It is no secret that customers have become increasingly demanding in recent years. It often seems that they expect you to know what they want before they do, understand how they prefer to be contacted and know whether they are ready to buy or just shopping. Furthermore, they want you to know which of your messages are of interest to them and deliver only those messages. Even if a customer interacts with you via social media, your mobile app, email, a kiosk located inside your physical store and your website, he or she expects you to track the entire communication journey and deliver content in the proper context. To accomplish this, you need data regarding every customer’s purchase history, behavior, location and preferred method of interacting with you. You may already possess the data you need, but that does not necessarily mean that you can turn the data into actionable steps. However, combining the power of Dynamics 365 with the power of Sitecore can help you achieve your goals.
The Strengths of Sitecore
Sitecore began as a content management system for managing web content. It has evolved to encompass support for multichannel, contextual marketing. Sitecore is a powerful CMS and offers many optional features that can increase its capabilities.
The Strengths of Dynamics 365
Dynamics 365 offers true customer relationship management, allowing you to build direct relationships with your customers and boost sales. The stronger your relationships are, the more you can learn about your customers’ expectations and needs. You can act upon your knowledge to identify purchasing signals, evaluate your strategies and make effective presentations.
What Using Dynamics 365 and Sitecore Together Offers
At first glance, it might appear that CRM and CMS solutions have little in common. You might also feel that you need only one of the two. However, if you look a little deeper, you can discover that the combination of Dynamics 365 and Sitecore can deliver some tangible benefits.
- You can enhance your analytics as well as your reporting capabilities. The combination lets you combine web activity with customer profiles to give you a better picture of their intentions and behaviors. For example, an existing contact who visits your website’s pricing page several times in a brief period may be receptive to a sales call.
- You can improve email campaigns. Reports of the death of email marketing are premature; email is still an effective tool for engaging customers. Dynamics 365 and Sitecore both have email tools, but combining them can boost your success. Sitecore’s email experience manager can help you create relevant, effective emails, while Dynamics allows you to target groups and relay the results to your contact profiles.
- You can deliver personalized web content. Increasingly, visitors to your website expect personalized, relevant content. You can use the data gathered about each contact in your CRM to allow Sitecore to display content that has been tailored to each visitor’s needs.
- You can improve your customer service. Customer retention is a critical part of building or growing a business. Integrating Sitecore with Dynamics can make it easier to give your customers better service. For example, you could design a form for your website that allows customers to submit support tickets or build surveys to obtain information. The information entered can be transferred automatically to your CRM.
In short, Sitecore or Dynamics alone can offer many benefits for your sales team. However, when you combine them, you maximize each software’s benefits while simultaneously creating other advantages that neither can deliver without the other. Together, they can help you achieve greater success in personalizing your content, attracting new customers and enhancing your customer service.
