d365 marketing: real-world benefits - Alignment
A MINI SERIES - The real word beneftis
Marketing is vast in it’s definition. It is the individual or team(s) that are responsible for Brand, Promotion, Competitor Strategy, Consumer Messaging, Advertising and more. They are the team that is essentially responsible for determining WHO to target, WHEN to communicate, HOW to get the message across, WHERE the message should be placed, and WHAT that content needs to be. The role, whilst very rewarding and with it’s many perks, comes with its challenges
This mini series of blogs will focus on the real working world benefits that D365 can have on the marketing department and wider business as a whole.
HARSH REALITY ONE : THE MARKETING SILO
It’s quite a funny thing being a Marketeer. You are expected to know everything there is to know about the customer…. yet you have very little communication with them on a day to day basis; particularly where B2B Marketing is concerned. Typically it is the Sales Representative or Customer Service Representatives that talk to their customers on a day to day basis. Marketing is contacted by other teams often when merchandise is required, promotional requests are being made and so on. But the truth is, sometimes Sales and Customer Service can at times be so wrapped up in their own objectives and KPI’s, that communication to the marketing team about crucial customer information and data can often be put the the bottom of the priority list. Sometimes it might not be seen as important information. But Marketeers love the little things too. Whilst the business has an overall objective and goals, it is very easy for the marketing department to be singing from their own hymn sheet and typically their own CRM system for communications. The result in this is a siloed marketing team at a business level.
On the flip side of that, there may be very good communication between Sales Customer Service and Marketing Teams. However, where organisations expand and multiple marketing teams are required (Events Team, Communications Team, Social Media Team etc), similar siloed departments can again exist internally; particularly where there are many sources of truth with different teams using different CRM systems to manage contacts and their Social Media interactions, e-commerce analytics and Email communications.
HOW CAN D365 MARKETING HELP THE SILOED DEPARTMENT?
The first thing that Marketing Teams benefit from is ONE SOURCE OF TRUTH. D365 Marketing is an application that pulls information from DATAVERSE which is the same information that both the Customer Service and Sales Applications use. Straight away this improves alignment across different departments within the organisation. Providing permissions allow, Marketeers can gain those Golden Nugget insights from the customer service team, without having to do the chasing to help build that trusting relationship.
For example, i recall a time i was flying overseas to see a client. The Customer Service Rep at the time had told me during one of our chats that she had spoken to this client and got onto the conversation of how much they missed Greggs sausage rolls. This was something i took across as a small gesture (albeit this was before bribery acts came into play …. can you consider a sausage roll bribery? That is probably a conversation for another day!) , but i would not have known this without having spoken to the CS rep. Had we have been using the same CRM system, this little golden nugget could have been shared. Had we have not spoken that day, i would have missed this small opportunity that went a very long way.
In addition to the above , Marketing can benefit internally. The Marketing Application has dedicated areas for Outbound Marketing, Real-Time Marketing and Events. Providing permissions allow, different marketing teams will be able to see eachother’s Marketing Calendars in the system. For example, the Events team will be able to see the latest customer journey campaign that is being sent out, and the Emails or SMS messages that contacts will be receiving, similarly the communications team will be able to see in advance all of the events that are coming up in the fiscal year and they will be able to plan their communications in accordance with any Launch Events or Conference attendance etc.
Using the one CRM system to manage and view all customer interactions also allows for an accurate 360∘ view of a contact to be captured. Which leads me onto the next harsh reality of the marketing role….. DATA.
My next blog post in this mini series will discuss the Marketeers frustration of data , and how D365 Marketing can help provide Marketeer with accurate data which can be turned into meaningful insights.
