Chapter at a Glance

Organizations rely on proper communication with their customers and prospects. Marketing is often described as a process by which an organization creates the communication and mechanisms to convince customers to purchase its products or services. Marketing typically uses numerous communication channels—direct mail, e-mail, seminars, on-site visits, outreach programs, and phone calls, for example—to communicate with customers and prospects. Firms leverage lists of customers and prospects to properly articulate the benefits of their products and services to their target audience. For example, a company might e-mail all prospects within a city about an exciting promotion occurring at a local store. Or a firm might send a renewal notice to all customers whose contracts expire in the next 30 days.

Marketing professionals can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to execute marketing strategies and segment customer lists. Marketing lists are groups of accounts, contacts, and leads that can be used in marketing campaigns and for various other business purposes. For example, a sales representative can create a marketing list of her new accounts to quickly send proposal letters and create new sales opportunities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to create a marketing list, manage list members, and create a mail merge document that includes marketing list member data.

Creating a Marketing List

The true value of a customer relationship management system lies in the quality of its data. Marketing lists provide a convenient mechanism for grouping account, contact, and lead records. Before you select the members of a list, you must first define the list itself. By default, Microsoft Dynamics CRM requires you to enter a name for the list and choose a member type. The member type must be either Account, Contact, or Lead; each list can have only one member type. Additional information can be captured, such as the source, cost, and purpose of the list. You can also configure custom attributes to further define your list.

See Also

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides the ability to import marketing lists, allowing you to quickly create multiple marketing lists by using a simple import wizard. Although you can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to import marketing lists, you will still need to add members by using the techniques described in this chapter. For more information on importing data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM, see Chapter 18.

In this exercise, you will create a marketing list of customer contacts who reside in the state of Illinois.

Note

USE a user account that has the Marketing Manager security role or another role with privileges to create marketing lists.

BE SURE TO use the Windows Internet Explorer Web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web site before beginning this exercise.

1. In the Marketing area, click Marketing Lists.

   

2. Click the New button.

   The Marketing List form opens.

   

   New Marketing LIst

3. In the Name field, enter Illinois Contacts. In the Member Type field, select Contact.

   

   Troubleshooting

   The member type cannot be changed after you save the marketing list. If you want to market to both prospects and customers, you should create multiple marketing lists.

   Important

   The Locked attribute prevents anyone from adding members to or removing them from your list. Leave this attribute set to No until you have added the desired members to your list.

4. Click the Save and Close button.

   

   Save and Close