Marketing in Motion

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I posted my first blog article on our Dynamics GP blog on this date, four years ago: http://gp.rosebizincblogs.com/2007/12/fear-not-it%E2%80%99s-only-great-plains-10-0-2.html

So what?

I along with others at our firm have gotten into the habit of blogging and sharing our expertise and thoughts with our communities. Beyond just the personal expression benefits, blogging has helped us develop a strong Internet presence that supports our marketing objectives.

What we’ve found is that blogging is pretty easy to do, and it’s cheap. We feel that it definitely differentiates us from our competitors, and draws in prospects.

This is the quick summary. If you’re not already blogging, get started. You cannot have an immediate impact on your market, so you need to start as soon as possible and build momentum.

I’ve been using Microsoft CRM, version 4 intensely for about two years.  The integration with Outlook is solid.

I regularly e-mail out of Outlook and promote e-mail messages, outgoing and incoming, to CRM.  This leaves a wonderful trail of activity records at both the Contact level and the Account level.  It is so easy to quickly refer to the history, and get caught up on any opportunity or relationship.

I also use CRM to track phone conversations, a lot.  I schedule phone calls to complete in the future.  They automatically show up in my Outlook task list on the appropriate day.  I can go right into the record, or “snooze” it for awhile.  If I don’t actually talk to the subject of my phone call, I make a note of the date and the attempt, on the task, leave the task open, and reschedule it for some time in the future.  I usually follow up with an e-mail message and make a note of that, and note any response from the subject.

Whether I schedule the task in Outlook or CRM, or I update the task in Outlook or CRM, the two systems synchronize in due course.  This keeps me productive and moving through my day.  Terrific!

Here’s what my Outlook task list looks like with the CRM tasks:

This is a video I created sometime ago, that shows this in action:  http://youtu.be/XeZTa3ksMBI

Most of us are wearing many different “hats” these days.  Doing this, doing that.  I picked up some additional responsibilities for national sales for RoseASP.  I am now working with a whole new and large group of Dynamics resellers.  I found out early that if I was going to survive, I had to keep copious records regarding who, what, when, and where.

Microsoft CRM is perfect for that.  I can easily keep e-mail messages in CRM; incoming and outgoing.  I can schedule follow-up activities that flow directly to my Outlook task list.  I can automate follow-up when appropriate.  I use automation to sendout additional content and schedule future tasks.  I record and track opportunities.  And here’s the key point:  Whenever I want to find out about a person, company, or opportunity, all the information is there, in CRM, in one place!  Beautiful.

If you’re becoming overwhelmed in your business, start using CRM.  It will save you.

This is the slide deck I used at our recent Microsoft CRM 2011 Launch Event.

CRM 2011 is loaded with new functionality.  Plan on attending the launch event:

Have you tried to add attachments to e-mail messages you send out in a mail merge, in CRM 4.0?  You can’t do it without some extra help.

I found two pieces of software that will let you easily do it.

The first one is from MAPIlab.  They have a number of Outlook add-ins.  Interesting stuff.  Check it out.

The second one I came across is Outlook Mail Merge Attachment.  It involves running a VBA script, so it’s not for everyone.  But it’s available for download for free, to try it out.

In CRM 2011 we won’t have to worry about this.

We are making a lot of use of the workflow functionality in CRM for  www.mygpcloud.com

We are using it to distribute a substantial amount of content for new users to assist them in getting Dynamics GP up and running effectively and quickly.

I used these workflow step types several times within the workflows:

• Wait Condition
• Check Condition
• Send E-mail

I set up a workflow based on the Contact record. 

I used the Wait Condition steps to space out messaging over a period spanning 30 days. 

I used the Check Condition step to make sure the Account record to which the Contact was associated was a prospect or customer.  Because we also have partners in the CRM database, I didn’t want to send them the end-user messaging.

I used the Send E-mail steps to send specific messages to end-users.  I decided to use e-mail templates instead of just e-mails so I could modify the e-mail message content without having to stop and restart the workflow.  Because the workflow spans 30 days, stopping and starting the workflows would cause havoc with our objective to nicely send helpful information to our new users.

I created this vide to show how I did it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT6LQOQyXtk

For awhile I’ve had a problem with CRM that I’ve been hoping to solve with out-of-the-box functionality.  I finally came up with some quick customizations that will do it.

So, this is the problem:  I want an easy way to select a small number of contacts so that I can include them in a Quick Campaign to send out an e-mail merge.

I could set up a Marketing List, add the Contacts to that, and then run the Quick Campaign.  But that seemed like too much.  So, this is what I did:

• I created a customized field on the Contact record to indicate whether a Contact was on the “QuickList” or not
• I created a new query to view all Contacts on the “QuickList”
• I created a Workflow to set the “QuickList” value back to “No” when I’m done with the list

This is how I use it:

• For the Contacts I want to include on my “QuickList” I select “Yes” for the “QuickList” field
• I select the “QuickList” view, and the designated Contacts are included
• I create a Quick Campaign to execute the e-mail merge
• I run the Workflow on the “QuickList” view when I’m done, to set the “QuickList” value back to “No” for the Contacts

I created this short video to show some of the set up, and how I use it.

I recently made use of the two types of N:N relationships available in CRM 4.0:

• Native N:N Relationship – CRM automatically creates the relationship between two entities.
• Manual N:N Relationship – A combination of two N:1 relationships that share a common intersect entity.

I created a custom entity to represent network events that I attend at which I meet new or known contacts.  I want to track which events I attend and when, as well as the people I have the opportunity to spend some time with during the event.  For this I used the native N:N relationship.  I just created the custom entity and then created a new N:N relationship with the contact record.

Here’s my simple custom entity.  The contacts list is represented in the details section as “attendees”.

Here is a view of the Network Event from the Contact’s perspective.  If I had met with this contact at several network events, they would all be listed:

Here are the details of the N:N relationship that was created by CRM:

 

I also created two custom entities to track which ISV products our clients own.  I set up a manual N:N relationship for this because I wanted to not only identify which ISV products a client has, but also some specific information about the product registration, e.g. user count, renewal date, etc.

Here is a diagram of the custom entities and the relationships:

Here is an example of the ISV Product Registration that has specific information about the client’s registered products:

 

The product is Mekorma MICR, and the client is A.L. Wizard.  There is specific information about the client’s registration of this product.

This allows me to easily track ISV product registrations and create workflows and views that help manage this part of our business.

I have wanted to have information about the last activity for any specific contact to be displayed on the contact record and in various views, and found an easy way to do it.  I was helped a great deal by this post by Joel Lindstrom.

The first thing to do is create new fields and add them to the Contact form.  I created a date field to display the date of the last activity, and a text field to display the subject of the last activity.

My objective is to show the date and subject of the last activity that was completed for each contact.  So the next step is to create individual workflows for each specific type of activity in CRM, e.g. Task, Phone Call, Appointment, E-mail.

This is how the workflow for Phone Calls looks:

The entity is, Phone Call; and I want to update the Contact.  I chose to have the workflow activate when the Actual End date changes (signifying that the activity is complete).  I also chose to allow the workflow to run on demand so that I could run it against the past month’s worth of Phone Call activities.

There are just two properties I’m going to update on the contact, the date, and the subject of the Phone Call.  I also am going to add a bit of text before the subject to indicate what type of activity it is.

Once I complete a Phone Call, this is what the contact record looks like:

You can create separate workflows for each of the different types of activities that you want to update the record.  I had to experiment a bit in order to determine what attribute(s) I wanted to use to trigger the workflow.

You can also include the new fields in your views and advanced find searches.  It was easy to do, and a good example of how to use simple workflows in CRM 4.0.