Why You Need to Think about Email Integration with Dynamics CRM
One of the main reasons people use Microsoft Dynamics CRM is to store all customer and prospect email so anyone with the appropriate permissions can see all relevant customer communications in one place. For example, you can see all email associated with a particular contact or account, or for a particular opportunity or case.
When you integrate your email with Dynamics CRM, you also gain several other benefits:
- Unified View – When you integrate your email with your CRM, you will be able to see all of your activity in one place. You won’t need to jump between your email client and CRM to figure out what’s going on with a customer. In addition, you will be able to attach emails to your customer records, so you can easily see all your customer communications in an organized fashion and see communications as they relate to your sales process.
- Faster Responsiveness – When you integrate your email with your CRM, you will save time, because you won’t have to switch back and forth between two programs. You will also be able to see relevant customer and prospect information along side your emails, so the information you need to respond to inquiries is at your fingertips.
- All of Your Contacts in One Place – You can consolidate your email contact lists into CRM to reduce data redundancy, gain better visibility and, instead of searching your emails for an address every time you need to send an email, you will have a convenient way to quickly look up email addresses.
- Greater Control – Once your contacts and email addresses are in CRM, you can easily use them for marketing campaigns, mass emails, or integration with BI solutions to gain insight so you can make better decisions faster regarding your customer and prospect interactions.
There are a couple of ways to synchronize CRM with your email system, including:
- Server-side Synchronization – the preferred synchronization method, because it enables email folder tracking and syncs appointments, contacts and tasks, among other benefits.
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook – a full CRM client that includes offline capabilities. Users can do almost anything in CRM for Outlook that they can do in the web client, so it’s possible to work exclusively in the familiar Outlook interface, which cuts down on training time.
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Email Router – an earlier synchronization method, mostly useful for legacy scenarios. If you want to synchronize records between CRM Server (on-premises) and Exchange Online, you must use the Email Router, however, you can’t synchronize appointments, contacts, and tasks with the Email Router.
To Learn More about Email Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online,
View the Email Integration with Dynamics CRM Video.