Where sales and marketing (finally) collide (and a free eBook!)

Richard Penny, 11 December 2012

A little while back, one of the team at Magnetism showed me a demo of Click Dimensions. Now as a long-time marketer (and exponent of CRM), one of the things that has often frustrated me about CRM tools was that, for all their potential, the information within never seemed to offer the level of real-time, actionable insights that are required to provide a sales team with a high quality pipeline of leads. Because of this I have to say I started out a bit of a sceptic...

Not for long. What was immediately apparent about Click Dimensions was just how easily it was able to produce information that was of immediate and immense value to a sales team.

Click Dimensions is part of what is a relatively new category of software, known as Marketing Automation. These solutions bring the tools necessary to manage the various components of an effective and measurable marketing programme (such as email marketing, newsletters, lead nurturing, website analytics and landing pages) into a single integrated package.

There are a number of these offerings available now, and to be fair, some of them are excellent. However where Click Dimensions really leaps ahead of the pack is in its tight integration with Dynamics CRM, and their combined ability to build a truly 360 picture of your prospects.

Where the combined package really comes into its own is its ability to deliver insight into how a potential prospect is engaging with your brand. What struck me immediately was just how much Click Dimensions was able to tell me about how people were interacting with a website. For once I was not seeing aggregated, anonymous data, but instead, trackable interactions with identifiable prospects that showed very clearly not only how many times someone had been on the site, but when, on which pages they lingered and where they had clicked.

Now we have seen some of this functionality on an anonymous basis with the likes of Google Analytics, but with Click Dimensions not only do we know that someone likes your stuff (you can't sell stuff to the invisible man), but who they are, and where they are from. Then, with the power of the integration with CRM, this data can be blended with information gathered from other offline sources to give the relevant people in your organisation a truly 360 degree view of the prospect and the information required to properly tailor the next step of the engagement.

Just how it does all this will be the subject of future posts, but in the meantime, if you are interested in finding out how a tool like Click Dimensions can generate new leads and boost your sales I'd recommend starting by taking a look at the "Marketing with Microsoft CRM Idea eBook" that the Click Dimensions team have kindly published.

It is packed with great content on topics such as:
* How to publish great newsletters and measure their results
* Understanding the effectiveness of your online advertising
* Effective targeting through tools such as AdWords and LinkedIn
* How to qualify and score online leads

You can download the eBook here, and if you are interested in finding out more about how Click Dimensions can empower your sales and marketing teams you should consider coming along to our breakfast seminar on 11th December. For more details and to register please click here.