Managing Leads, Accounts, and Contacts

How do you make sure that everyone you need to market to is in your database, that everyone is registered correctly, and that you are allowed to have everyone registered? How do you know whether someone is a potential customer or an existing customer? Would you target your marketing differently at these two different types of people? The answer, by the way, should be yes. Yes, you absolutely would do marketing differently for a potential customer and an existing customer.

Microsoft, together with Adobe and SAP, is part of the Open Data Initiative (ODI), and they have all agreed on a Common Data Model (CDM). The ODI and CDM are a way to make sure that a lot of systems that are used in IT are based on the same types of tables and named in the same way, making it easier to do integrations even when you have two systems from different companies.

One of the first things I always do when going to a new customer is write down what information they...