Microsoft is introducing more features in Dynamics 365 Marketing at an accelerated pace. Dynamics 365 real-time marketing brings together the latest features. Below, we'll take a closer look at the most recent updates that caught our attention the most.
In D365 Marketing, a set of new features was added to a new section “Real-time marketing“. The existing features were moved to a separate Area “Outbound marketing“.
The figure below clarifies which features are included in which area and also shows that there is an “overlap”—in other words, certain features are available in different forms in both areas. The “old” version of the features therefore remains available in the “Outbound Marketing” area so that all existing automations continue to work and remain customizable.
Gradually, all existing features from “Outbound Marketing” will be updated. This means that if there is no reason to continue using the old version of a feature, it is recommended to use the latest version in the “Real-time Marketing” section. Below, we’ll take a look at the most notable “real-time marketing” features.
Triggers in real-time journeys
Any interaction with or modification of Dynamics 365 data in Dataverse—where a Contact is linked—can serve as a trigger in a Journey (i.e., a personalized marketing automation flow for that Contact). Furthermore, you can add conditions in the most granular way possible to determine exactly in which specific cases the trigger applies. For example, if you use the “Email Bounced” trigger, you can apply additional filtering to start a Journey for the relevant Contact only for specific bounces.
This is a fundamental difference from “outbound marketing,” where contacts are typically added to a customer journey only when they are placed in a (static or dynamic) segment.
There are numerous out-of-the-box triggers available. In addition, you can create your own trigger (i.e., a custom trigger), which opens up a wide range of possibilities for automation through the new Journeys.
Custom trigger
A trigger can be used to start a Journey, but you can also create a Custom Trigger to activate within an ongoing Journey—for example, to start a Power Automate flow.
With a Power Automate With flow, you can configure highly advanced automation that goes far beyond the standard capabilities of the Journey itself. In other words, the possibilities of Journeys have become virtually unlimited thanks to the Power Automate integration.
Below is an example of a custom trigger that allows you to assign a Contact to a specific category by linking a related record (of the custom entity type “Tag”) to it. Using the custom trigger, you can then specify which Tag record should be linked to the Contact. A similar trigger can also be used to remove the link between the Contact and Tag records.
Conditional Content
Another new feature in “Real-time marketing” emails is the ability to dynamically customize the content of an email message based on the recipient’s profile by configuring “conditional content rules.” This means you can display different content in the email depending on the customer’s profile without using any programming code. Conditional content is currently available as a “preview feature” for Dynamics 365 Marketing.
Branching
In a Journey, you can dynamically branch the flow based on a property of the Contact (or based on related data associated with the Contact). After the branch, you can have the various side branches converge back onto the parent branch. This is a significant improvement over the Customer Journeys in Outbound Marketing, where branches cannot converge again.
Automation of SMS Responses
SMS allows you to communicate quickly with your customers. However, it’s not enough to just send messages—you also need to be able to automatically process their responses. You can now build Journeys based on replies to the SMS messages you send. Easily create custom keywords and add them to your messages in Journeys to automate the conversation with your customers.
Marketing interactions on the timeline
On the timeline, you’ll now see the digital marketing touchpoints in a chronological overview interspersed with sales and customer service activities. This means you’ll also see a website visit, “marketing email received,” “marketing email opened,” “marketing email clicked,” etc., listed on the Contact page. This provides a complete chronological overview of communication with a customer in a single view.
Another great feature is that users can search and filter the timeline by marketing entries and, in the case of a marketing email, view the preview that the customer received.
Microsoft Teams Integration
Marketing teams can work on emails, customer journeys, marketing pages, etc., all within the same interface stay in touch with coworkers via Microsoft Teams. The Teams integration is now available for the Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service apps, and will also become generally available for the Dynamics 365 Marketing app later in 2022.
