March 23, 2012 – When I first started doing marketing automation integrated within Dynamics CRM, the only thing I cared about was email tracking. That is, after sending a marketing email, knowing which emails were delivered or bounced, which ones were opened or clicked through, and so forth. But the more marketing I do, the more I appreciate the importance of other features as a complement to email tracking, and one of those – analytics – is the topic of this article.

March 16, 2012 – Part 1 of this series of this series showed how to use the goal management features of CRM 2011 to create click-through goals for a ClickDimensions email marketing campaign. Part 2 goes a step further and shows how to create conversion goals for email marketing.

March 5, 2012 – Recently I finished writing a couple of chapters for an upcoming book, co-authored by several Microsoft CRM MVPs. One of my chapters was on Dynamics CRM 2011 Goal Management, which for me is turning out to be one of those the more I use it the more uses I find for it features. This article is the first of a series on what I find to be a particularly useful application of the goal management features: how to use them to manage marketing automation and email marketing goals.

January 26, 2012 – Today I had the pleasure of co-presenting a webinar with John Gravely and Matt Wittemann of ClickDimensions, with the snazzy title, “CRM MVPs Reveal Best Practices: What Works in Marketing Automation”. Not only was the title good, but I thought the session was as well. Here’s a a summary of my part of the webinar, and a link to the recorded session.

December 3, 2011 – I recently began using ClickDimensions for my crm-centric marketing automation solution, and it’s been working great. This article summarizes the primary benefits of marketing automation add-ons for Dynamics CRM, and uses ClickDimenions examples to illustrate. Enjoy!

October 15, 2011 – In an earlier article, I summarized the most important new features in the upcoming “R7 Service Update” to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. That article generated lots of comments and questions so I thought I’d address them all in one place rather than a bunch of separate threads. Plus, I cover the Activity Feeds feature here, wihch I left out of the first article.

June 20, 2011 – Configure the CRM 2011 Client for Outlook 2010 to use the CRM form for synchronized records, and then add shortcuts for CRM records to the Outlook Quick Access Toolbar.

April 1, 2011 – The Dynamics CRM 2011 upgrade is a juggernaut, partly because it’s a great product at a significantly lower price point than its competitors, and partly because of solid, aggressive marketing. Apparently the marketing’s going to get cranked up another notch or two: I’ve learned recently of ongoing discussions to release branded client versions of Dynamics CRM on two of Microsoft’s hottest devices: the Windows Phone 7 and the KinectXBOX add-on.

August 22, 2010 – Lauren Carlson wrote an article recently that I liked a lot and recommend, “Dynamics CRM Industry Solutions: Our 20 Favorites”. Check it out and let me know what you think. What’s your favorite vertical?

May 19, 2010 – In part 1 of this 2-part series on digital marketing integrated in Dynamics CRM, I focused on CoreMotives’ e-mail marketing features. This article covers the web analytics piece, and why I like it in my CRM.