Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing Automation Tools integration

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Why Dynamics 365 Sales?

With the change in customer expectations, the very nature of Sales is changing. Customers are beginning to expect more personalized experiences. In response to this expectation, technology has stepped up to fill the gap in the knowledge of customer preferences and habits and helps facilitate better services and better experiences for the customer. Dynamics 365 Sales are one of the answers to this need for knowledge of customer preference. Dynamics 365 Sales is of two types: Dynamics 365 Sales Professional and Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise. In this blog, we will be focusing on Dynamics 365 Sales Professional.

Dynamics 365 Sales Professional

Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is a CRM software that is meant to be a more compact version of  D365 Sales Enterprise. Microsoft Dynamics 365 sales has a lot of benefits but not everyone can afford the full enterprise suite, and, in many cases, they have no need for all the functionality present in the Enterprise Suite. In such a scenario Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is best. It allows them to focus only on the Sales features of Dynamics 365 without paying for the other features which they might not require.
The capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales Professional include:
  • Engagement: Sales Professional allows users to identify the key stakeholders and personalize the interaction with the customers. Productivity: Collaborate with colleagues and customers and work on the go even without connectivity. Microsoft Dynamic 365 Sales professionals create winning Sales proposals and access relevant documents.
  • Performance: Gain real-time insights and reports and make informed decisions with current data.
  • Setup: Sales Professional can be set up and be up and running in a few hours. With existing Office settings, the setup can be accelerated allowing you to get it ready for use immediately without a long waiting time.
  • Customization: They are a lot of pre-configured tools ready for use as soon as you finish setting up. No need to waste time configuring the tools for your use. You can also save time with a single configuration process that supports multiple platforms.

Sales Professional vs Sales Enterprise:

As stated earlier, Sales Professional has lesser functionality than the Enterprise Suite with a primary focus on the core sales functionalities and at a much lesser price. A more detailed comparison of their features can be seen below:
Features Sales Professional Sales Enterprise
User licenses
No maximum or minimum license restriction.
No maximum or minimum license restriction.
Access to Sales entities: Includes Leads, Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts, Activities, Campaigns, Products, Price Lists, Quotes, Orders and Dashboards
Present
Present
Access to Outlook, Teams, Excel, and Power BI.
Yes
Yes
Custom Entities
15
Unlimited
Customization Entitlements: Guided process flows
5
Unlimited
Customization Entitlements: Forms and views
2/entity
Unlimited
Customization Entitlements: System Charts and Dashboards
5
Unlimited
Customization Entitlements: Queues
15
Unlimited
Sales Goals
Not Available
Available
Territory Management
Not Available
Available
Marketing Lists
Not Available
Available
Marketing Campaigns
Not Available
Available
Quick Campaigns
Not Available
Available
Hierarchies
Not Available
Available
Forecasting
Not Available
Available
Product Families & Relationships
Not Available
Available
Competitor tracking
Not Available
Available
Sales Playbook
Not Available
Available
Knowledgebase
Not Available
Available
Gamification
Not Available
Available
Cloud Storage
Default entitlements. Additional per user capacity entitlement not applicable.
Along with default, additional entitlement includes Common Data Service Database Capacity: 250MB per user license and Common Data Service File Capacity: 2GB per user license
Power Apps: Access to run custom applications or access custom portals.
Not Available
Unlimited access.

Comparison with Competitors:

With the above table, we can see the comparison between the two Sales offerings of Microsoft. What it doesn’t show though is the difference between Sales Professional and its competitors based on a few simple criteria. The five competitors we are going to look at are Zendesk Sell, Sugar Sell, Zoho CRM, and HubSpot.

Features Dynamics 365 Sales Professional Zendesk Sell Professional Sugar Professional HubSpot Sales Professional Zoho CRM
Pricing
Nominal
Nominal
Nominal
Expensive
Nominal
Company Size
Small to Mid- size
Small business
Small to Mid – size
Small to Mid – size
Mid- Market
User limits
No user limit
No user limit
10 users minimum
No user limit, includes 5 paid users
10 users minimum
File Storage
10 GB
5 GB/user
15 GB
250 MB / user
5 GB minimum. Additional storage up to 100 GB can be bought.
User friendliness
User Friendly
Very user friendly
User Friendly
Very user friendly
Easy
Ease of Setup
Very Easy
Very Easy
Easy
Very Easy
Easy
Integrations
Integrates well with all the Office Products.
Has good email integration and integrates well with Mail Chimp.
Integrates well with Outlook and other emails and integrates well with E-Commerce Platforms.
It integrates very well with other platforms such as Salesforce.
Zoho integrates very well with a lot of Apps such as Office 365, Mailchimp, Shopify, Facebook ads, and more.

Pricing: Professional vs Enterprise

One of the reasons why many small companies choose Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is due to its lesser price compared to Dynamics 365 Enterprise. The prices of both are as follows: Sales Professional is $65/user/month and Sales Enterprise is $95/user/month.

Dynamics 365 sales professional is $65/user/month and Sales Enterprise is $95/user/month.

The reason for the lesser price being as mentioned in the above comparison between the two the Sales Professional focus mainly on the Sales components, while enterprise on the other hand, encompasses Marketing components as well as Sales, with Marketing Lists and Marketing Campaigns being available for the use of the user. In case the user wants to make use of the Marketing campaigns functionality without having to migrate to the enterprise they can make use of a Dynamics 365 Marketing Automation Software integration.

Marketing Automation Software Integrations:

One of the features seen in competitive products is the ease offered by them in integrating their CRM solutions with an email marketing tool such as Mail Chimp and Zoho Campaigns which allows the user to send many emails to a much larger audience ensuring a greater Marketing outreach. Some of the email marketing tools which can be integrated or synced with Dynamics 365 Sales Professional are as follows:
click dimensions
sales fusion
hubspot
Marketing logo
Mautic
mail chimp

In the below table, we can see the pros and cons of each of the above tools when used along with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales after integration.

Email Marketing Integrations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales
Click Dimensions
Sales Fusion
HubSpot
Microsoft Dynamics for Marketing
Mautic
Mail Chimp
Pros
It is directly embedded in Dynamics 365 CRM.
It integrates easily with all supported versions of Dynamics.
HubSpot has great scalability so it can scale up and down easily.
Dynamics 365 for Marketing also has EMail Marketing tools and provides features such as multi-channel campaigns, event, and webinar management, lead tracking, scoring, and nurturing, and data visualization tools.
Mautic has introduced a plugin that makes integrating with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales easier.
Mailchimp is mostly known as email programs and is used by companies that don’t have extensive marketing needs.
Has useful features such as forms, lead scoring, and duplicate detection.
All out of the box integrations are native integrations.
Many providers offer integration, so a greater choice is there.
As a part of the Dynamics 365 Portfolio it can be easily integrated with Dynamics Sales.
It offers a two-way data integration, reduces data error and change in one is mirrored in other.
Updates happen in real-time.
All the marketing data gathered are housed in Microsoft Dynamics 365 database.
Mautic offers an open marketing cloud that enables companies to connect all their digital properties and channels into a seamless customer experience.
Cons
Expensive
Expensive and has a low email limit.
Does not sync in real time.
Expensive
It is expensive but much cheaper and more efficient compared to some other automation tools.
Integrations by third-party vendors, not native.
Its marketing automation has a free version with limited features, and the paid version is cheap but can be very expensive in the long term.
Configuring mails is difficult.
It is expensive.

From the above comparison, we can see that while all the above-mentioned software has good features which will help with increasing our marketing outreach, price becomes the biggest differentiator. Dynamics 365 Marketing Automation supports tools that businesses need to streamline their marketing activities, enhance customer engagement, and drive business growth.

Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is used by small to mid-sized companies who can’t afford many of the above Marketing Automation software. What’s more, in many cases they won’t require many of the advanced features offered by the above.

Thus, in terms of price HubSpot and Mautic come out on top. Of the two Mautic is better as it has a better sync system with its two-way data integration and what’s more its price for its offerings does not increase a lot from the base price. In the case of HubSpot, the price increases the more features you require even though the base price is lowest at $50. As you scale up, the cost too will continue increasing bit by bit, and you will be required to pay additional costs for the add – ons. Thus, Mautic is the best integration for increasing Marketing Outreach.

Upgrade from Dynamics 365 Sales Professional to Dynamics 365 Enterprise:

As seen earlier, Sales Professional offers only the core sales functionalities. As your company grows there might come a time when the functionalities provided by Sales Professional are no longer enough. In such a scenario upgrading from Sales Professional to Enterprise will be the best choice. To Upgrade from Dynamics 365 Sales Professional to Enterprise the steps given below must be followed:
  • Purchase a D365 Sales Enterprise subscription
  • Assign D365 Sales Enterprise licenses to the users
  • Install the D365 Sales Enterprise edition solution
  • Delete the D365 Sales Professional solution
For further help with leveraging Dynamics 365 Sales Professional to its full capability, get the help of a Microsoft service Provider like Korcomptenz. We will be happy to help, and we will keep you updated with more such insights and blogs for your reference.
KORCOMPTENZ is a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner headquartered in New Jersey with extensive experience in improving business outcomes for our customers. We leverage end-to-end solutions involving the ongoing convergence of ERP, Azure Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT. We specialize in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 range of products such as Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, and Dynamics 365 CRM. Request a consultation today

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