With single sends, you can send a one-to-one email from Microsoft Dynamics 365, to an individual contact, or lead. What’s more, you can automate single sends, triggering them when actions have been completed, such as when an order is placed. It allows account managers, sales, or in fact any CRM user, to send beautifully crafted (kudos to Dotdigital) transactional emails that will also keep the brand police happy. Sales teams on the ground are then empowered to send at scale without the need to reach out to marketing each and every time. Meanwhile, marketing is happy as every send retains brand voice, and style.

Most notably, the single send function leverages CRM-data which makes mass communication simultaneously completely unique and personalized for each and every message.  This winning combination is why we continue to prioritize our Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration and Unified Interface support. We know personally just how powerful it is, and want to pass on this empowerment to our customers and partners alike.

We best-practice what we preach

Our customers use single-sends for a myriad of reasons, the most common of which is automatically triggering personalized transactional messages such as Welcome and Thank You emails. But we use them as an organization ourselves too, and caught up with Katerina Bent, technical analyst and developer at dotdigital, to find out how:

Setting expectations is half the work

“Personalized emailed are sent to new customers, giving a brief summary of our onboarding process. It sets expectations, by letting them know that we’ll be in touch soon to introduce the individuals that will be looking after them. It’s a powerful automation, because it combines data from our CRM with the functionality of Dotdigital, and enables us to scale communications that feel personal to the end-user.”

Single sends help us keep step with business changes

“As your business grows and develops, some projects and priorities will make way for others. Over the course of the relationship with a customer, we regularly find that customer needs change and so do what they require from their plan with us. An acquisition may lead to additional child account structures being required, or a company merger may lead to the need for data consolidation. Business hat aside, as humans we have a tendency to resist change, and so we leverage single sends, triggering emails as these processes occur, to ensure that we keep step and that our clients remain informed. Especially if you work in B2B, you’ll know it’s important to keep customers feeling happy and secure; burning these bridges can be a very expensive affair indeed.”

First stop single sends, next stop, programs!

Single sends users start seeing the value of transactional messaging in no time. (By the way, you can read all about how to set them up here). But the next stop on your way to a mature customer engagement strategy is to enroll individuals into programs which send a series of automated messages. And imagine being able to do this straight from your CRM…

For example, let’s say you’re a salesperson working within a membership organization. You have a contact or lead you want to nurture, so they can better understand the value of their membership plans, moving them closer to conversion, or perhaps renewing their membership. In just a couple of clicks, you’ve enrolled them into a dedicated nurturing automation program to do exactly that. With Dotdigital for Microsoft Dynamics 365, this is achievable for your sales teams too.

Learn how to enroll contacts into automation programs here.

Use cases in higher education (and what we can learn from them)

Marketing and communication managers at higher education facilities like universities are focused on engaging with enquirers and make large use of our single send functionality in conjunction with workflows. This is because they send emails to prospective students (or if you’re not in the biz, think of them as leads) tapping into custom entities such as ‘applications’. (A custom entity is simply a database field that is not provided out-of-the-box with Dynamics). Rather handily, with MS Dynamics 365, you could even personalize the friendly from-name to @course_facilitator@ or @department@, so the recipient can immediately see the relevance and importance of the email.

These features are invaluable to higher ed communication managers, as prospective students often don’t know straight away in which area of study they want to go into. They could fill up multiple online forms to get information on the courses they are interested in, before making a final decision on which course to apply for. For anyone in B2B who sees their prospects daily enter the information stage of the funnel, you will sympathize!

Get the most out of Microsoft Dynamics 365

Thinking of using Microsoft Dynamics 365 for your CRM? Get in touch to see a demo of the Dotdigital Unified Interface solution. If you’re already a Dotdigital user, speak to your account manager or check out our Help Center for more information.

Among people that have been doing it since before I was born, the ones I owe so much to, the regulars and the ones that allowed themselves to be there for the first time.

Pride is a day of gratitude, emotions and of course celebration. And yes, people celebrate in different ways. Some like to dance in extravagant outfits on top of moving buses, others (like me) just like to march quietly holding a meaningful sign or t-shirt.

Pride is what you make of it.

My pride celebrates diversity, the right to be and the progress made by our community.

What really moved me this year was seeing few of you bring your children to the parade. It’s to those people I particularly want to say: thank you!

What a great thing to do, take a stand for diversity and inspire the next generation, setting the example. That’s such an astonishing and selfless act which I found simply heart-warming. To show your children that we can walk side by side with those from different paths and to normalize and encourage the right to stand up for equality; it passes on a great lesson.

One day they might have friends, relatives, children come into their lives that may need them to be open-minded. I hope this experience will help them to embrace diversity, be open to feel and be whoever they are without any fear or shame.

I’ve going to leave you with the magic worlds of Hannah Gadsby from her wonderful show ‘Nanette’ currently on Netflix UK.

[…] I believe we could paint a better world if we learned how to see it from all perspectives, as many perspectives as we possibly could.

Because diversity is strength.

Difference is a teacher.

Fear difference, you learn nothing. […]

Fancy being a part of our proud and empowered team? Check out our current career opportunities.

If you are looking to move to Dotdigital, one of our digital program managers will be in touch to guide you through the onboarding process.

When migrating, you should consider all of these aspects:

Email list(s)

Export your list(s) from your old ESP before they lock you out of your own account! This can be a unique list or separate lists and depends on how you used to manage your subscribers and/or how you’re looking to manage them with your new ESP. This might be a good time to look at your list hygiene; for example, by introducing an email preference center for existing subscribers or using services such as Kickbox.

Suppression list(s)

Don’t forget to migrate all suppressed contacts, the email addresses that hard bounce, and also those who’ve unsubscribed.

Google Analytics

If you use Google Analytics or any other tracking systems, don’t forget to set them up with your new ESP immediately so you’ll be able to compare the performance.

Sending ‘from address’

You probably won’t be able to carry over your current sending ‘from address’, so start thinking of a new one that doesn’t stray too far from the original. Consistency is important, after all.

Dedicated IP

If you are looking to move to a dedicated IP, please consider that the warm-up process will take an average of eight weeks.

IP certification

If you use an IP certification tool such as Return Path, don’t forget to let them know about the move.

Emails and email templates

Export your existing emails and email templates in case you need them for the future; it won’t hurt to save them for reference.

Reports/behavioral data

You’ll want to have access to as much data/as many reports as you can, so export all historical data/reports and store them safely for future reference. Once your existing provider switches you off, you might not have access to these assets ever again.

Sign-up forms/marketing automations

If you have any sign-up forms, remember to recreate those in your new ESP. Keep an eye on all the data entry points and re-map them in your new provider to ensure everything’s feeding into the correct places.

It’s a similar story with any automations that you have live: take notes of the flows so you can rebuild them easily.

Integrations

It’s essential to know exactly how you currently collect your data and how you expect this to flow to your new system. In this instance, it’s really important that you involve your tech team and your new provider. The sooner you start the conversation the better – you don’t want any unexpected delays or surprises!

If you’re moving over to Dotdigital, check out the ‘Getting started’ section of our Support Portal; it’s full of information on everything from creating an address book to choosing an email template.