The customer journey doesn’t end after the sale—in fact, that’s when the most meaningful work begins. In the loyalty stage, ongoing engagement is key to long-term retention, upsell opportunities, and turning customers into brand advocates.
One of the most effective ways to strengthen customer relationships at this stage is through proactive check-ins. Unfortunately, check-ins are often inconsistent, delayed, or skipped altogether—especially when left to manual follow-up.
By combining the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM with a marketing automation platform like emfluence, you can automate timely, relevant customer check-ins that drive engagement and keep your brand top of mind—without adding more to your team’s plate.
Why Proactive Check-Ins Matter in the Loyalty Stage
Proactive check-ins serve multiple purposes:
- They show that you’re invested in the customer’s success.
- They help identify potential issues before they escalate.
- They create space for feedback, referrals, upsell conversations, or re-engagement.
- They reinforce your value after the initial onboarding or implementation has passed.
These small, consistent touches go a long way in building trust and loyalty, especially when personalized and timed strategically.
Using CRM to Identify Check-In Triggers
Your CRM is the best place to determine when a check-in should happen. Within Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can use fields and activity history to identify customers who should receive proactive outreach. Common check-in triggers include:
- Time-based milestones (ex. 30, 60, or 90 days post-onboarding)
- Product usage or key feature adoption benchmarks
- Engagement decline (ex. no recent logins, no email opens in 60 days)
- Renewal windows or subscription anniversaries
- Support ticket resolution or recent escalations
This data can be used to trigger automated workflows in your marketing automation platform and to ensure outreach is both timely and relevant.
Automating Check-In Campaigns with Marketing Automation
The emfluence Marketing Platform integrates directly with Dynamics 365, allowing you to build intelligent, CRM-driven workflows that handle check-ins automatically.
Here’s how it works:
- Triggered Emails: When a customer meets a CRM-defined condition (ex. 60 days since onboarding), an automated check-in email is sent from their account manager or customer success rep.
- Personalized Content: Use merge fields to include the customer’s name, rep info, product details, or most recent activity.
- Embedded Surveys or Feedback Forms: Add a Net Promoter Score (NPS) question or satisfaction survey link to capture early sentiment.
- Behavioral Branching: If the customer clicks a resource or completes a form, they’re routed into a follow-up sequence or flagged for personal outreach.
- Internal Alerts: emfluence can notify account managers in real time if a customer responds, disengages, or submits a negative score.
This automation ensures no customer slips through the cracks—while still feeling personal and intentional.
Aligning Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success
Automation isn’t just for marketing. With a CRM-integrated platform like emfluence, you can ensure every team is looped in:
- Log campaign activity directly in Microsoft Dynamics so reps can see what emails a customer has received and how they’ve engaged.
- Trigger CRM tasks when a customer submits feedback or hits a re-engagement threshold.
- Notify customer success teams if a check-in email goes unanswered or if the customer hasn’t opened anything in X days.
- Share insights across departments, improving retention strategies and account planning efforts.
The result is a unified customer experience supported by real-time data and aligned communication.
Measuring the Impact of Automated Check-Ins
To continuously improve your check-in strategy, monitor:
- Email engagement metrics (open/click rates, bounce rates)
- Survey participation and sentiment scores
- Time-to-response on outreach
- Renewal or expansion activity post-check-in
- Support volume trends before/after automated campaigns
Both emfluence and Microsoft Dynamics CRM offer reporting capabilities that help you track how proactive engagement impacts long-term customer health.
Conclusion
Check-ins shouldn’t rely on sticky notes, spreadsheets, or memory. With CRM-driven marketing automation, you can deliver proactive, personalized touchpoints that keep customers engaged, satisfied, and loyal—without burdening your sales or success teams.
By integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM with the emfluence Marketing Platform, marketers can automate the right messages at the right time, triggered by the data you already have in your system.
Ready to scale your customer retention strategy?
Schedule a demo or start your free 14-day trial of the emfluence Marketing Platform today.
The post How to Automate Proactive Customer Check-Ins with CRM and Marketing Automation appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.
