The lines between sales and marketing continue to blur. If sales and marketing teams are not on the same page or unaware of what each other are doing to further the sales funnel, valuable time and effort can be wasted. For organizations that are using Dynamics 365 Sales, the Campaigns entity provides an introductory way to create and track marketing campaign performance and activity without a dedicated marketing application.

What can be done with Campaigns?

Let’s start with the basics. Campaigns in Dynamics 365 Sales can create campaign activities like e-mails and assign them to team members, assign marketing lists created from contacts in Dynamics 365, and monitor audience response and campaign costs. A separate entity called Quick Campaigns provides Dynamics 365 users to quickly create one activity like an email and distribute it right away to a single marketing list.

Out-of-the-box campaign records include options to specify the details of the proposed campaign. These options include Campaign Name, Status Details, Estimate Revenue, Currency, Campaign Type, Expected Response %, and Start Date/End Date. For campaigns that are still in the proposal state, a campaign record can still be created to denote its current state by setting Status Details to Proposed and adding a proposed Start Date/End Date.

Using Campaigns to track campaigns in 3rd party systems

Once campaign records are created, they can be associated to lead records to monitor where leads are coming from and analyze campaign effectiveness based on lead qualification and close rate. Dynamics 365 Sales users can create campaign records for campaigns happening elsewhere like Google Adwords or whatever email marketing application the marketing team is using. When a lead comes in, the salesperson can set the Lead Source field to Marketing Campaign and associate the related campaign record.

From there, quick reports in Dynamics 365 or Power BI can be created to analyze which leads were tied to marketing campaigns and how successful the campaign was at bringing in leads that were likely to qualify or turn into a sale.

What about Dynamics 365 Marketing?

Campaigns and Quick Campaigns are not a replacement for digital marketing platforms like Dynamics 365 Marketing or Mailchimp. Campaigns and Quick Campaigns in Dynamics 365 Sales provide basic ways to send emails to marketing lists and track campaign info, but do not reach the detail or content management capabilities in applications like Dynamics 365 Marketing. Dynamics 365 Marketing should be considered by organizations that are utilizing Dynamics 365 Sales and want a digital marketing application to handle email marketing, event management, or other digital marketing efforts. The biggest benefit of Dynamics 365 Marketing is that it utilizes the Dynamics 365 database meaning data is always up to date with sales data and vice versa. When leads come into Dynamics 365 Sales from a Dynamics 365 Marketing campaign, source customer journey, page, form, or email are automatically filled in making campaign tracking all the easier.