Dynamics 365 users currently find themselves in a bit of a pickle when it comes to marketing automation.
Sure, there is a D365 for marketing solution – but it’s very new, untested and can hardly fulfill the role of a fully-fledged marketing automation platform. If you’re only doing basic stuff (building landing pages, sending out emails) based on your CRM database, it’s probably a good start. If you’re more advanced, with a more complicated tech stack, it won’t do (at least, this is what prospects and customers here at Net-Results tell us).
The same kind of goes for ClickDimensions. While it lives in the Dynamics interface completely, marketers tell us it is a limited solution, that they eventually have to replace.
So, if you’re serious about marketing automation, you’re looking at an external platform. (And if you’re not sure if what you’re doing is “serious” marketing automation, have a look at this here marketing automation 101 guide.)
Anything Salesforce is immediately out, since they’ve made it clear they want all their users in their own eco-system (Pardot’s Dynamics integration was scrapped entirely because of that philosophy).
Speaking of Salesforce, that CRM system is often much better supported in marketing automation platforms than Dynamics.
Marketo is often named as option for Dynamics users, but it was built for use with Salesforce (originally intended to be a part of it).
Act-On has a good integration, but the company seems to be in more turbulent waters.
So, what are you to do?
As it turns out, there is a fully-featured marketing automation platform that integrates deeply and seamlessly with Dynamics 365. It’s called Net-Results and it goes toe-to-toe with platforms like Pardot and Marketo on a daily basis – and wins (read more about that in this comparison report).
Watch a video about the Dynamics 365 – Net-Results integration here. You can also download a more in-depth whitepaper about how the two systems work together.
