The CRM 4.0 Launch Tour event in Atlanta was a packed house.  Approximately 200 people filled the seats to see and hear the latest on CRM and Microsoft.

The programming was similar to the Tampa event, but with new client studies.  The client study was hosted by Paul Kalella from Customer Effective and their client, Jamestown Properties, represented by Chuck Niswonger.  Changing the way data is collected and stored across Jamestown Properties was a phenomenal undertaking for Chuck.  The installation and leveraging of MSCRM allows for a stronger and different type of acquisition pipeline at Jamestown Properties.   The new way of leveraging data and the new process have brought tears to people’s eyes (literally) at Jamestown Properties.

Based on the large percentage of attendees with marketing roles, the demonstration and overview portion of the day went deeper into Marketing and Support tools in MSCRM.   The showcasing of the workflow ability inside of CRM definitely drew a positive response.

Well, Exact Target and I are off to MS Convergence (booth #206) to discuss how leveraging MSCRM workflows and ExactTarget email makes it a very powerful combination. 

Hope to see you at Convergence!!  More to come……

Craig Herman
Director, Global Partner Development – Microsoft

The ExactTarget Partnership Team is excited to announce a marketing technology partnership with SensorPro.  SensorPro, based in Limerick, Ireland and San Francisco, CA, markets an on-demand enterprise level survey tool that allows clients to gather real time data on their customers.  Some of their global client base include: Coty, Pepsi, Northwest Airlines, Tesco and Procter and Gamble.

By combining SensorPro’s advanced survey tool with ExactTarget, our joint customers will gain increased knowledge of their subscribers, enabling their ability to send highly personalized messages.  Development of an integration between SensorPro and ExactTarget is well underway and we look forward to rolling out the solution shortly.

Learn more about SensorPro by checking out their website.  Think SensorPro can help with your survey needs?  Contact us!

Interested in becoming an ExactTarget Marketing Technology Partner?  Read about our program, view our current partners, and fill out a partner inquiry form.

Lauren Hertler
Partner Relationship Manager  

Greetings from ExactTarget at the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Launch Tour.  The US kickoff started today in Tampa, FL and Nashville, TN.  I am writing from the Tampa event where approximately 60 people showed up to hear the latest on CRM best practices and Microsoft’s greater play in the space.  ExactTarget was situated between Cisco and Smart Catalog.  The mix of attendees is pretty evenly broken out across sales personnel, marketing and IT.

Don Peppers, of Peppers and Rodgers fame – www.1to1.com, kicked off the event and drove home some points from their new book, “Rules to Break and Laws to Follow”.  The most important piece in a customer’s choice is trust in the vendor or seller.  Mr. Peppers went on to say that “earning trust often costs money in the short term.”  However, before you can earn your customers’ trust….you must first earn your employees’ trust.”  He showed examples of exemplary companies in this area like Ritz Carlton, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and others.  The ability to enable your employees to engage in their mission should be every company’s priority.  CRM is critical to enabling your employees to serve their customers/clients better and be engaged in their work.  The ExactTarget folks in the audience were fist pumping throughout (not really…..more on the inside).  Leveraging Don’s guidance, MSCRM and email through ExactTarget makes Don’s words very achievable.

Shawn Tabor, of Raymond James Financial, also spoke as a client study and gave a walk thru of how they chose and rolled out MSCRM across their enterprise.  The day wound up w/ Julie Herman from Microsoft walking thru several use cases and demo scenarios of using MSCRM 4.0 across Marketing, Sales and Support. 

All in all a lot of information in 4 hours!!  Now it’s off to Orlando, Jacksonville and Atlanta…..more to come!

Craig Herman
Director, Global Partner Development – Microsoft

Social networking websites are white hot right now.  We read about it in the news, investors are clamoring to put their money in it, and consumer’s young and old use these social networks to connect and communicate.  Even Microsoft is getting in the game as it recently paid $240 Million for a small stake (1.6%) in Facebook. 

Question: What drives new users to join or existing users to log back into their account? 

Answer: Users of the social network upload the email addresses of their contacts and email their friends to join the network.  An email prompts a prospective user to join a site or a registered user to come back and see the activity in their network. 

Why does this matter?  Because ExactTarget is helping social networking sites solve a number of problems, such as managing deliverability, scaling the email volume with our infrastructure, and monetizing their emails with an ad supported model.  

Email not only drives user membership and traffic, it can also generate revenue.  Is social networking going to kill email?  NO, it’s going to make it more important and useful than ever. 

There is a trend in the software industry to expose one’s core infrastructure via APIs to allow other businesses to leverage that infrastructure to build new applications.  Who is moving in this direction?  Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com all offer APIs that allow ISVs to leverage their infrastructure to develop applications on their platforms. 

ExactTarget Embedded is ExactTarget’s new product offering for developers and ISVs.  The ExactTarget Embedded web service APIs to allow ISVs to leverage our messaging and deliverability infrastructure to develop applications within or on top of their applications.  One can quickly get to market with less up front capital investment by building applications on ExactTarget’s suite of web services.  More importantly, letting ExactTarget manage the deliverability and back end process of sending email takes the burden off of development resources, freeing them up to work on other tasks.

Here is a summary of ExactTarget Embedded:
http://email.exacttarget.com/ETWeb/partners_embedded_detail.aspx

ISVs both big and small are finding value in leveraging large capital investments made by ExactTarget and other software companies.  Here are some similar examples from Amazon, Salesforce.com, and Google:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=3435361

Salesforce.com
http://www.salesforce.com/platform/

Google
http://code.google.com/more/#label=APIs&product=gdata

ExactTarget participated in Microsoft’s Convergence 2007 Show as a silver sponsor. The event drew Microsoft Partners and clients from across Europe to Copenhagen, Denmark to take in the latest innovations from Microsoft--it also afforded me the opportunity to travel to Copenhagen, Denmark with a few other team members to showcase the ExactTarget for Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration.

As my first international trip, and I loved the experience! After traveling across the Atlantic, I learned that email marketing needs overseas are very similar to those in the states. Deliverability is a concern for marketers across the globe. Marketers are seeking a scalable solution that they can role out to all divisions of their companies whether based in the states or abroad.

As the number of organizations using our product grows to nearly 6,000, we’re committed to growing our service offerings for clients across around the world. We look forward to expanding our partnerships to provide world class experiences for our clients. If you’d like to learn more about our partnership programs, please email us at partners@exacttarget.com.

Cheers!

Stephanie Rhoads
Partnership Relationship Manager