Send email to list of crm contacts without campaign?

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Posted on by mc625569

Hi All,

We have a medium sized exchange install, and are looking for some type of centralized contact management solution.

Our ceo wants a simple "outlook based" way to quickly search for a list of contacts (say by zipcode) and then on the spot send this group an email .

the content of this email would change every time, so it can't be a template. The number of recipients would be a static group (about 10-15 board members).

Is there a way to do this without creating a marketing list, and then a quick campaign? This is far more involved than composing an email in outlook and manually adding people from his contact list?

It seems there is no manual way in dynamics to send an email to a specific group of people without a quick campaign - which compared to a simple email is really cumbersome.

Am I missing something?

Thanks

MC.

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CRM Manager on at

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Hi

You would be able to send emails to the CRM contacts or leads as CRM email activity and offcourse you can track the email conversations. But if you are looking to track the responses then campaign would be necessary. Hope this helps. Also, a plug-in addon may help with contact search by zip. Hope this helps.

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RuneDaub 3,795 on at

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Well.. Actually I would not create a quick campagin.. if its a static group, then I would create a marketing list containing that group of people and then use the marketing list for creating the email.

There is even an option to send out email based on the marketing list.

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mc625569 on at

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Is there a way to send an email to all the members of a marketing list without having to go through the mail merge process.

In the same way you can click on a single contact and send an email. we'd like to do that with a marketing list or selection of mutliple contacts.

Quickcampaigns, and even mail merges are too involved for what we are looking for.

In order to sell CRM to our organization, we have to satisfy the need of our CEO - to quickly send emails to a list, and to our CEO - quickly means in the same fasion he's used to in outlook . Extra steps - merging/campaigning will confuse/bore/anger him :)

I understand that CRM is not really a replacement for outlook contacts - its a much richer application, but in order to get buy in for the implementation we must show that this type of centralized contact management can easily lead to on demand emails to groups with minimal/no additional steps.

I know this is a specific requrest, but when the CEO asks, we try and answer:)

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Gus Gonzalez 27,113 on at

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Hello,

The process to send an email to many people on a list with Quick Campaigns involves 3 steps included on an easy to follow wizard.

If this is too complicated, can you explain what is your CEO exactly looking for?

Thanks.

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Mike W. 60 on at

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We are completely baffled by this. Why isn't there a big clear button to 'email' a marketing list? We don't see it.

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mc625569 on at

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Yes 3 steps is 3 steps more than what he's used to. Basically he is looking for a way that our organization can have exchange distribution lists that show up in all employees outlooks. These lists would change frequently enough, and the contact base is large enough that exchange contacts are not

If he wants to send a list to group a he can build grop a in crm (or have his assistant do it) and then click group a and hit an email, button.

It seems like a no brainier feature to me. A tracking free option to email, quickly without the extra steps.

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Mike W. 60 on at

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I agree 100% with mc625569.

Worse still, these mysterious and magic '3 steps' are completely opaque (and well nigh impossible to find). Basically MS CRM has a lot of videos telling you all the great things you can do with their tool but when it comes time to actually do stuff there is crap for direction on the linear iterative steps you take to actually do these great things. What does exist is about five versions old (no ribbon and the file pathways have all changed so much that you are left guessing at the redesign and poking around).

Can someone just please post these simple 1,2,3 steps here on how to send an email to a marketing list? I can't believe I'm having to ask for that on a support forum.

Why not this - let sales people choose the marketing lists they build in the drop down accessed via the "to" field of Outlook. I can now see Accounts, Leads etc.. accessible there... but wouldn't it make sense to have ye ol marketing lists there too?

After investing months of time and plenty of money migrating over to MS CRM - it blows the mind that something we didn't even think of asking about - emailing one of these marketing lists - isn't idiot proof obvious.

Please - can someone just put those three steps here? An hour into searching and poking around it blows the mind that I haven't seen how to do this. What am I missing?

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mc625569 on at

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Mike W.

The only way I've figured out - is to open your marketing list, go to the "add tab" and then click "mail merge members on list" and then choose "blank document" which then opens word, you type in your message then choose "finish and merge".

I have no idea what other 3 steps people were talking about - but this is the only way I've been able to figure out - its is absolutely horrible for sending an email to a list. I couldn't think of a better way to waste the awesome dynamic list feature for xRM customers than remove easy access to what I'd think would be a really important feature /purpose of having a list in the first place...

Again, if someone made a plugin to do the obvious . I think dynamics could be a fantastic product, far better than salesforce, but this omission will prevent us from using it.

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Melissa Boyd 5 on at

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Hi, I'm just a CRM user but I use the direct mail option 99% of the time. Just go to contacts, use CTRL and click each contact you want to send to and then follow the next step to create the email and send. It's really as easy as that.

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Chris Paoli 440 on at

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Did you ever get an answer to your question? i agree with your question/frustration. The simple things are difficult to do with dynamics.

Thanks,

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