This episode of the MSDW Podcast is sponsored by dotdigital. Find out more about their Microsoft Dynamics offering here.

As marketing technology continues to evolve, so does thinking on where it can deliver the most impact in an organization. The marketing-to-sales funnel remains the most common way to deploy marketing automation tools, but Dan Griffin of dotdigital makes the case on this episode that the organizations should be pushing for customer engagement that encourages more of their own departments to communicate across channels. Customer service, product managers, and others have a lot of value to add to the customer experience after the sale is made, and the digital tools that marketers understand best today could be brought to bear with the right planning, says Griffin.

We also discuss the evolution of the Microsoft channel when it comes to delivering martech solutions. System integrators and agencies will deliver marketing solutions quite differently. And today's economic climate has led customer to ask their service providers to help them deliver digital marketing capabilities  in new and more efficient ways.

Show Notes:

• 3:15 - dotdigital's latest efforts in the Microsoft channel to deliver marketing technology
• 5:00 - What does martech mean to partners today?
• 7:30 - The current landscape has forced customers to do more with less, and they are finding out why digital matters in areas like account-based marketing, top of funnel brand marketing, etc.
• 9:30 - Companies are beginning to understand the value of marketing to their customers
• 11:30 - How well do different types of Microsoft partners - systems integrators vs agencies - approach the challenge of digital marketing solutions
• 18:00 - More ideas on using marketing-based tools to improve engagement across the customer lifecycle
• 21:30 - Why you want your organization focus more on process to improve metrics
• 23:00 - How the Microsoft community's marketing conversations have evolved in the last six months