October 26, 2012 5:30 AM

With the announcement last week, it was official. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is getting serious about leading the CRM market with highly advanced Marketing Automation upgrades.

Microsoft announced the strategic acquisition of MarketingPilot. MarketingPilot provides Integrated Marketing Management solutions that allow organizations to better understand their customers, manage and streamline marketing operations and create automated and measurable multi-channel marketing campaigns.

According to IDC, “Marketing Automation is expected to grow faster than any other segment of CRM over the next 4 years.” More and more, marketers are being asked to drive the overall strategy and execution of customer interactions across multiple channels and touch points, and to measure ROI on those interactions. In response to the projected industry trends and emerging business opportunities, Microsoft is taking immediate steps forward in a growing and competitive field of CRM application innovation.

Microsoft Dynamics VP, Bob Stutz released a statement, noting with great enthusiasm that “This acquisition is a very exciting step forward for us, and will accelerate our ability to better meet the needs of CMO’s through rich business intelligence, and better enable marketers to successfully plan, execute, monitor, and optimize customer interactions across digital, social and traditional channels, and measure ROI.” He added, “With this acquisition, we believe we will be well positioned to deliver highly valuable marketing automation solutions to new and existing customers.”

Microsoft will roll out plans for product vision (including the future with MarketingPilot) this coming March at the annual Convergence conference.

Follow along! Microsoft is making it pretty exciting in a competitive CRM landscape…

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Christine Sheppard is the marketing and communications voice at Atum Corporation – a VPS hosting and IT Solutions Company. Atum is a Canadian leader in VPS solutions and virtualization and Christine draws upon her inherent interest in the advance of new computer technology to discuss topics in Cloud Computing, Virtualization and emerging business trends. www.twitter.com/AtumIT

Posted by Sue Ansell at October 26, 2012 5:30 AM

Categories: Sales and marketing

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