so every piece of CRM can be put through its paces: the database, the servers, your internet connection, and all points in between. Some of the information in these whitepapers is geared towards developers like those at ClickDimensions, who have incorporated optimization techniques in the code for our solution, but there are also a lot of practical instructions for optimizing the CRM database and infrastructure.
   
   Some of the key optimizations you should consider include creating and maintaining indexes (see item #4 below for some of the ClickDimensions entities whose tables you might want to optimize), ensuring your SQL Server has sufficient RAM, and keeping transaction logs on a separate disk from the data. Make sure you understand the ramifications of any change you make in SQL Server, and, if you’re unsure, consult an experienced DBA. CRM also has the ability to be deployed in multiple server configurations, spreading server roles across multiple machines. Depending on the size of your organization and your usage of CRM, you may get varying mileage from the tips that Microsoft provides in these whitepapers:
   • For CRM 4.0: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3997 In particular, there is a section in this whitepaper on Optimizing Report Performance (p.28-9), and optimizing the CRM database (starts on p. 36/37)
   • For CRM 2011: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27139 This whitepaper also has sections that cover report and database optimization techniques.
2. If you’re running SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft has an additional document on some CRM performance improvements you can make in this PDF: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=8438
3. Bulk Record Deletion: Some entities in CRM can collect a lot of data, resulting in large tables in the SQL Server database. If you SQL Server is not adequately optimized, users may notice slow responses when querying these entities through views, reports or other means. If the data is only valuable for a certain amount of time, it might make sense to periodically remove old records to keep the size of these tables in check. (See step 4 below for a list of ClickDimensions entities that you might consider periodically reducing old records for. As with anything related to CRM, make sure you understand how your business users make use of the data in CRM, and always make sure you have good, scheduled backups.) Fortunately, CRM 2011 and CRM Online have an easy way to start Bulk Record Deletion jobs that is built right into the UI. CRM 4.0 supports bulk record deletion too, but you’ll need a free tool (or you can develop your own based on a sample in the Microsoft CRM 4.0 SDK) to actually start the deletion job.
   
   For CRM 2011/Online:
   Navigate to the Settings area and click on Data Management. Click the “Bulk Record Deletion” link and then click “New” to launch the Bulk Record Deletion wizard.
   
   
   In the Bulk Record Deletion wizard, define the records you wish to delete based on criteria that makes sense for your business users. The interface is very similar to CRM’s Advanced Find. In the screenshot below I’m setting up criteria to remove “Anonymous Visitor” records that were created on or before a certain date:
   
   
   Next, choose the date and time to start the Bulk Record Deletion job. If the criteria you defined in the previous step lend themselves to it, you can even schedule this as a recurring job. (It wouldn’t make much sense in my example to create a recurring job, since the date in my example is fixed.) You can even tell CRM to email you when the job is completed. Depending on the number of records you are deleting, this may take a while to run.
   
   
   For CRM 4.0:
   
   To create a bulk record deletion job for CRM 4.0, you can follow these steps (Make sure to have a good backup of your CRM database and a good understanding of how to create views in CRM. ClickDimensions does not provide support for the use of 3^rd-party tools):
   • THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT: Create a system view for the entity you want to delete. The view should use filter criteria so it only displays records you wish to delete. To create a system view, go to Settings > Customization > Customize Entities, and open the entity you wish to create the view for. (I’ve listed some key entities below). Define the view so you are sure it only shows records that you wish to delete. You might use filter criteria such as “Modified On | On or Before | 10/1/2011”. Save the view as, for example, “Records Modified Before 10/1/2011”, and publish the View.
     
   • Download this tool from CRM MVP Tanguy Touzard: http://cid-23a519594c2cb8c5.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/BLOG%20CRMTOOLS%20FILES/BulkDeleteLauncher.zip
   • Follow the instructions on Tanguy’s blog to connect to CRM and select the view you created in step ‘a’ above (I would not recommend scheduling this job for recurrence if you’re likely to need to update the view’s filter periodically as time goes on): http://mscrmtools.wordpress.com/tools/bulk-delete-launcher/
   • You will enter the system name of the entity and select the view. For example, in this screenshot, I’ve selected the Anonymous Visitor entity and the “Inactive Anonymous Visitors” view:
     
   • This will create a bulk deletion job in CRM. You can monitor the progress of this job directly in CRM by navigating to Settings > Data Management > Bulk Record Deletion. All the tool does is create the job. CRM will handle the rest. Repeat as necessary for other entities.
4. Here is a list of some of the entities in CRM that may collect a lot of data, where you might consider removing some older records from CRM when they are no longer needed. Create system views with filter criteria that match your business requirements and think carefully about what the right data retention policy should be for your company. Note that many of these entities are inter-related, so deleting an Anonymous Visitor record will delete its child Visit records and Page View records:
   • Anonymous Visitor (cdi_anonymousvisitor)
   • Visit (cdi_visit)
   • Page View (cdi_pageview)
   • Email Events (cdi_emailevent)
5. To reduce the amount of data flowing into CRM: Lastly, it always makes sense to evaluate the type and amount of data you are collecting in CRM. For example, your website statistics can drive a lot of value for your marketing efforts, but you may find it helpful to focus on key strategic and actionable statistics, such as landing pages, pricing pages, etc. Consider limiting the pages where you place the ClickDimensions tracking script on your website to just pages that are important for your sales and marketing efforts. If you place the tracking script on a webpage that has a lot of traffic but little value to your sales and marketing goals, you may end up with a lot of data in CRM that is not actionable and not worth retaining.

Note: This blog article was adapted from a KB article on the ClickDimensions support site, http://support.clickdimensions.com.

Connect with ClickDimensions at Microsoft Convergence

If you are planning to attend Microsoft Convergence in Houston Texas March 18 – 21 please visit ClickDimensions in booth 218 (right by the Microsoft CRM area). We are a bronze sponsor and will be represented by our sales and marketing teams as well as our CEO John Gravely, CTO Koren Tako and Chief Customer Officer Matt Wittemann. We will also participate directly and through our customers in several marketing presentations including:

• CRMUG's DayOne Email Marketing round up on Sunday, March 18^th at 4:45pm
• Convergence Session IDCRM01R1 "Driving Marketing Effectiveness: Tips & Tricks with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011" on Tuesday, March 20 at 2pm
• Convergence Session CSGP21 "Adding Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Your Business to Unleash the Power of Microsoft Dynamics GP" on Tuesday, March 20 at 3:30 pm
• Convergence Session IDCRM01R1 "Driving Marketing Effectiveness: Tips & Tricks with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011" on Tuesday, March 20 at 5pm
• CRM Technology Showcase presented by Microsoft and SalesMetrix Tuesday, March 20 at 3:00pm

We will be sponsoring the biggest and baddest Convergence party around complete with Satisfaction, The International Rolling Stone show and a $5,000 giveaway. Details at http://www.thespot2012.com/

Finally, we will be giving away two Kindle Fires. Be sure and come by our booth for a chance to win one.

Protect yourself with a click fraud detection dashboard

We wish Google was doing much more to protect their advertisers (i.e. me) from click fraud. In September we wrote a blog post titled "Where is Google showing your ads?" because our use of the ClickDimensions solution made it painfully obvious that our Google display network ads were being shown on web sites that had absolutely nothing to do with the keywords our campaigns were targeting (Microsoft CRM marketing solution ads showing on auto enthusiast web sites?). As a result of that observation we altogether stopped using Google's display network in combination with keywords. When I asked my Google contact about it she admitted that you have to keep an eye on where your ads are being shown.

However, we still advertise with Google using other targeting methods and we still try and keep an eye on where our ads are being shown. But, who was time for that? Well, yesterday we happened to notice a large group of visits coming from the same referring web site. Our ads were being shown on that web site at a high rate (and high cost to us) but a visit to the site revealed that the site is a bogus site set up just for the purpose of click fraud. Click fraud is when people create sites to show your ads and then generate clicks on your ads so they will get paid from Google.

Once we detected the rogue site we were able to go into our Google account and exclude it from showing our ads. However, it made us think about how to more easily detect this sort of click fraud. Using Microsoft CRM and ClickDimensions we built a click fraud detection dashboard and now can check it occasionally to look for anomalies. Here are the steps you can take to do this:

1 - Always make sure to end the URLs in your Google ads with a unique parameter. We use the parameter 'adwords' at the end of all our Google ads. So, the URL that people are directed to will look like this http://www.yourdomain.com/?s=adwords (the ? indicates a parameter is coming, the 's' is the name of the parameter – 's' for source or you could write out the word source if you want). By adding that unique parameter it will be easy to create views in CRM that allow you to see exactly which visits have come from your Google ads

2 - Create a few CRM views of visits from Google ads. These will be views of visits where the entry page field of the visit record contains your unique parameter (i.e. adwords). I created views for 'Visits from Google Ads today', 'Visits from Google Ads yesterday, 'Visits from Google Ads this week' and 'Visits from Google Ads last 15 days'.

3 - Create CRM charts to display your views graphically

4 – Create a dashboard to display all your charts in one place. With this in place you will be able to quickly see any anomalies happening in your visits.

Below is our click fraud detection dashboard. On the top row we see the visits for this month that have come from Google ads. This view shows us the visits by day and we can immediately see a spike on February 21 and a mini-spike on February 19. This tells us we need to dig deeper.

On the second row we can see the top 10 visits by referring host for today, yesterday, this week and the last 15 days. This shows us when a specific site is bringing a lot of visits. Now, we always expect to see a lot of visits from the host 'googleads.g.doubleclick.net' because this is a mechanism Google uses to serve ads on sites in their network. And, you can usually see the host of these visits in the keywords field on the visit record. So, we could also build charts for that and go even deeper. For now let's keep it simple. Notice in three of the charts we can see a site that was bringing a lot of visits. This alerts us to check that site and see if it is legitimate. Of course, it was not a legitimate site so we blocked it in our Google account yesterday and this is why it does not appear on the chart for today's visits.

With this dashboard in place it will be much easier to keep an eye on what is happening. We won't need to look at it every day but a glance once a week should reveal any problems and then we can go to Google and ask for credit. I did that yesterday and hope to hear from them today? J

Join ClickDimensions at the biggest and best Convergence party

If you will be attending Microsoft Convergence in Houston March 18 – 21 ClickDimensions would like to cordially invite you to the biggest and best party around; the SPoT 2012. The event will be held on Tuesday, March 20 starting at 8pm and will feature Satisfaction, the International Rolling Stones Show. In addition to the great entertainment there will be food and drinks for all as well as a $5,000 cash giveaway.

To learn more about the event and to RSVP please visit the party website at http://www.thespot2012.com

We hope to see you there!

Tracking webinar attendance in Microsoft CRM

At ClickDimensions we use GoToWebinar for our online webcasts. However, we realize that many of our clients also use LiveMeeting, WebEx and other services. In this post we will outline a way to easily bring the data from these webinar services into CRM without complex integration. We covered this in our recent blog post titled "An easy customization for event tracking for Microsoft CRM" but we had several request to go into more depth with specifically how this can work for webinars.

The steps we follow for recording webinar attendance in CRM are as follows:

First, we created a custom event entity in CRM to record attendance. The entity contains the following fields:

• Description (text field for the name of the event)
• Contact (lookup to the contact record)
• Event Type (picklist)
• Event Date

Below you can see a completed event record for a contact that attended our weekly webinar. Note that this record captures everything we need to know about the contact's participation in the webinar. This record is linked to the contact record so anyone looking at the contact record will know that the person attended our weekly webinar on February 15.

Values on the 'Event Type' field:

Values on the 'Participation' field:

With our new event record created we then simply import data from the webinar attendee report into event records at the conclusion of each webinar. Since the GoToWebinar attendance report includes the contact's email address we can use this to match the records in the report to CRM contacts using CRM's import tool. We will then set the other fields including description, event type, event date and participation.

We start by opening the GoToWebinar attendance report and copying the key data points into a .csv file template we will use for importing data. All we need from the webinar report is email address and whether the person attended the webinar or not (i.e. no-show). The CRM 2011 import tool will be able to use the email address to match our event records to contact records in CRM. Below is what the GoToWebinar attendance report looks like. All we need from it are the email addresses and the field that indicates whether the person actually attended or missed.

We copy the information into our .csv template. This template should have fields to match our event entity.

Next we start a CRM data import and make sure we have our mappings set up as seen below. Note that we have mapped email address in the .csv file to the email address on the contact field which is a lookup on the event record.

After we have completed the import there can be some records that failed to import because there was no matching email address on contact records. If you want to record these you can use CRM's import feature to create contact records for those email addresses and then re-import the events for the records that failed. To get a list of the event records that failed to import you can open the import job (under workplace > imports) and export the event records that failed.

An alternative to this if you have duplicate checking set to look for matching email addresses is to import all records on the attendee report as contacts before you import the events. The idea here is that duplicate contacts will not be imported so every email address in your webinar report will be in CRM when you import the events. Thus, you will have no failures after your event import. This is the simplest approach but does require that you have duplicate detection running on imports and checking for unique email addresses across your contact records.

Below is a sample contact import file. Note that if you import account name and the account name you import uniquely matches an account in CRM the newly created contact record will be linked to the matching account record. However, unless you have altered CRM to make the parent account field required you do not need to import this field.

We follow this process internally at ClickDimensions and it becomes fairly simple to do after each webinar. It allows us to track who has attended and no shown up for our webinars and other events. Again, more detail on this can be found on our previous post titled "An easy customization for event tracking for Microsoft CRM"

Use the Report Wizard to Create a Survey Response Report

ClickDimensions includes some reports out-of-the-box, but CRM provides simple tools to pull data out in a variety of formats that are easy to share. In the video below, Matt Wittemann, the Chief Customer Officer at ClickDimensions, shows how to use the CRM Report Wizard to create a simple “Survey Response” report that you can run any time, print, or save as a PDF to share with colleagues.

Special webinar: 3 stories of marketing and a guide to tree house construction

ClickDimensions CEO and Chief Marketer John Gravely presented at the Extreme CRM conference in Berlin, Germany this week. John's presentation, titled "3 stories of marketing and a guide to tree house construction" received some pretty raving reviews from the people in attendance. In fact, John drew nearly half of the entire conference crowd with ~200 people being in the room. Below are some of the tweets that were sent out after the presentation.

Given the positive feedback we thought we would give the presentation again online. Please join us for the repeat performance at 11 am EST (GMT -5) Wednesday, February 22. Click here to register.

The "ClickDimensions Experience"

After someone makes a decision to start using ClickDimensions for marketing automation, we turn our focus to making sure they have a path to success, from installation through training and ongoing use. We call this path the “ClickDimensions Experience.”

The Experience: Start > Learn > Succeed

Our team of Marketing Success Managers and Support Engineers guide new customers through the process of installing and setting up ClickDimensions in their CRM, delivering personalized training, and providing ongoing support. Here are some of the resources we provide to help our customers get the most out of their experience:

Start

• Register - After signing up for ClickDimensions, you will receive a link to register for a solution that is customized for your CRM. ClickDimensions works with CRM 4.0, CRM 2011, and CRM Online.
• The ClickDimensions Quick Start Guide – This 15-page PDF covers the basics of registering and deploying our solution, setting up the tracking script on your website, and sending your first email campaign.
• Installation and transition guidance – Resources to help you transition from another marketing automation vendor and improve deliverability

Learn

• Marketing Success Manager – Each customer is assigned a Marketing Success Manager who coordinates and delivers personalized, hands-on training via web meeting. These personalized sessions are tailored to focus on the features the customer wants to leverage, and let the trainees see exactly how ClickDimensions works in their own CRM.
• Regular weekly web training - The Marketing Success Managers also deliver regular webinars covering our two core courses (CD101: Email Marketing and CD201: Web Analytics). Each course is delivered twice a week to make it more convenient for customers in different time zones. The web courses are free to all customers to attend at any time, and many customers find an occasional refresher to be a great way to increase their marketing effectiveness with ClickDimensions.
  • ClickDimensions 101 Email Marketing: Covers how to create template, execute your first ClickDimensions email campaign to your selected recipients, and how to monitor the results from delivery to click-throughs.
  • ClickDimensions 201 Web Analytics: How to track visits to your website and identify leads and contacts who respond to your web marketing. Also covers ClickDimensions surveys and the effective use of landing pages.
• An online training center – Our team is continually adding new videos, articles, templates, and how-to guides. ClickDimensions is easy to use, but it’s also rich with features, and the training center helps marketers and IT professionals find exactly the information they need. (Coming soon: A new help center will be available soon to centralize training and support resources!)
• ClickDimensions User Guide – This 144-page guide covers ever feature and functionality in depth, with easy to follow step-by-step instructions and illustrations to help every marketer use ClickDimensions features like web content and template design, subscriptions, surveys, statistics, social discovery, forms, lead scoring and many more useful tips.

Succeed

• A convenient support center and forum – Many of our customers and partners contribute to the forum, knowledgebase, product suggestions and feedback areas on our support site. Customers can also request free support from our helpful Support Engineers.
• Our popular blog – Marketing with Microsoft Dynamics CRM – is updated several times a week with illustrated posts about new features and marketing tips based on our real-world experience.
• The monthly ClickDimensions newsletter – Anyone can sign up on our contact page to receive our monthly newsletter which highlights some of the previous month’s most useful articles and news.
• Deliverability guidance – Deliverability is important to email marketers, and ClickDimensions monitors the performance of your email marketing campaigns, providing insight and assistance to ensure you get the best deliverability and results from your campaigns.
• Marketing with Microsoft CRM Idea eBook – Includes more than 60 pages of creative ideas for juicing up your marketing with Microsoft CRM from targeted pay-per-click ads to customizing CRM so you can easily track event participation.