Contacts and companies

Article
05/15/2018
4 minutes to read

Applies To: Dynamics Marketing

Important

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing has been discontinued and is no longer available. All customer data related to this product has been permanently deleted from all Microsoft servers and is no longer available for extraction. This documentation is being provided for historical purposes only.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing includes powerful, intuitive, and fully integrated functions to help users manage clients, vendors, and prospects. It makes it easier to find information and to see 'who' is doing what. Dynamics Marketing has a database where all prospect, lead, and customer information can be stored for access and analysis. You can learn more about customers, clients and prospects, make better decisions, and determine which campaigns and programs are most profitable. Additionally, list management and segmentation features let users perform a variety of tasks related to contact lists. You can:

Get clean, updated, and accurate information about customers and prospects.
Query, analyze, and define targeted customer segments.
Run counts and generate mailing lists for direct mail, telemarketing, and email campaign execution.
Create and store all campaign information such as cost, budget, and offers in one place.
Analyze results: Revenue, sales, orders, products purchased, open rates, click-throughs, cost per lead, and cost per order, Media Efficiency Rate, ROI, and more.
Build and nurture qualified prospect lists that you can use again and again. More information: List management and segmentation.

Prerequisites

Users must have the appropriate User Role to view clients, staff, and vendor contact and company records. More information: Work with user accounts and staff contacts

Companies and contacts

Dynamics Marketing lets users create records to track all the activities for contacts and the companies they work for. Contacts can be linked to companies; activities (projects, tasks, financial transactions, etc.) for all the contacts linked to a company roll-up to the company.

Typical agency set up

Agencies use staff, vendor, clients, and marketing functions.

The marketing group

Dynamics Marketing has a marketing group to help manage marketing databases of contacts and companies. Use the marketing group for:

Sales. Add prospects to the marketing group to keep them separate from clients, vendors and staff.
Marketing databases that belong to clients. Marketing contacts can kept separate for each client. More information: Manage marketing databases of different companies

Clients

Clients are contacts and companies you work for that may be invoiced for products and services.

Vendors

Add vendors, that is, companies and contacts that do work for you and that you purchase products and services from, to the Vendors group.

Staff

Staff are the contacts that work for a site company, but are not necessarily employees of that site company. Staff contacts are displayed on the Staff page in the Site Company folder. More information: Work with user accounts and staff contacts

Move companies and contacts from group to group

Dynamics Marketing lets you move companies and contacts from one group to another.

From marketing group to client and/or vendor groups:

If you change the group of a marketing contact that is linked to a marketing company to the vendor and/or client groups, Dynamics Marketing will make a copy of the company in the vendor and/or client group.
If you change the group of a marketing company that has linked marketing contacts to the vendor and/or client groups, Dynamics Marketing will 'move' the company and link the marketing contact to it.

From client and/or vendor to client and/or vendor groups:

If you change the group of a client contact that is linked to a client company (and vice versa) to the vendor group, Dynamics Marketing will 'move' the contact and leave the company in its original group.
If you change the group of a client company that is linked to a client contact (and vice versa) to the vendor group, Dynamics Marketing will 'move' the company and leave the contact in its original group.

Teams

Contacts can also be organized in teams. Teams can include staff, client, and vendor contacts. More information: Define and manage teams

Channels

The channel functions in Dynamics Marketing provide a consolidated or roll-up view of all marketing activities that are related to a specific marketing channel. More information: View channels

Departments and Divisions

The departments function can provide a consolidated or roll-up view of all marketing activities that are related to a specific department and/or division of your company. More information: Set up divisions and departments to reflect your organization

Email marketing

The Email Marketing tab on the Contact maintenance page lists every email marketing message that was sent to a contact and its status. The Click-Through Details pop-up window displays the date and time of each hyperlink in the message that was clicked by the contact.

Locations

The location function in Dynamics Marketing is particularly useful if your marketing efforts support retail outlets, stores, and franchise units, and let you provide a consolidated or roll-up view of all marketing activities that are related to a specific location. More information: Manage regions and locations

Lists

The Lists function is for defining lists of contacts to be used for marketing campaigns, events, and programs. More information: List management and segmentation.

Parent, agency and advertiser company functions

Dynamics Marketing has a number of advanced features to help manage complex relationships. These functions are typically used by marketing services providers who provide services to clients directly and to agencies with clients. More information: Parent, agency, and advertiser companies