Mass E-mail Options in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Laura Robinson and I contributed on a recent post describing some of the ways you can send mass e-mail with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Here is a quick summary of the native options.

Dynamics CRM Mass E-Mail Summary

The following table outlines some key differences of the mass e-mail options for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Each of these options is also available for Dynamics CRM Online as well! Please see the full article for further details on each of the native options.

	Direct E-mail	Quick Campaigns	Workflow	Direct E-mail via Mail Merge
Uses templates	Yes, E-mail templates*	No	Yes, E-mail templates*	Yes, Mail Merge Templates*
Can include images and hyperlinks in the e-mail message	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Available entities	Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Accounts and Quotes	Only Leads, Accounts, Contacts and marketing lists	Most entities including custom entities	Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Accounts, Quotes, and any custom entities
E-mail recipient selection	All or some of the records in a view	All or some of the records in a view	Can only apply manual workflow to all records in a page (250 records max)	All or some of the records in a view
Can include a file attachment	No	No	Yes	No
Works with campaign responses	No	Yes	No	Yes**
Tracks e-mail opens	No	No	No	No
Tracks hyperlinks clicked in the e-mail message	No	No	No	No
Provides unsubscribe information	No	No	No	Yes**

* See the Email Templates v. Mail Merge Templates blog post for comparison.
** These options are only available when the direct e-mail via mail merge is started from the Outlook client.

Although the out-of-the-box options for mass e-mailing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM can meet many organizations’ needs, companies like ExactTarget offer an add-on product for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that includes many additional e-mail marketing features and benefits. ExactTarget offers its e-mail marketing services on a hosted basis, and provides direct integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premise product so that users can send e-mail through the ExactTarget service directly from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM interface.

By using the ExactTarget service for sending mass e-mail, Microsoft Dynamics CRM users can enjoy the following additional benefits:

• ExactTarget sends the e-mail messages through its servers, not through the outgoing e-mail server configured for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This allows users to send a large volume of e-mail without affecting their internal network. Outsourcing the message delivery to ExactTarget also helps improve message deliverability because ExactTarget works with the various e-mail companies to ensure consistent delivery.
• ExactTarget automatically captures response data such as e-mail opens, clicks in messages, bounces, and unsubscribes. Almost all of the response data downloads into the Microsoft Dynamics CRM user interface so that you can report on it, access it using Advanced Find, and so on. The default ExactTarget for Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation includes data such as unique opens, total opens, unique clicks, deliverability rate, and bounce rate.
• Users have more control over the delivery of their mass e-mail messages because they can schedule a specific date and time to start the message send. In addition, users can throttle the e-mail to send only a certain number of messages per hour.
• ExactTarget offers a proprietary user interface in which users can create and design their e-mail messages to include images and hyperlinks.
• ExactTarget Email Marketing Automation functionality allows marketers the ability to create and manage programs that will automate email campaigns using the native Microsoft CRM workflow capabilities. Common scenarios for the Email Marketing Automation functionality include:
• Automatic confirmation responses to customer feedback, purchase completion, whitepaper downloads, etc
• Welcome message when someone completes a subscription or membership.
• Customer alerts based on activity with their account.
• ExactTarget Smart Capture will allow marketers to configure landing pages on ExactTarget’s site that will capture information, perform optional logic, and read and/or write data to and from Dynamics CRM.