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Serena HsiFlag for United States of America

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CRM Integration w/ 3rd Party Email Campaign Service

Which is the better alternative for using an in-house CRM solution (let's say, Microsoft CRM, for this example) on the backend with a 3rd party email solution like Silverpop? Help me to understand vendor-speak.

I have a vendor who says their service is better because their application has built-in integration with Microsoft CRM; I have come across other vendors like Campaigner and Siebel that have API capabilities. Are these two integration solutions talking about the same thing, or is one superior to the other?
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Our current setup uses Microsoft CRM with Vtrenz as our email campaign provider (Vtrenz is owned by Silverpop, but the Vtrenz ECMS doesn't offer the same features as Silverpop); anyhow. The ideal use is to have a email campaign details populate customer records in CRM; and to be able to segment customers for targeted campaigns in Vtrenz (or whatever service) using CRM tables and pull that data out for broadcasting. This is what we're currently working on.

I was just asking if a 3rd party vendor with API was as good (or better) than a 3rd party vendor that offers Microsoft CRM integration with its email capabilities. Maybe they're the same. I don't know. I've only used solutions with API capabilities; and standalone customer lists with Vertical Response.
I probably don't have enough experience to share much on the differences between those options.  But it certainly seems to me that a 3rd part that offers MS CRM integration is probably going to be pretty powerful and much easier to manage than creating your own integration through an API.

Exact Target seems to have a very good reputation.  Though I cannot speak from personal experience, I've talked to several who have a very high opinion of them.  They are also quite expensive.
Thanks for your input.