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Using Dynamics 365 for Sales Leads in the customer journey in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

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Posted on by CRMYogi

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Hello all,

We are evaluating dynamics 365 for marketing app and we have stumbled into an issue that could be a deal breaker. We use the sales app to work with leads and there is a comprehensive business process flow to nurture a lead into a prospect. For eg, meetings and negotiations that happen during this entire cycle. A lead stays a lead for a long long time untill it is qualified to become a contact (i.e prospect).

Now at the same time we would also like to target these leads in the marketing campaigns via emails etc. That's where dynamics 365 for marketing comes into the picture. We want to use segments and customer journeys however unfortunately it seems that only contacts can be targeted in customer journey, and not leads.

So we are in a fix now because unlike what Microsoft says, these two apps don't really compliment each other. How can we target leads in customer journeys? Has anybody else comes across this? What would you advise?

Please note that I have already read the documentation where Microsoft suggests to use MarketingOnly flag on contact but I think that's outright lame and dirty solution for this.

Regards

CRMYogi

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CRMYogi 505 on at

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RE: Using Dynamics 365 for Sales Leads in the customer journey in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Thank you everyone for your responses. Unfortunately none of the suggestions could fit our case. We had to discard usage of Lead entity in Sales. When I spoke to Microaoft product manager, he acknowledged that this is an improvement area that will be looked into for later releases.

Regards

Yogesh
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d_radulova 2 User Group Leader on at

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RE: Using Dynamics 365 for Sales Leads in the customer journey in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Hi @CRM Yogi,

We have successfully implemented examples of what you are trying to do a number of times.

It does take some time to get used to it, but indeed works well as Clofly has been explaining.

A few points from me,

- You have the advantage that you are just starting to use Marketing, which means you won't need to populate marketing only contact for historical records, just make sure it's populated in the Marketing app going forward.

- Then all you need is a few tweaks to the views and this can resolve your issue around people finding and seeing more contacts than they should.

All views that sales people have access to should have marketing contacts =no, or filter on sales ready flag.

- D365 Marketing Lead scoring models can really complement your complex nurturing process to get holistic idea of the relationship.

Let me know if you want to chat further.

Thanks,

-DD
cloflyMao 25,198 on at

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RE: Using Dynamics 365 for Sales Leads in the customer journey in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Hi CRMYogi,

1. You could create a new app in app designer and only show sales contacts,

while in marketing app, only show marketing contacts.(Also restrict only users with marketing security roles to access marketing app)

Sales only app:

Marketing app(only marketing contacts):

2. Add workflow to set contact to marketing contact if he/she was from marketing activities.

eg: if a new record source marketing page contains data, then update marketing only field..

In conclusion, we could only distinguish those two types of contacts by flags with our own business logic at present.

Please request your requirement to Idea forum if you had any thought,

or you could share it in current thread and I'll try to find whether it could be achieved with available features.

Regards,

Clofly
CRMYogi 505 on at

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RE: Using Dynamics 365 for Sales Leads in the customer journey in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Hi Clofly,

Thank you for the prompt response.

I don't see a technical challenge in implementing MarketingOnly flag, just that it doesn't seem like a clean solution.

Imagin the overhead in changing every contact view in MSD, ensuring this check in every development or configuration meant strictly for prospect data, and the most important and difficult of all - explaining users this difference between two apps that are supposed to work seamlessly. Users will always question the definition of lead in Marketing Vis a vis it's definition in marketing app. Same for contact. Whenever they do advance find in sales or create segments in marketing app. More I think of it, more it seems like a bad design to me. I may be wrong and hopefully I can hear from you/someone about a real case study of implementing this.

Regards,

CRMYogi
cloflyMao 25,198 on at

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RE: Using Dynamics 365 for Sales Leads in the customer journey in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Hi CRMYogi,

Could you share your thought that why the flag would fail to meet your business requirement?

Because marketing application takes Contact to stands for people, so it would be different compared with concepts in CE.

Sales part is still available in marketing application so you can still use business process flow to your leads.

In my thought, you could build lead score model for your leads(obviously need to be associated with a parent contact record),

when these people did enough interactions(*) which could nuture them to real Contact(Prospect) you want, then filter them out in segment to send them further marketing email.

* interactions examples:

-> email interactions: opened time

-> marketing page interactions: visited time

-> marketing form interactions: submitted time(with their update information, these data will reflect to fileds change and also become nuturing filter)

etc.

Regards,

Clofly