In the next release of ClickDimensions, there will be a new optional web tracking script. This update will show a pop-up to your website visitors that will allow them to disable web tracking for your domain. This is in an effort to help our customers with the new GDPR regulations that will go into effect on May 25, 2018.

Later this month, we will start providing two different tracking scripts: the existing script and the new one with a disable option.

How it Works

The pop-up states that web tracking is used and gives the option to proceed or to disable tracking

If they select OK, they will continue to be tracked as they are now.

If they select Disable Tracking, they will see a confirmation message.

Either way, a cookie will be saved in the browser for six months. This cookie saves their answer so they are not asked every time they visit your site.

If they disable tracking, no page views or visits will be tracked on that browser for that domain for the allotted time (six months is the default). After six months, or if the visitor clears their cookies, he or she will see the message again.

Setting Up the Script

If you decide to use the new script, you will get the script in the ClickDimensions Settings > Tracking Script area.

On your website, wherever you have the existing script, you will replace it with the opt-out version.

You can optionally change the look and feel of it by adding the additional provided script to the header of your website and changing the options for colors, font, the actual text, the length of time the cookie is saved and more.

For web content forms, surveys, subscription page and landing pages, there is a new Enable Opt Out setting on the domain record (you must update to the ClickDimensions version 9.2 solution file, available later this month). This will put the message on the web content automatically. This is only recommended if you are using the direct links. You do not want the message to appear in an embedded iframe as well as the overall page. As long as the domain on the web content is set as the same domain of the page you embed it in, the opt-out script you add to your website will capture and abide by the visitor’s web tracking preference.

The post Coming Soon in ClickDimensions: Opt-Out Tracking Script appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

Change has impacted many businesses and industries in recent years, and health insurance companies have been no exception. Many consumers today have more choices than ever when it comes to health insurance coverage, which has driven payers to focus more on customer engagement and the customer experience. In the example scenario below, let’s take a look at how a health insurer could nurture their members and create healthy customer relationships using ClickDimensions.

Choose Health Group wanted to tap into their existing intelligence about their members in order to turn demographic information or important life events into customer retention and effective cross-sells.

Using the ClickDimensions campaign automation builder, the Choose Health Group team created a nurturing campaign aimed at members that will soon turn 65 to educate them about health and wellness in their golden years.

The campaign automation includes several emails, all made with the ClickDimensions drag and drop email editor. This easy-to-use tool also allows for personalization, which Choose Health Group used to add each member’s name and their birthday for a customized email experience.

Within the automation, members are invited to download the company’s guide to healthy habits for individuals over 65. Using ClickDimensions, Choose Health Group was able to easily create the landing page and form used for the download – no coding required!

The automation also features a webinar invite aimed specifically at this audience. With connectors to WebEx, GoToMeeting, Eventbrite and Cvent, ClickDimensions’ event management functionality also allows Choose Health Group to see event, registration and attendee information directly within Microsoft Dynamics CRM for greater insight into who registers for and attends their webinar.

In addition to their health and wellness campaign, Choose Health Group also wanted to increase customer stickiness by showcasing their other policy offerings like dental, vision and critical illness insurance. With ClickDimensions, there’s no limit to the campaign automations the company can create for cross-selling, new customer onboarding, lead nurturing and more.

In addition to campaign automation, email marketing, event management, landing pages and forms, ClickDimensions gives you a wide variety of tools that can be incorporated into customer retention and cross-selling campaigns – or any other marketing efforts! – including social marketing, surveys, SMS messaging and web intelligence.

Happy Marketing!

The post Creating Healthy Customer Relationships: How Health Insurers Can Use ClickDimensions appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

Have you ever wondered how a visitor discovered your website? ClickDimensions web tracking can help! Each time a page view is generated in CRM, the field Referrer will help shed some light on that exact question. Before we begin our dive into the Referrer Type, it’s important to understand what a referrer is and how that information is passed from server to server.

Let’s break down the process of what happens when someone tries to visit your website. When someone clicks on a link to access a website, it initiates what’s called an HTTP request to access the website’s address. That request is sent to the server where the website you want to visit is hosted.In that request, there are several pieces of information, but for this blog post, we’re going to focus on what’s known as a header. The header contains various information about the client requesting access, including the URL they are requesting access from. This is known as the referrer URL. The referrer type is determined by the referrer URL.

Now that we know what the referrer URL is, we can start to determine how the visitor arrived at our website. In ClickDimensions, we have five different values for referrer on the visit record: 

• Direct Traffic
• Email
• Social
• Search Engine
• Unknown

When a referrer type is Direct Traffic, this will imply there was no referrer URL in the HTTP request header. This means that the visitor knew the exact URL and typed it directly into the browser address bar or they clicked on a bookmarked page. A Direct Traffic referrer type will look like this:

Note that the Referrer field is blank, indicating the visitor did not request to access this page from a location.

If the referrer type is Email, it means that the URL contains ClickDimensions tracking parameters. On the visit record, the Entry Page URL will display those parameters:

Also note how the Visit record will be tied to the email send record the visit was generated from:

The referrer type will be set to Social if the referrer URL has a domain value related to a social network. We keep an extensive list of social networks to ensure accuracy.

Similarly, the referrer type will be Search Engine if the Referrer URL has a search engine domain value:

When we have a referrer type of Search Engine, depending on the search engine used, we may be able to pull in the keywords used by the visitor to locate our page. Google will not display any keywords resulting from an organic search; however, if the visitor clicked on a paid Google ad, those keywords will be passed through on the visit record. See here for more information.

If none of the above criteria apply, a referrer type of Unknown will be displayed:

Page views will also display referrer information similar to visit records, with the exception of those that are unknown. With page views, we have a referrer type of Referring Sites. This referrer type can occur under four different circumstances and is often influenced by the visit’s referrer type. A page view record will display a referrer type of Referring Sites under the following circumstances:

• Visit Referrer Type = Unknown
• Visit Referrer Type = Social
• Visit Referrer Type = Search Engine
• The page view is not the first page view of the visit

Happy Marketing!

The post Breaking Down Web Analytics: Referrer Type appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

Timing is everything. That statement holds true for many things, including marketing campaigns. That’s why the ClickDimensions campaign automation builder offers two different options for controlling when a particular part of your campaign is executed, whether that’s an email, SMS message, an internal notification or other campaign component.

A Date Timer is used in campaign automations to tell the automation to wait until a specific date before continuing for the individual participant while a Wait Timer is used to tell the automation to wait a specific amount of time before continuing. Knowing when to use them is the key to get the results you want from your campaign automation.

Date Timer

Date timers are mostly used when you want the campaign automation to send a participant down a path on specific date. For example, if recipients are registering for an event, and you want to send a reminder email before and follow up email after the event.

Scenario

Company A has an event on March 22, and they want to send a reminder email to the recipient a few days after they register with additional information. So, once they have registered, the participant encounters a Date Timer, then an email will be sent to them on March 20 to remind them that the event is coming. The Date Timer is used to pause the participant before sending them to the next step, ensuring they receive the email closer to the event and keeping it top of mind.

Next, you can set a second Date Timer to send a follow up email after the event, thanking the recipient for attending or expressing your regret that they couldn’t make it.

Wait Timer

Wait Timers are best used in campaign automations when you want to nurture participants over an extended period of time with evergreen content. For instance, you may periodically add people to your campaign automation through the quarter or year through a Manual Add trigger or Added to List trigger, once you qualify them.

Scenario

Company B gradually feeds their leads into a campaign automation throughout the year. By using a series, it is possible to group together several emails. Since leads could get added to the automation throughout the year, it makes the most sense to send them another email every X number of days, instead of on a specific day. You can also set the series to end when a trigger is achieved, instead of when all the actions in the series are completed. That way, if someone clicks a link, they will no longer be sent the same follow up email. Instead, you could take a different action, like immediately notifying a sales rep.

Adding a series to the campaign automation is a great way to save space and make your campaign automation look a little cleaner too. Once you click inside the series, you can add the sequence of emails and divide them with Wait Timers to ensure the emails are sent to the recipient every three days until they click or open the email. If they do not click or open the email, they will be removed from the marketing list.

Happy Marketing!

The post Wait Timers and Date Timers: How to Use Them for Effective Campaign Automations appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

Partnership will enable ClickDimensions customers to ensure data quality, accuracy and compliance

ATLANTA (April 24, 2018) –  ClickDimensions, marketing for Microsoft Dynamics 365, today announced a partnership with Data8, a global leader in data quality management. Like ClickDimensions, Data8 is built natively in Microsoft Dynamics 365. The partnership between the two companies will give marketers the power to ensure data accuracy and leverage that data for marketing success – all from within Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Being fully native, ClickDimensions customers can utilize all the data in Dynamics 365, unlike users of other marketing platforms that only have access to a limited amount of data. This unparalleled level of data access enables ClickDimensions users to perform comprehensive segmentation, implement hyper-personalization, and accurately report on ROI and revenue attribution, both at an individual and an account level.

“Access to data in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a tremendous advantage for our customers, but all the data in the world won’t matter if you don’t have high-quality, accurate data,” remarked Mike Dickerson, CEO of ClickDimensions. “That’s why we think this partnership with Data8 is so critical to our customers, particularly as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is set to take effect and make data quality issues more than just a detriment to success, but a potential liability as well.”

“With a shared focus on Microsoft Dynamics 365, a partnership with ClickDimensions is a natural fit,” said Anthony Allen, Managing Director at Data8. “Duplicate records, poorly formatted values, typos, inconsistencies and data discrepancies would significantly reduce the effectiveness of marketing efforts. We’re pleased to partner with ClickDimensions to help bring to their customers a greater confidence in their data so they can achieve even greater marketing success.”

Current ClickDimensions customers interested in Data8’s services can contact their account manager for more information.

ClickDimensions currently serves more than 3,400 customers around the globe. The company has been named to the Inc. 5000 three years in a row and recently was honored with inclusion on Deloitte’s 2017 Technology Fast 500.

About ClickDimensions

ClickDimensions was founded in 2010 to help Microsoft Dynamics users worldwide bridge the gap between sales and marketing for bigger business wins. The ClickDimensions marketing automation solution brings together essential marketing tools like email marketing, campaign automation, web intelligence, surveys, web forms and landing pages, social marketing and more to help organizations attract more leads, close more sales and more effectively engage customers – all from directly within Microsoft Dynamics 365. For more information, visit www.clickdimensions.com, follow @ClickDimensions on Twitter or email press@clickdimensions.com.

About Data8

Data8 has developed advanced (proprietary) data management and data quality technologies to cleanse, validate and enhance our clients’ databases and, as a result, to transform their businesses. The services include real-time data validation, data cleansing, data management, analytics, B2B and B2C data supply, business process outsourcing, analytics, and visualization, enabling a single customer view. Data8 also offers integration services with major CRM databases and shopping cart solutions and is a Microsoft Gold Partner. With offices throughout the UK, Data8 has more than 14,000 users worldwide, enabling them to unlock the power of data to drive their business forward. For more information, visit https://www.data-8.co.uk/click-dimensions.

The post ClickDimensions Partners with Data8 for Data Quality Management Services for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Users appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

In our 5 Questions blog series, we profile our customers, partners and team members to help the ClickDimensions community become better acquainted. We hope you enjoy getting to know these individuals, and if you’re interested in being featured, send us an email at marketing@clickdimensions.com.

Emma D’Arcy
Product Consultant, ClickDimensions

1. What do you like best about your role at ClickDimensions?

As a Product Consultant, I love that I get to work with such a wide variety of customers. Each of my sessions with customers is always on something different which keeps my role both engaging and challenging. From conducting simple training calls to building out complex resolutions, I learn something new every day. I have also recently attended two on-site trainings with some of our customers. Being able to teach people new ClickDimensions tricks and providing solutions that will achieve their marketing goals is a very rewarding experience.

2. What is one piece of advice you would like to share with ClickDimensions customers?

ClickDimensions has some fantastic learning resources available at no additional cost to our customers. I always encourage customers to utilize the ClickDimensions Academy to its fullest prior to a product consulting call so the time spent with me can be focused on the client’s specific business needs. In addition to this, I also recommend reading the ClickDimensions blog as often as possible. Many of the articles on our blog are written by ClickDimensions Product Consultants and are based on real use case scenarios we have encountered with our customers. You might just find something to inspire your next marketing campaign!

3. What’s new in your department or area of the company that’s exciting for ClickDimensions customers?

The product consulting team is a very dynamic and fast-paced team to work on. There’s something new happening every week with many projects on the go at any given time. The team has taken a more proactive approach when it comes to working with our customers, and we now have the ability to be a bit more hands on. Right now, we’re able to provide consulting calls on how to best achieve your marketing goals, and we can also assist with training on how to use ClickDimensions. We’re looking to expand these services in the near future, so stay tuned for updates.

4. If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

I would love to be able to talk to animals! I currently have a 7-month-old kitten named Oscar whom I would love to be able to logically reason with at 4 am when he’s going wild. Fun fact: Oscar features in one of my blog posts about social sharing here!

5. If you could meet any historical figure, who would you choose and why?

Being a fiercely proud Irishwoman, I would want to meet Michael Collins to learn more about how Ireland gained her independence. There was always a lot of controversy around the creation of the Irish Free State and I would love to know more about how and why it came about. Collins was a very persistent man, who embodies everything Irish people are well known for. He was a proud patriot and he never gave up, despite how difficult things were at the time. Irish history is an incredible story of perseverance, loyalty and tragedy; I would love the opportunity to hear that story on a personal level.

The post 5 Questions: Emma D’Arcy appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

Leading marketing technology provider for Microsoft Dynamics users honored by The Atlanta Business Chronicle

ATLANTA (April 26, 2018) –  In a ceremony held this morning at the Georgia Aquarium, ClickDimensions received a 2018 Pacesetter Award from The Atlanta Business Chronicle. This is the fifth year in a row that the company, the leading marketing automation platform provider for Microsoft Dynamics 365, has earned a Pacesetter Award. The awards honor Atlanta’s 100 fastest-growing companies, and ClickDimensions ranked 55 on this year’s list.

To be eligible for the award, Atlanta-based private companies must have experienced a two-year growth in sales of more than 50 percent and have garnered revenues between $1 million and $300 million in 2017. Companies are then ranked by a growth index formula based on revenue and employee growth.

“Winning a fastest-growing companies award five years in a row says a lot about a company,” said ClickDimensions’ CEO, Mike Dickerson. “It says that we continue to innovate to find new ways to help our customers effectively leverage Microsoft technology in their marketing initiatives. It says that we have worked hard to win the business and loyalty of thousands of customers and partners around the globe. And most importantly, it says that we have the hardest-working and most talented employees, who work tirelessly every day to ensure that we deliver the best solution and customer experience in the business.”

Natively built inside Microsoft Dynamics 365, ClickDimensions gives its users a complete picture of leads and customers for greater marketing, sales and customer experience success. The company has been named to the Inc. 5000 three years in a row and recently was honored with inclusion on Deloitte’s 2017 Technology Fast 500.

About ClickDimensions

ClickDimensions was founded in 2010 to help Microsoft Dynamics users worldwide bridge the gap between sales and marketing for bigger business wins. The ClickDimensions marketing automation solution brings together essential marketing tools like email marketing, campaign automation, web intelligence, surveys, web forms and landing pages, social marketing and more to help organizations attract more leads, close more sales and more effectively engage customers – all from directly within Microsoft Dynamics 365. For more information, visit www.clickdimensions.com, follow @ClickDimensions on Twitter or email press@clickdimensions.com.

The post ClickDimensions Named One of Atlanta’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies Five Years Running appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect in only a few short weeks, plenty of questions abound about the who, what, when, where, why and how of compliance. This is particularly true when it comes to email marketing, so we have compiled a list of some of the most pressing and popular GDPR questions we’ve heard from email marketers.

What needs to be on a web form for consent?

A web form needs to contain a few things to meet the GDPR requirements for consent and transparency:

• The company’s identity must be displayed.
• The reason for collecting the information must be clearly stated.
• There must be a way for the subscriber to actively mark their consent (e.g., an unchecked box, radio buttons or a slide).
• Each processing operation or channel needs to have a separate consent option; this means if you want to communicate with the subscriber by SMS, postal mail and email, each communication channel should have its own consent.
• Include either a privacy statement or a link to a privacy statement or privacy policy (there are separate requirements for the privacy policy).

Relevant GDPR sections regarding consent:

Articles 4(11), 6

Recitals 32, 38, 42

What needs to be documented for consent?

The data controller (you can learn more about data controllers and data processors in this blog post) has the obligation to demonstrate that consent was obtained. We suggest that the controller documents the following elements to be able to demonstrate consent:

• How the consent was obtained.
• When consent was obtained.
• Who gave the consent.
• What processes are being consented to.
• What information was provided at the time of consent.

Relevant GDPR sections regarding consent documentation:

Article 7

Recital 42

Does consent have an expiration?

No. There is no official timeframe within which consent will expire. As of now, we recommend the use of common sense and context given the lack of published definite timeframes or best practices. At a minimum, consent is required prior to the beginning of data processing and at any time there is change to the processing type or scope. How often consent is refreshed should be based on the length of the sales cycle and what makes the most sense for the organization.

The consent guidance published by the EU Data Protection Working Party discusses this subject in more detail.

Does GDPR require a confirmed or double opt-in?

GDPR requires “explicit” consent for processing of “sensitive” data. There is a distinction between “active” or regular consent, where the data subject needs to take an action to confirm consent and “explicit” where the data subject must provide “an express statement of consent.” Per GDPR, confirmed or double opt-in would only be required if you were to process sensitive personal data. The consent guidance provides a few different examples about how this can be achieved. One of those examples is what is referred to as “two stage verification of consent,” (what we know as confirmed or double opt-in).

However, for marketing purposes in general, double opt-in is a best practice in that it allows you to verify the owner of the email address and that they want to receive the communications.

Relevant GDPR sections regarding consent documentation:

Article 4(1), 9

Recital 51

The consent guidance published by the EU Data Protection Working Party discusses this subject.

Can I use the opt-ins that we already have or do we need to get refreshed opt-ins?

If the opt-ins that you currently have meet both the consent requirements and the consent documentation requirements, there is no obligation to refresh the opt-ins.

If the opt-ins you currently have don’t meet one of the criteria, you’ll want to re-permission your marketing lists.

Re-permission campaigns, where you ask your currently opted-in subscribers to resubmit their preferences (in a way that meets GDPR requirements) doesn’t have to be just a one-off email campaign. Having an email campaign with two or three touches including an initial communication and then some reminders will give your subscribers the opportunity to submit their preferences. It doesn’t have to be a standalone campaign at all; including calls to action for preference updates in existing campaigns (newsletters, for example) is a great way to get the word out.

Which contacts can be re-permissioned?

Only subscribers that are already opted-in to your marketing communications can be asked to refresh their preferences. If a subscriber has opted-out/unsubscribed previously, you cannot email them again asking them to consent to marketing.

What do I need to know about web tracking?

GDPR doesn’t going into detail about tracking personal data on the web, but to be conservative you could apply the GDPR requirements of consent and withdrawal of consent to processing of personal data on websites.

The European Union’s new ePrivacy Regulation, expected to be published at the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019, will cover electronic communications specifically including the internet, web tracking, cookies and online advertising. Most marketers are avoiding any major changes until the final ePrivacy regulation is published.

What do I need to know about email tracking?

Much like web tracking, GDPR’s detail about tracking in emails (opens, clicks, etc.) is limited. The ePrivacy Regulation is expected to provide more clarity around this subject. For now, many brands have included information regarding bulk email tracking, what is tracked, and why it’s tracked in their privacy policies or disclosures.

Is business data personal data?

GDPR does not make a distinction between personal data and business personal data. If the data can identify a natural person, then yes, it is personal data. The easiest example is email address. A general email address that could be received by many people (marketing@clickdimensions.com) would not be considered personal data. But an individual’s work email address (jane.doe@clickdimensions.com) would be considered personal data.

More Resources:

https://www.eugdpr.org/eugdpr.org.html

https://gdpr-info.eu/

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/justice-and-fundamental-rights/data-protection/2018-reform-eu-data-protection-rules_en

http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/news.cfm?item_type=1360

http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=623051

http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=622227

The post GDPR FAQs for the Email Marketer appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

ClickDimensions’ Senior Director of Pre-Sales Consulting and 12-time Microsoft MVP Matt Wittemann shares his latest Dynamics 365 news and insights.

If you have been following the recent news, browsing social media, or perhaps attended a recent industry conference like eXtreme365 or the CRMUG/D365UG Summit EMEA, you have no doubt heard a lot of talk about CDS 2.0, Flow, and “Power” everything (PowerApps, PowerBI, Power-lifting – oh no, wait, scratch that last one).

Other folks in the community have done a great job of expounding on the CDS 2.0 news and helping to make sense of what we are hearing from Microsoft. But how does this connect back to you, and what does the future look like for an end user, an administrator, an implementation partner or an ISV like ClickDimensions?

End Users

First, let’s take a look at what end users can expect in the short term. In a word, not very much. CDS 2.0 and PowerApps are emerging technologies, and as such, the Dynamics apps and solutions and UIs that you use today are going to change only slowly as these new technologies are adopted. Longer term, you can expect to see more apps that are better aligned with your particular role or industry. Behind the scenes, these apps will take advantage of CDS and may well be built on the PowerApps framework, delivering tailor-made experiences across devices that enable the automation of tasks, visibility into data patterns, and collaboration with other teams and companies. But again, these are things that will emerge in time, and for now, you can expect to continue to use the readily available applications like Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales or Field Service. There is still a lot of work to do to get the full functionality of the “old school” default interface – what we used to call CRM – into these more targeted apps that leverage the new unified UI and underlying platform.

Administrators

If you are an administrator, you’ve got some work to do. You will want to start becoming familiar with the user interfaces, tools like Flow, and licensing models that are being introduced around CDS and PowerApps. In many ways this might be similar to the experience you may have had in introducing the Sales app interface to your users. If they are accustomed to accessing the traditional “CRM” address, it can be a challenge to get users to adopt the new URLs for the specific apps that have been tailored to their combination of role, license and access privileges. Microsoft is really trying to drive users to adopt https://home.dynamics.com as their starting point, from where they can select which app to dive into based on what the user needs to do next. As new apps are built out on CDS and PowerApps, there will be new entry points for users based on their role. This can become challenging if the user wears a lot of different hats – they may take the path of least resistance and just stick to logging directly into the old school, default CRM UI and going from there. At this point, that is probably just fine, but soon they might miss out on some of the powerful solutions that can push specific tasks or insights directly to them regardless of the device. Think of the Flow approval scenario where the user gets a Yes/No button directly in their Outlook app on their phone. Just another way to enter into this new experience, and there will no doubt be more like it.

Systems Integrator Partners

For Microsoft’s large network of partners who do implementation, consulting, customization and provide other services around the Dynamics platform, CDS 2.0 and PowerApps represent both challenges and opportunities. First, the challenges: Not too many years ago, Dynamics CRM was an application that a single technologist could wrap their arms around. You could pop a golden disc into a server, run an installer and see all the bits that made it up, from the SQL database to the IIS web front end. In the intervening years, Dynamics has exploded into a family of products, with the old school CRM at the heart of a constellation of line-of-business applications like Social Engagement, Field Service, PSA and more. With the rebranding of Dynamics 365 incorporating Microsoft’s ERP applications, the Dynamics 365 ecosystem now requires individuals to specialize. For partners, CDS 2.0 and PowerApps is both a new star in this constellation, as well as a way to tie them all together with a neat bow. But as with all new technologies, there will be a learning curve: how to implement them, and figuring out how to sell them and where they fit in your customers’ businesses.

The opportunity for partners is thankfully tremendous and outweighs the challenges. I foresee partners incorporating PowerApps in their standard “CRM” implementations as a way to address unique project requirements that previously would have required extensive custom development. There will also be partners who have a vertical specialty in a particular industry, and PowerApps and CDS can help them get to market faster with resellable IP.

ISVs

Lastly, for ISVs, CDS 2.0 and PowerApps present an interesting conundrum. ISVs’ bread and butter is developing proprietary software that extends core Microsoft technologies. Certainly, like the vertically-focused partners, there may be opportunities for ISVs to build packageable IP that addresses more horizontal business needs. There may be some partners whose SI practices start to look more like ISVs and vice versa. But I see a big opportunity for smart ISVs to work strategically with both other partners and customers to use PowerApps and CDS 2.0 to plug their own product holes. It’s not uncommon for a customer who implements an ISV solution to have a very specific requirement for which no off-the-shelf software exists. Instead of this being an obstacle in the ISV purchasing decision, adept ISVs who can demonstrate how a PowerApp fits that requirement will be able to show the end customer greater value and attain greater stickiness. A lot of these types of solutions may fly under the radar, but Microsoft has put another tool in ISVs’ toolbox to deliver long-term value to customers, all while leveraging parts of the platform that Microsoft manages, limiting the technical debt that one-off solutions might have persuaded ISVs to shy away from in the past.

Summarizing

CDS 2.0 and PowerApps are going to represent the beginning of a new world for Dynamics professionals. As these technologies mature, and as more partners dive in, businesses will find increasing value in what Microsoft has delivered to the marketplace.

To learn more about PowerApps or sign up for a free trial, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/index. (Provisioning a new database instance in PowerApps will provision an instance of CDS 2.0.) For more on Microsoft Flow, see here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/flow/getting-started. 

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Leveraging Google Analytics in your email marketing campaigns can drastically improve your results. These simple tools can help provide valuable insights into your subscribers and help win back potential customers you may have lost along the way. Some of these tools are more complex than others, but they all aid in producing the best results for your email marketing campaigns.

1. Goal Setting. While this feature is a simple one, the way you utilize it could significantly improve the results of your email marketing campaigns. A goal through Google Analytics allows you to keep a record of a page that you specify when a visitor has gone to your website and shown interest in your product/service. Whether that’s a newsletter sign up or a contact us form, setting a goal will allow you to see when you meet these goals. It will also help you analyze your leads and customers, and better understand their preferences and behaviors so that you can appeal to them in a way that will produce great results.
2. Email Campaign Tracking. Connecting your email marketing campaigns with a web analytics solution like Google Analytics can help drastically improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. By using a tracking code from your email system, like ClickDimensions, and putting it on your web pages, it allows you to track when an individual clicks through from your email campaign to the website. “Beyond the click tracking” helps you to analyze the interaction with different pages or review the bounce rate. Analyzing this information will allow you to gauge and test what is working for your potential customers and what isn’t. Maybe the page you linked the email marketing campaign to doesn’t provide the information that your subscribers need or maybe the font choice or color selection isn’t engaging enough. By reviewing the data this tracking provides, you can analyze your efforts and try something different next time.
3. Email Campaign Tagging. Google Analytics allows you to create UTM tracking for all your email templates and individual email assets. Once you do this, you can easily track, report and analyze the performance of your email marketing campaign. Learn how to set up UTM tracking with your ClickDimensions emails in this blog post. Once your campaign tagging is set up, you can see where the traffic is coming from, where they went to on your website, how long they stayed on your website, and whether they completed a goal or even converted to a sale.

By utilizing these Google Analytics features and tying them into your email marketing campaigns, you will be able to differentiate between active or non-active subscribers, and formulate a plan for engaging those that aren’t actively engaged with your brand. When trying to understand customer behaviors, remember to test and measure everything, whether it’s the wording on the campaign, the color scheme of the campaign or the landing page that the campaign connects to. Analyze this information, apply changes and measure the effects of those changes, so that you produce better results for your business and your customers.

Happy Marketing!

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In my last post, we looked at how to import external fonts and use different styles on ClickDimensions forms to give them the look of a standalone web page instead of a regular form. Today, we’re going to look at some additional modifications like making forms mobile and centering them using CSS.

Part one of this series contains steps one through three, so you may wish to start there so that steps four and five of this post make sense. You don’t have to implement the code from the first blog post to use the code we look at today; the code below can be used in your existing forms.

Please remember that this post provides custom code that you may use if you wish. ClickDimensions cannot support or troubleshoot use of this code, so if you need assistance implementing it, you will need to work with a web developer/designer on your team.

Step 4: Spacing and Alignment

Centering the Form

One of the main changes we can make to our form is to center it on the page so it’s the focal point when our customers visit it. By default, the entire form will be left-aligned, which is fine, but if you want to center it like I did, then you will need to add in a few CSS styles to do so.

First, we will need to target the <html> tag by adding some styles to the code editor. The <html> tag basically holds all the code for the page the form sits on, so when we add styles to it via CSS, it will affect the whole page.

background: #ddd; This gives the whole page a gray background so we can provide some contrast between it and the form. (We will build on this idea more in a moment.)

margin-top: 75px; By adding a margin for the top of the <html>, we’re just letting our form content have some space from the top of the page instead of being flush against it.

display: flex; This attribute, and the two that follow, are using Flexible Box Layout, or Flexbox. By setting the display attribute to “flex” we’re allowing for our form to be centered without using extensive margins or other spacing attributes.

align-items: center; This Flexbox attribute is vertically aligning the form.

justify-content: center; Centers content within the Flexbox.

If you would like to learn more about using Flexbox in your other web design projects, this site has additional tips.

You can see that the content of our form hasn’t changed but the overall look of the page has.

Now we need to target the <body>, which is the area of the form’s page that the form content is actually sitting in. Having the form’s page use the gray background we just added is fine, but by modifying the <body> tag, we can make just the area that the form sits in have some different styling. By default, the body has the CSS shown below.

To add the color and margins/padding that we want, we will need to modify a few of those options.

As you can see in the preview above, when we use those body area styles, the form has changed its background to white instead of gray.

max-width: 600px; Sets the maximum width of all content within the <body> tag to 600px. So, our form’s content will never try to be wider than 600px.

width: auto; The max-width attribute simply says that it shouldn’t be wider than 600px, so setting the width attribute to auto allows for the form to resize itself as needed on different screen sizes.

background: #fff; Since we set the <html> to use gray, we will want to set off the form content a bit by adding a different background color. This simply changes it to white.

padding: 0 !important; We don’t need any padding inside the <body> tag itself, so setting this to 0 and marking it as !important ensures that no padding will be applied here.

Centering the Fields

The first step to centering the form fields is to change the default margin.

It’s initially set to 0, but we will want to indent that some by changing it to the following:

margin: 0 0 0 100px; This sets the top, right and bottom margins to 0, but changes the left-margin to 100px. That will allow our fields to indent more towards the middle.

Along with setting the field’s left margin, we also want to set the margin for the field labels, allowing them to match. So, adding this margin will allow for that to happen.

margin: 10px 0 1px 100px; This sets the top to 10px, right to 0, bottom to 1px and the left to 100px. You don’t have to include a top or bottom margin if you prefer, but it does help create a little extra space for readability if you add top/bottom margins between repeating elements like form fields and labels.

A quick check-in shows our form looking like this.

To check the form on desktop, go to Embed > Embed as Link and click on the URL there to open the form in your desktop browser. Once changes in the Code Editor are saved and the Form is saved, you can refresh that browser tab where the form is and see the changes you just saved.

Finishing the Design

Now we just have the header image, header text and submit button to finalize.

The header image and text need to have some attributes added, as shown in the highlighted sections of code below, in order to center them and remove unnecessary padding.

img: Targets all instances of the <img> tag. We are only using one image here so it’s fine to leave this targeting the tag, but if we had multiple images that need variations of these attributes, then we would need to use classes specific to each image.

• max-width: 100%; Instructs the any <img> tag to allow its contents to take up the width based on the current screen size. This attribute does allow for the image to resize more simply when we address mobile code.
• margin: auto; You will typically set the margin’s value to auto when trying to center the content you’re targeting, so this is just working towards that. You can learn more about centering content here.

.html-component: Targets all instances of this class.

• margin: 8px 0 8px 100px; Any content using this class will have the top and bottom margins set to 8px, right margin to 0, and left margin to 100px. Our header text is using this class so therefore we will now see it indented to match the field and label indenting.
• text-align: center; Centers the content.

div.clickdform.mainDiv: Targets the area within the <body> tag.

• padding-left: 0 !important; Overrides any other inline or stylesheet code that may try to set a left padding value of anything other than 0.
• padding-top: 0 !important; Same as the padding-left attribute, this makes sure that the top of the form’s area doesn’t allow for other styles to add padding in.

With these styles added, our form now looks like this:

The last change we can make is to move the button so it’s more on the right side of the form than on the left. This is probably the easiest change you will make. Just be sure that all your code changes are saved in the code editor and then in your form’s designer window, drag the Submit button to be in the middle column.

And with that final change saved, our form is ready for desktop use!

Congrats! You have now finished your form design so it looks like a standalone page. The form will display well if your email recipients are viewing it on a desktop screen, but if you want to allow this same form to display well on mobile screens too, keep reading for some tips.

Step 5: Mobile Responsive Code

This section is optional as it shows some additional code I included for my form to display well on mobile. I explain briefly below why I used the code that I did, and you can certainly use it too. Just keep in mind that when working with code and implementing it with different content/layouts you may need to make some changes so it fits your design.

Here’s how our form looks with the current code when viewed on mobile:

Mobile code is written in CSS using what’s called an @media query. There are more details here on how it works and the possible variations that can be used. We’re going to use one that alters certain attributes of our form when the screen size the form is being viewed on is 450px or smaller.

All our mobile code will be placed between the open and close braces shown above. I’ll explain the different styles we’re including below, but you can view all of them here.

html

• margin-top: -8px; The desktop version of our form has a different margin setting to have extra space between the top of the page and the form’s content. For mobile, we need to eliminate that extra space. Using a negative number here helps the form content to sit flush at the top of the page.
• background: #fff; This removes the gray background for mobile viewing and changes it to white.

body

• width: 100%; Allows the body—our form content—to take up the full space on the page.
• max-width: 450px; Sets a limit on how wide the body content can be; in this case no wider than 450px.
• height: auto; This allows the height to automatically generate the value it needs based on where it’s being viewed. For example, a 300px wide screen will need a greater height for the form content than a 400px wide screen.
• margin: auto; Helps keep our content better aligned and is typically used to help with keeping content more centered.
• text-align: center; Instead of leaving the content left-aligned, we are just defaulting it all to use center alignment.

.responsiveCellSize1, .minSize1: These are two existing CSS classes that we can modify to make one slight change for our design.

• width: 100% !important; This overrides the width those classes are already using, so when viewed on mobile, all our content is able to display at a good width.

.html-component

• max-width: 400px !important; Our header text can take up to 400px of width.
• margin: 0; This allows for headers to have different margin settings—essentially none—on mobile screens as opposed to the desktop CSS we previously wrote.

.mainDiv: This is another existing class that we’re targeting for more responsive CSS.

• padding: 0 0 !important; Removes the current padding for this section of the body and sets all sides to have 0 padding.
• width: auto; Again, we’re using this to help our width dynamically configure based on screen size.

.clickdform input[type=’text’], .clickdform textarea, .clickdform select: Targets any text, text area or select (list) fields on our form.

• margin: 4px 29% !important; This setting was a bit of personal preference as I used 4px to set the top and bottom margin for the fields. The 29% will allow the right and left margin to dynamically use 29% of the available space. This way the fields aren’t flush to the left or right of the form page.

And now our form displays like this on mobile:

All the code we looked at today is in this file along with the code from Part 1 in this series. You can use it on your forms and customize it as needed.

Happy Marketing!

The post Customizing a ClickDimensions Form as a Standalone Page: Part 2 appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

In our 5 Questions blog series, we profile our customers, partners and team members to help the ClickDimensions community become better acquainted. We hope you enjoy getting to know these individuals, and if you’re interested in being featured, send us an email at marketing@clickdimensions.com.

Jim Townsend
Founder and CEO, InfoStrat

1. What do you like best about your job?

I enjoy helping InfoStrat’s clients solve business problems and helping our consultants achieve their potential as developers, analysts, project managers and other roles. The great thing about consulting is that it never gets boring. We are always asked to handle new challenges and to use new products and technology. In many cases, we are enlisted to turn around failed projects, adding even more time and budget pressure. This career is great for lifelong learning.

2. What are the biggest professional challenges you face, and how does ClickDimensions help you address those challenges?

Our biggest challenge is to find clients who need our skills and experience. ClickDimensions provides tools for us to expand our outreach as well as handle incoming inquiries from prospective customers and teaming partners. And ClickDimensions also helps us get white papers and webinars to more people who might need the information and services we offer.

3. What was your background before landing in your current role?

Before I started InfoStrat, I worked in a Washington, DC think tank called the Center for Strategic and International Studies which was focused on international issues. I learned how to research and write on issues, and to present to audiences. In my current role, communication is paramount, and I must be able to quickly learn new products and apprise a project accurately. This think tank background helped me identify expert talent in technology, and to start practices focused on innovative products such as ClickDimensions.

4. If you could meet any historical figure, who would you choose and why?

If I limit myself to English speakers so that I could communicate best, I would choose Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain). I’m sure he would be an engaging dinner companion and we share many interests such as fishing and boating.

5. What book has had a big impact on your life, either professionally or personally?

Many years ago, I read the Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt and was inspired by his ability to be an intellectual and a man of action. I admire Roosevelt’s optimism and idealism. I also enjoyed the Roosevelt biographies by Edmond Morris.

The post 5 Questions: Jim Townsend appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

From blog articles to ad copy and eBooks to video scripts, great writing is the cornerstone of memorable marketing. While most marketers recognize the importance of writing, that doesn’t mean that all embrace it. For many who fall into the “hate it” versus “love it” camp, the amount of time it takes to write quality content plays a big part in their dissatisfaction. As someone who has written a lot of marketing content in the course of my career, I get it. It can be very time-consuming to create quality content, but with a few simple tips and tricks, you can start to write faster and more efficiently. Here are my favorites:

1. Keep your ideas. The idea for a piece of content can often be the hardest part, and one of the biggest obstacles to efficient writing is coming up with a great idea. Set yourself up for success with idea files. These can be on your computer, on your phone, in a notebook. or in all those places and more, but they can be your go-to source when you need to start writing. Use whatever system works best for you for storing these notes. For example, I keep my ideas for blog posts and gated content in separate places so I don’t get them mixed up and each set of ideas is more focused. One important thing to remember is to include enough detail so you remember what each idea was about when you revisit them. Few things are more frustrating than finding a half-baked note about an idea and not being able to remember the full intent behind it.

2. Find the right time. As I write this blog post, it’s early in the morning and roughly 30 minutes into my workday. That’s really my sweet spot for writing and when I find that I’m most focused on creating content, particularly longer-form pieces. While many productivity articles and experts will advise that you knock out a difficult task or project first thing in the morning, writing might not be that thing for you. Take the time to notice when you feel like words flow more freely for you. Is that 8 am or 4 pm? Once you notice a pattern in what works best for you, follow that as much as possible. Because I’m a Content Marketing Manager, writing often happens throughout my day, but I try to stick with focusing on writing as much as possible in the morning and leave other tasks like editing or meetings for later in the day.

3. Break it down. When you’re planning a piece of content, it can seem pretty daunting. How is that 10-page eBook or 1,000-word blog post ever going to be completed? It’s simple. Don’t focus so much on the whole; think about the parts instead. Using this blog post as an example, there’s an introduction, a list of points and the details of those points. For longer content, make an outline and focus more on completing the individual sections than the entire piece. Breaking it down like this helps the writing seem more achievable, which can help you be more productive as you go about the writing task at hand.

4. Find the best approach. Does writing an introduction make you cringe? Or do you get hung up on the meat of a content piece? Whatever it is, we all have our Achilles heel when it comes to writing. The trick to overcoming it is first figuring out what your hang up is and then finding the best way to overcome it. When I write blog posts, for example, I do great with introductions, but then feel a little stuck sometimes when it comes to what’s next. To overcome this, I write my intro, then make a list of the points I want to cover in the body of the post. Once I have brainstormed that list, writing the rest of the piece feels far easier and I simply fill in the details of those points. The important part is to do what works for you. If introductions hold you up, start with another section and save the intro for last and chances are good that an idea for that intro will come to you along the way.

5. Avoid multitasking. The title of this blog post promises simple tips, but this might be a tough one for many of us. Multitasking is often seen as a strength, but when it comes to writing content, it can be a huge weakness. That’s because good writing requires focus, and it’s hard to be efficient at it if you are constantly switching tasks. You know best what your biggest distractions are, so work to eliminate them so you can efficiently power through your content writing. If it’s email, try closing your email program for a set amount of time while working on your content. If you find yourself distracted by conversations with co-workers, try putting on headphones and listening to music. No matter the distraction or the cure for it, focus on your writing and forget everything else, even if it is only for an hour.

6. Remember the route that works best. As a resident and native of Atlanta, I know a thing or two about navigating around traffic and remembering the routes that get me where I need to go in the least amount of time possible. Approach revamping your writing process the same way you would maneuvering your commute – remember the route that works best and stick with it. If you find that writing after lunch and starting with the end of a content piece is most effective for you and helps you write more efficiently, commit to that as your routine. Just keep in mind that, much like our traffic example, some days, even the tried and true route just doesn’t work. On those days, take a deep breath and see our next tip.

7. Get out of your own head. Sometimes, no matter what you do or the tricks you try, that little flashing cursor on the screen just mocks you relentlessly as you struggle to even find one word to put on the page. It’s at that point you need to step away. Take a walk outside, get a cup of coffee, respond to some emails – whatever you need to do to take a break, do it. While this might not sound like the best way to write efficiently, sometimes you need to get out of your own head to get your writing back on the right track. For me, walking is a great cure for writer’s block, allowing me to take a step back and brainstorm without a blank Word document staring back at me.

Happy Marketing!

The post 7 Simple Tips for Writing Marketing Content Faster and More Efficiently appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

As a brief recap, GDPR is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation that is going into effect on May 25, 2018. This piece of legislation very firmly establishes the principle of data privacy as a fundamental human right. It includes the right to be forgotten, the right to opt-out of automated decision-making, and specific obligations for companies regarding transparency around how they are using and processing data. For more information about GDPR and how it may affect your business, check out our GDPR microsite, and to learn more about what might prompt the need to re-permission a contact see our GDPR FAQ linked here.

Due to the new opt-in requirements around consent, many marketers are re-permissioning their subscriber lists, by effectively sending them a double opt-in, or re-engagement campaign. They are then opting out any subscribers that do not submit a compliant opt-in form by the GDPR deadline. The problem is, most marketers are getting this step wrong. Don’t be one of them.

It may be tempting to send the re-permissioning campaign to everyone in your marketing lists that has previously opted in, but the same best practices for data quality apply to these efforts as well. Sending to old data (email addresses that you would not regularly include in campaigns), unengaged populations or to unverified contacts has potential to hurt your sending reputation. For some tips on how to send a GDPR re-permissioning campaign while avoiding the potential pitfalls, keep reading!

Note: Information contained in this blog post should not be considered legal advice; it is for informational purposes only. Consult your compliance department or legal counsel for specific guidance.

1. Don’t send to previously opted out contacts. Updated consent can only be obtained from contacts that are already opted in to your marketing communications. The purpose of the re-permissioning is to update the consent to meet all the GDPR requirements. If a contact has unsubscribed in the past, you are not allowed to reach back out to them to gain a new consent.

2. Complete all efforts to re-permission before May 25. Re-permissioning is no longer permissible after that date. Continuing to mail to these contacts after that date, without sufficient permission, will result in the company being in violation of GDPR in the midst of efforts to comply.

3. Suppress any unengaged subscribers that have not opened a mailing in 12 months or more. This should be done before beginning the re-permissioning campaign (you can find steps for doing this with ClickDimensions here). Recycled spam traps are a significant danger if every email address ever collected goes through the re-permissioning campaign. This is especially true the longer the company has been in business.

4. Make sure that the consent collected is GDPR compliant. At a minimum, this means no pre-checked boxes on your form. Make sure to research what is required for the specific types of communications sent to your subscribers, and when in doubt, contact legal counsel.

5. Make sure the email clearly explains what’s being asked for. Be aware that many consumers are not aware of GDPR. Mentioning it in the subject line might be confusing and reduce open rates if subscribers don’t think it applies to them, though it is definitely a good idea to provide them with links to relevant resources.

6. Understand that this may result in a significant reduction in list size. And that is okay. You should at least expect a lift in open rate and hopefully click rate by purging contacts that do not confirm their opt-in.

The ultimate thing to remember about GDPR is that while it may seem like a pain for those of us working in marketing and technology (especially the professionals who sit at the intersection of these two), ultimately this regulation can be a force for good to restore trust with consumers. It is my hope that increased trust will lead to increased engagement and ROI for brands that properly adhere to the regulation.

The post 6 Tips for GDPR Re-Permissioning Success appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

Dynamics 365/CRM on-demand workflows are like little racehorses waiting inside the starting gate for the gun to go off. You may have dabbled with them previously for CRM functions, but how about with ClickDimensions? In truth, there’s already a nice list of uses. And we’re going to go through them together based on different scenarios. Now, if you’re not familiar with on-demand workflows, don’t worry— I will give you a bit of an introduction first.

Workflows are a CRM feature that you can use to perform specific tasks with existing data within CRM or even to create new data and records. You can set workflows to run in the background automatically, when something specific occurs or you can have them waiting until called upon.

On-demand workflows are the ones you run “manually,” but I use manually loosely because something needs to make it run. With ClickDimensions, the nice part is that you don’t have to stand by to press a button throughout the day. Unless you want to, then by all means. But none of us have that kind of time, right?

Let me show you an example of what an on-demand workflow looks like—this one’s job is to update a Job Title field on a contact record. One thing to note here: Since workflows are a native CRM function and not a ClickDimensions entity, if you need assistance with setting them up beyond this you will want to reach out to a CRM resource such as an admin or partner.

Enter the Entity

The entity that you’re going to run the workflow for will be specified in the workflow’s Entity field. In my example, I’m using the contact, but there are quite a few very viable entities, so you have many possibilities!

On-Demand, On-Demand

Make sure you select for the process to be run “As an on-demand process.” Then you will start adding your steps (see the bottom of this screenshot).

Choose Your Field

In this case, I am updating the Job Title field as mentioned above with my desired value:

Save it, then activate it and voila!

Now let’s talk about how we can use on-demand workflows like this with ClickDimensions.

Automating Automations – Using Campaign Automation to Run Your Workflows

Thanks to the Workflow action in campaign automation, you can publish your campaign automation, stand back and let the workflow work its magic. It will be there to “press the button” on your behalf for every participant that reaches that step. And you can have all kinds of Workflow actions in your automation, like even ending every path with one to update records upon completion.

The scenario here is what I have within my double opt-in campaign automation. To briefly revisit, the workflows update the contact records for each participant depending on how they completed their path based on previous actions. This allows me to have a recorded status on every contact record, which I can see when working with individuals.

This next one here is special. With some custom fields in place and multiple on-demand workflows to signify phase steps, you will know where your participants are in a campaign automation just by glancing at their records!

One final note regarding campaign automations and the workflows used within them: They can only be set up for contacts and leads. If you have both in the same automation, you will want to make two versions of each workflow, one for your contacts and one for your leads.

Advancing Your Advanced Finds – Running the Workflow on Advanced Find Results

I know, I know, advanced find is a CRM feature. But ClickDimensions entities and data are accessible within the advanced find tool thanks to our native integration.

In an advanced find, there’s a Run Workflow button that you can click after you get your search results to run an on-demand workflow. The easiest example I have on hand is from another one of my blog posts here, where I created a custom CRM field to map sources on contact records. Through some nifty advanced find work, I was able to run one of multiple on-demand workflows to mass populate the contacts that came up in my results to all have the right information entered in the Source field.

This is huge. Now you’re using this to continually affect and update fields on the go, and since on-demand workflows aren’t constantly running in the background, make plenty of them and run them at the end of these searches, and all in conjunction with ClickDimensions entities and records.

Updating Your Records in Record Time – Run an On-Demand Workflow on Lists of Records in Views

Just think about all the views you may use on a normal day. Views of email statistics, web analytics and posted web content? No problem. This blog post talks about running on-demand workflows on excluded email records to help weed out invalid addresses in your marketing lists.

And this post shows you how you can run on-demand workflows on email events to create notes on contact records after specific actions, such as a click on an email.

Full-Contact Contacts – Run the Workflow from the Contact Itself

Save time navigating through the menus, set up some loops to run an on-demand workflow regularly without having to have tons of different versions of the same workflow running all the time. An example would be here— send out an email to wish people a happy birthday automatically. Add a little FreeMarker into those emails and stand back. You don’t have to do anything. It just goes and goes and goes.

Or, to take the recurring email to the next level, you can use an on-demand workflow to send them daily, monthly or even a relative time, such as the first day of the month. Just follow this link to take a look at the full process.

Accountable Accounts – Running the Workflow through the lens of Accounts

On the heels of the previous example, we’re still shooting for the contact, but now we’re taking a step back to run the workflow through the account record. The example from this blog post has the on-demand workflow process outlined as Method 3. Bonus: This one does go through quick send emails and some neat things with the ClickDimensions import tool too.

And that wraps this up. I hope this gives you a new perspective on on-demand workflows, creates a wellspring of ideas on how you can implement these in your systems, or at the very least, some fantastic new ways to use them with ClickDimensions that you can keep in your quiver for just the right occasion!

The post Utilizing Dynamics 365 On-Demand Workflows with ClickDimensions appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

Most people will do a fair amount of research before buying anything – whether that purchase is something simple, like office pens and paper, or something larger, like software or equipment. Marketers who can put their company’s products or services in front of potential buyers during this search are able to generate potential leads to pass along to their sales team to qualify or even conduct a direct sale. These opportunities are possible with a tactful marketing strategy and open communication between marketing and sales, which can be easily facilitated through ClickDimensions’ campaign automations.

In a previous post, we looked at sending campaign automation participants down various paths depending on which link(s) they clicked in an email. That campaign automation is designed to distribute informative content, such as login credentials or training information. But, if you’re looking to leverage campaign automation to qualify leads for a sales team, then the use of a ClickDimensions form can assist you in capturing the necessary data for the next steps in your sales process. In this post, our example will be following up with attendees of a tradeshow. We’ve collected their information, but perhaps we haven’t closed the sale, and we need to gauge their interest level after the show. An easy way to automate the follow up and gauge the continued interest from the potential buyer is to use a campaign automation, marketing lists, email templates and a form.

In the below campaign automation, we start with an Added to List trigger. Using the ClickDimensions import tool, we’ve imported tradeshow participants into Dynamics and added them to a marketing list. You can also run an advanced find to create a static marketing list for the Added to List trigger, but you will want to check the Run on Entire List box within the trigger to ensure everyone on the list will go through the campaign automation.

Once participants are added, an email will be sent thanking them for stopping by the booth and containing a call to action to fill out the form if they wish to continue the conversation about the product or service your company offers. Make sure your form contains form fields to collect the person’s email address, as well as their interest in your products. Checkboxes can be a great way to collect this information, while still making sure you don’t overwhelm the potential buyer and leaving room for your sales team to collect more information on the follow up call.

Example email:

Example form:

In the next steps, we will be checking to see if the email is opened/clicked. If the first email is opened and/or a link clicked, they will go on the positive path and be added to a marketing list (think of this as a container, if you will) of participants that may have some interest. We will consider these warm leads. But if after six days the participant hasn’t opened the first email, they will go on the negative path. We will send one more email and see if any interaction takes place. If someone opens and/or clicks the second email, we will add them to the warm leads container. Adding participants to a marketing list will make for easy reporting and/or easy follow-ups in the long run.

After the emails have been sent, we will then want to check and see if the form has been submitted. If so, we can notify the sales rep from the tradeshow or perhaps another internal sales person. While a click from an email is indicative of interest, a form submission is a valuable tool to actually qualify your leads and vet their interests. If there was no email interaction after the second email or a person doesn’t fill out the form, then they are added to a cold leads list to facilitate follow up in the long run.

Again, the advantage of using this technique is to gauge the interest of the potential buyer. If the person opens the email, they have some sort of interest in your company. They are familiar with your company’s name and intrigued with what you have to say. The next step in gauging their interest is with the use of a form. This is really putting the ball in the participant’s court. If they would like to continue the conversation with someone at your company after the event, they will more than likely fill out the form and you can use this as part of your qualification process.

The post Managing Sales Opportunities Via Campaign Automation (Part One) appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

In our 5 Questions blog series, we profile our customers, partners and team members to help the ClickDimensions community become better acquainted. We hope you enjoy getting to know these individuals, and if you’re interested in being featured, send us an email at marketing@clickdimensions.com.

Lisa Patrick
Vice President of Sales – EMEA, ClickDimensions

1. What do you like best about your role at ClickDimensions?

In my role as Vice President of Sales – EMEA, I spend a lot of time understanding people’s pain points and then advising on how we can help them be more profitable and make their jobs easier. It gives me a great sense of satisfaction when I hear how ClickDimensions has helped a customer succeed with their marketing efforts and business objectives. I also have the distinct pleasure of meeting people throughout EMEA, and the kindness and hospitality from all cultures always overwhelms me, and is an incredible benefit of my job.

2. What is one piece of advice you would like to share with ClickDimensions customers?

Be aware of all the great learning and training opportunities that ClickDimensions offers, and take advantage of them! Check out the free eBooks and white papers that our marketing team creates and the resources developed by our amazing training team, like the ClickDimensions Academy. Our product consultants are available to answer questions to make sure you have everything you need for a successful campaign. And don’t forget the ClickDimensions knowledge base, for access to informative help articles and videos.

3. What’s new in your department or area of the company that’s exciting for ClickDimensions customers?

This is an exhilarating time for ClickDimensions customers and partners in EMEA. This year, we officially opened the EMEA office located in Central Station in The Hague. Some of the team has already relocated to the beautiful Netherlands and we are hiring additional people as we continue to grow. We have also added in-language support for Spanish, Italian, German and French, which helps us better serve many of our EMEA customers. And we look forward to expanding our localization efforts in the future.

4. If you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you want to have with you?

There are several people I work with that I have always said if I was stranded I would want them with me. They are brilliant and can figure out anything. If taking people isn’t allowed, I would revert to my Maine upbringing and take my favorite fly rod, canoe and cell phone.

5. What is your favorite word, and why?

Kindness. When I thank someone, I always add, “for your kindness.” We often forget the extra time and effort people put forth to do what may seem like a simple favor. I believe if we all took just a moment to thank people for their kindness, we would see more of it in this world.

The post 5 Questions: Lisa Patrick appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

If your company maintains multiple brands out of one Dynamics environment or services customers in multiple countries, you may find at times that you have email templates that could apply to all of your brands or areas of service. So, it just makes good sense to use the same template across the board. A common problem is that when you start setting up a flexible, reusable template, you may realize that your subscription management page is going to quickly become overcrowded and convoluted. Maybe you need to include unique terms of service depending on the country in which your customer resides. Or maybe you want to restrict certain customers from subscribing to multiple lists. So, what do you do?

Fortunately, using conditional FreeMarker, it’s easy to create a dynamic footer that serves up a different subscription management page to different recipients all in the same template. First, though, you will need to do a bit of setup and determine the criteria that is most valuable or relevant for your recipients. For this blog post, I’m going to be referencing the Address 1 Country field on the contact and lead entities as it’s a standard field, and I won’t have to add anything custom to the entity form to do my segmentation. If you’re filtering by customer type, you may need to add a custom field to indicate what type (i.e. business catering, in-store rewards or wholesale) a given contact or lead is. If you’re going that route, I would recommend doing so with an option set, such as with a drop-down menu, as it standardizes your choices and prevents misspellings or typos.

Next, make sure you have created all the subscription management pages that you want to link to in your email template’s footer. For this example, I have created three subscription management pages – one for German customers, another for French customers and another for everyone else – with appropriate terms of service included in each. You can read up on how to create subscription management pages here.

Now that our pages have been created, we need to identify how we’re determining which subscription page we want to link to for a given recipient. As I mentioned before, I’m using the Address 1 Country field, but if you’re segmenting by type, this is where you would identify the type that a given contact or lead falls under. Now that we have chosen our field, we can go to our template and do some setup for our FreeMarker. For your reference, this is what my full template looks like:

In this blog post, we will focus on the FreeMarker found here:

And here:

When writing conditional statements in FreeMarker, it is important to remember that we can’t directly reference an interpolation in a logical check.

So, this doesn’t work:

Instead, we need to first assign our values to variables so we can use them throughout the template. For this to work, we need to assign two variables, one for contacts and one for leads.

Let’s start by pulling in the interpolations we need to use for these values. Go to the personalization menu for the editor you’re using, and select the fields you want to reference on the contact and lead entities.

Now, our FreeMarker should look like this:

With those in place, we want to remove the “$” and “{}” and wrap these interpolations in <#assign/> statements that assign them to variables we can reference throughout. I’ve decided to name my variables contact_country and lead_country. These should look like this:

You’re now ready to set up your footer. I’m using a relatively simple text navigation footer that looks like this:

After adding my FreeMarker, it looks like this in the editor:

I added line breaks here for readability, but once we’re done, we will clean those up as well. Once you have your conditional statement laid out, insert the links to the appropriate subscription management pages. You can insert these URLs through the hyperlink manager by selecting the Unsubscribe tab and choosing the subscription management page you want to insert.

Breaking this down, we have created three links, one for each subscription management page, and then nested them in an If Statement that checks to see if a recipient is from France or Germany and renders the correct subscription page based on that information. Then, if neither of those checks is true, it publishes the default <#else> statement instead.

Breaking this down line by line:

We have opened our If Statement and made our first conditional check in this <#if> tag. We’re checking to see if contact_country or lead_country is equal to “France”. If you aren’t familiar with it already, the double pipes ( || ) expression you see is a common way of saying “or” in many programming and templating languages. FreeMarker uses it this way as well.

We used the <#elseif> tag and the same syntax from the If Statement on the first line to check if someone is from Germany.

If they don’t match either of the earlier if statements, the recipient will see the default link listed after the <#else> tag.

We close out the If Statement with the closing </#if> tag to complete our FreeMarker template.

Now, we delete all the line breaks we created for readability so that whatever link renders, it renders on the same line as the rest of your footer. This will remove unwanted white space.

You now have a dynamic footer that displays different subscription management pages to customers in different countries!

Happy Marketing!

The post Using FreeMarker to Generate Conditional Email Footers appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.

In my last blog post about managing sales opportunities, we walked through a strategy for nurturing leads with potential sales opportunities using a ClickDimensions campaign automation. The campaign automation utilized static marketing lists as containers to distinguish interest levels based on the participants’ actions with an email. Interacting with the email would qualify warm leads, while no interaction would signify a cold lead. Again, this example is one way to gauge interest levels based on particular interactions and then continue nurturing the lead though your company’s sales process with a follow-up call.

If you and your team are leveraging the Dynamics 365 campaign entity, you may want to consider a more advanced approach for managing your leads. Out of the box, CRM campaigns are designed to provide you with valuable information on your investment for each initiative. They can be used to group information on expenses and responses and, at the same time store emails, marketing lists, phone calls and other activities. CRM campaigns can also be associated to ClickDimensions entities, like web content and campaign automations. The campaign entity can be very powerful when working with ClickDimensions records to view all collected data in one place and to see if your marketing outreach has generated any opportunities.

The strategy we will walk though in this post will use two campaign automations, and we will associate both to a CRM campaign named Fall ’18 Trade Show. We will also use the same example from our last post where we attended a trade show, uploaded the list of attendees via the import tool and would like to nurture those participants with whom we haven’t yet closed the deal.

In the first campaign automation, we will still be gauging participants’ interest via email and then we will separate them into warm and cold containers for quick reference on the CRM campaign.

In this campaign automation, we will start by adding participants to a marketing list, and then we will send an email thanking them for their attendance. If there is an email interaction (open and/or click), we will send them to the warm leads marketing list. If no email interaction occurs with the first email, we will send them another email and check for interactions once more. If an interaction takes place, participants will go down the positive path and be added to the warm leads list. If there’s no email interaction, they will go on a negative path and be added to the cold leads marketing list. You will then be able to view this data in your CRM campaign and see the member count of those lists to make for quick reporting.

For the second campaign automation, we will look at who has filled out the form requesting a follow up call. This campaign automation will start with a Submitted Form trigger to see who’s filled out the form that was provided by a link in an email associated with the first campaign automation.

If a respondent submits the form, we will create a task with the Create Task Activity action, followed by the Campaign Response action. Then, we will add them to a hot leads marketing list and remove them from our warm leads list since they have completed our qualifying process. Again, these actions will be associated to the CRM campaign, and the CRM user who owns the lead record will receive a task in their activities.

Campaign:

User’s Task:

As previously mentioned, you can associate your ClickDimensions web content records with any CRM campaign. In our example, any submission from our form requesting an appointment will be associated with our CRM campaign and will show in the custom sub-grid we have added for the posted form entity and labeled Appointment Requests:

You can also add sub-grids to view the campaign automations that have been associated to your CRM campaign in order to quickly reference them. Also, if you’re looking to track your opportunities generated from your campaign, you can add a sub-grid for these as well. Once you have added all relevant sub-grids, you have a central location to monitor the revenue generated from your recent marketing initiatives.

Happy Marketing!

The post Managing Sales Opportunities (Part Two): Advanced Reporting via CRM Campaigns appeared first on ClickDimensions Blog.