The power of 1:1 with single-sends

Let’s explain… Single sends are used in conjunction with Dynamics workflows (or Power Automate flows) and our Dotdigital Dynamics solution. It allows companies to automate business processes and email sends without human interaction, all within the Dotdigital app in Dynamics. It’s the ultimate tool when it comes to working smarter, not harder.

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.