Your ideas for an interesting use of CRM 2011

Hello,

I'm currently implementing what I hope will be a pretty straightforward CRM Online system for managing the recruitment of franchisees for a franchise network.

Here are the requirements: -

1. Capture leads from Corporate Website into Leads in CRM
2. Create a Mail Merge which sends a printed letter to all new leads
3. Progress leads through the sales process through to sale tracking all contact (email, phone, meetings)

For 1, I was hoping to use the Internet Lead Capture feature, but this is soon to be discontinued. Can someone recommend any alternative methods of capturing contact form submissions from a website into Leads in CRM?

For 2, We want to be able to send a letter and accompanying brochure to any new lead that hasn't already received it. Once the letter has been sent, it should be somehow marked as sent on each Lead. Any ideas on the best approach for achieving this? Workflows? Marketing Lists? Mail Merge? I'm not after step-by-step instructions, just some ideas really.

We have a number of tasks and stages in our sales process. E.g. Sending the info pack as outlines above being the first, follow up call being two, follow up email being three, send draft agreement being three etc. Any ideas on managing these stages so that we can easily see who is where in the sales process.

Any ideas will be most welcome!