Hello everyone,
we have a customer who wants to do LinkedIn-campaigning to generate leads. They have not done before, but as they are starting they want to combine this directly from the beginning with their Dynamics 365 Online Customer Engagement v9 Instance.
We consulted to use Dynamics 365 for Marketing module (as they would use other features also when they would have it - like Newsletter, Event Management etc) and then use the Customer Journey.
As a first draft for a poof of concept we think on a process like this:
Now I have some questions. Maybe you guys can help me on that to find the best practise. I am not a marketer and have no experience on LinkedIn campainging/integration - only something of research, (docs.microsoft.com and trial-videos) which I did the last days.
Lets assume we have Dynamics 365 for Marketing up and running and all prerequisites for linkedin (like an business account at linkedin etc).
1) Do you think this process is doable with Dynamics 365 for Marketing OOB-Functionalities? Or do you see any difficulties with customization/configuration?
2) If we would not be using the Lead Gen Forms, but a solution with a landing Page (where a user would then enter your details) and a third party tool which captures the data from the landing page to the crm, what would you suggest here? I just had a look at zapier e.g. Or can we use the dynamics for marketing "landing pages" (I think they are called web forms?). What would the way be, create a landing page in crm and then use this link in the campaign-ad in linked in? How would the connection then look like?
3) Most interesting question: Which KPI's/Information are given back from the LinkedIn-Campaing-Reporting/Monitoring to the CRM after the Campaign is done? Of course you have the leads (with Name, Mail etc from the lead gen form) stored in CRM (so you have the "number of leads", you have also the "lead source" which directs to the different linkedin-campaigns. But what else to we get back to CRM to do a campaign reporting in CRM? Or du you suggest to do the reportng in linkedin camapign manager? Or (as we will have PowerBI integration in future) can we send data to PowerBI and just showing them on BI-dashboards in CRM later?
Please have in mind, that we will definetly have 2 levels of implementation - one proof of concept with kind of low budget - and later (when more budet is available) then a more integrated level.
Thanks in advance for your ideas.
Tim
Hi Saurabh,
thanks a lot for your reply!
Yes you are right, I just had a loom at most of the microsoft-docs already, but to find the right ones is not always easy :)
I also just get more information meanwhile about the marketing forms, but thanks a lot though!!!
So just have two scenarios in mind:
1)
- Creating the Ad in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager
- Create/Add the Lead Gen Form there
- Add the Campain in the CRM Customer Journey
- Run the Campaign in LinkedIn
- Analyse in LinkedIn Campaign Manager (about reach, clicks etc)
- Analyse in CRM the Number of Leads and the Origin (which Campaign)
- Create follow-up-mails in for all the generated leads in the CRM.
I think this should not be too complicated if everything is set up correct (licence, crm user, linkedin account etc).
2)
- Creating the Ad in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager
- Create an external Landing Page
- Create a Marketing Form in CRM
- Embed the Form Code in the Landing Page
- Add the Marketing Form in the CRM Customer Journey
- Run the Campaign
- Analyse in LinkedIn Campaign Manager about reach, clicks etc
- Analyse in CRM the Number of Leads and the Origin (which Campaign)
- Analyse in Google Analytics other KPIs regarding the Landing Page (like website visits etc.)
- Create follow-up-mails in for all the generated leads in the CRM.
As I read correctly last days in all the documentation regarding the marking forms this can also be done with OOB funcionalities. But at least seems a bit more complex and (especially for giving cost-estimations to the customer) seems to have some more uncertainties :)
Also I found out, and you mentioned as well, that the Reporting will have to be done in several different places (like in the scenarios above: Some KPIs in LinkedIn Campaign Manager (reach etc), some in CRM and some in Google Analytics (if a website is involved). So we just through away the idea of having one Place (assumingly a Dashboard) with combined information. At least for the first proof of concept seems to be okay with this solution.
To summarize:
We have not done some LinkedIn-Integration before, so everything up to now is just "theoretical" knowledge. We do have an Demo-Instance for Marketing App, but no Demo for LinkedIn (Hard to get smth like this, even as a MS Partner) and also no own LinkedIn Campaig Manager-Access. Otherwise we would have tested before in this Demos.
Do you have some kind of "practical" advise? Where are (from technical perspective) the biggest differences between those two scenarios (Lead Gen Form vs. Landing Page with embedded CRM Marketing Form)?
What points to give special attention to? Where are the usual issue/trouble points? Any experiences about non-working CRM features or restrictions/limitations which you do not get out of the doc-pages? Any best practises for both scenarios?
Would really appreciate having you feedback.
And once again, big thanks so far!
Hey Tim
Thanks for sharing details of your scenario.
For 1) should be doable using the out of the box functionality.
Looks like you might have already looked at the docs but this is a good starting point -
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/marketing/linkedin-overview
For 2) I am curious to understand what you are trying to achieve? Do you still want to use LinkedIn Ads but simply point it to a website rather than use a leadgen form? At a high level this should be possible by using a Marketing form on the hosted website - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/marketing/marketing-forms
Beyond the tech solution though there might be other things to consider here wrt the overall experience. I am guessing here that you might end up seeing very different conversion/drop off rates if you go through a website and then a form vs using linkedIns built in lead gen form. LinkedIn's tips and best practices might be a good place to understand your options - https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/success/best-practices
For 3) CRM mostly contains the things you mentioned - The lead details, how it was created, and lead source. For additional metrics like overall spend/conversion rates etc. you do need to look at LinkedIn Campaign Manager itself. Curious to understand what kind of combined reports you were interested in? Dynamics 365 Marketing does let you generate PowerBI reports for e.g. -> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/marketing/marketing-analytics/analytics-gallery-program#lead-generation
The leads generated from LinkedIn would show up in this report as being generated through Outbound activities. You could tweak this further to filter it down to specific LinkedIn form etc. You may need to manually pull in the LinkedIn data to such a report if you want to have the specific cost / spend info from LinkedIn.
Hope that helps. Lmk if you have more questions.
Thanks
Saurabh
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