In September 2023, we announced that Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing are coming together as one offering named Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, an AI driven solution which revolutionizes your customers’ experiences.

Within this solution are two apps:

• Customer Insights – Data (previously known as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights) that empowers you to know your customers through 360-degree profile.
• Customer Insights – Journeys (previously known as Dynamics 365 Marketing) allows you to engage your customers with personalized experiences based on the profile.

In the same timeframe, we also announced the transition from outbound marketing to real-time. The transition to real-time is independent from product name or licensing changes.

New customer environments only include real-time journeys and event management. Existing customers, if necessary, can add outbound marketing through a self-serve interface. We will continue to support outbound marketing but will not be adding new enhancements.  We encourage all customers to transition to and use the exciting new capabilities available in real-time journeys. In this blog we cover how to plan for the transition to real-time and the resources that are available to you to help make this seamless. 

How do the changes impact me? 

If you are a new customer of the Customer Insights – Journeys app, you get real-time journeys only (including Event planning). So you start with the most current and advanced technology and avoid the time & expense of transitioning from outbound later.  

Existing customer environments using outbound marketing, show the new product name but otherwise remained unchanged.  When provisioning new, copying an existing, or upgrading a solutions-only environment to paid, outbound marketing is not installed by default.

If the system detects there is an existing environment with outbound marketing (in the same geo), then Settings > Version page shows Enable outbound link to install outbound. If you do not see the link or have issues enabling outbound, reach out to us directly as explained in the Transition overview page (see links in the resources section later).

When should I transition to Real-time? 

Though we haven’t announced a date for ending outbound support the time to transition is now! Rest assured, we will use our product telemetry data and customer feedback to provide an adequate time window to ensure all customers can plan and complete their transition before support for outbound is ended.  

But why wait? Real-time journeys offers most of the capabilities that outbound marketing has and a lot more that outbound doesn’t (and will not) such as the ability to respond and react in near-real time, high scale of 100M contacts/300M interactions in public preview (even more on the roadmap), and new & exciting capabilities with generative AI/Copilot, etc.   

How to transition? 

You can transition all at once or gradually depending on your business needs, capabilities you use in outbound marketing, and resources availability. 

In a one-shot transition, you will recreate all your journeys, segments, and other assets in real-time journeys and then switch over to them over a short period (a few days).

The other approach is to transition gradually over time. You can create all your new campaigns in real-time journeys and leave your current campaigns running in outbound marketing until they complete. This way you build confidence and train your team gradually over time. We’ve prepared guidance on how to manage consent in hybrid/transition situations. With custom reporting capability (see release plan below), single analytics across both outbound and real-time can be created for the hybrid situation.

We know that most of your effort is usually spent in creating and finalizing emails, so we have built a tool in real-time journeys to let you Import outbound emails, templates, and content blocks so you can preserve and reuse them. You will also have a tool to help you quickly migrate consent records.

We have assembled real-time journeys transition resources to cover transition planning and tools for each major product area.  

Real-time transition capabilities

With either approach, you will want to take a stock of what capabilities of outbound marketing you currently use, how they are supported in real-time journeys, and if there is a need to transfer any data or assets from outbound marketing to real-time journeys. In the transition resources section of our product documentation area, you will find a page for each functional area that has guidance, workarounds, and roadmap for specific capabilities. If you find there are some specific capabilities in outbound marketing that you need but are not yet available in real-time journeys, be assured that we are working to add them as fast as we can. For example, we already have a published release plan for these commonly asked for features: 

• Scheduling – Quiet hours 
• Email – View email in browser, Select from multiple email addresses 
• Journey – Split 
• Tracking – Web tracking 
• Forms – Forms capture 
• Event planning – Session level registration 
• Analytics – Custom dashboards 

We are actively working on prioritizing additional features that have been requested. These are being scheduled to be part of the next release wave: 

• Consent – Double opt-in 
• Segmentation – Export, Template, Email delivery status 
• Scheduling – Send scheduling 
• Email – Content A/B testing 
• Journey – Branch on email deliverability status, Templates
• Tracking – Redirection URL 
• Analytics – Click/Geo maps, combined analytics across outbound and real-time 
• Event planning – event portal, session capacity, reoccurring events 
• Forms – unmapped custom fields, form prefill, update none/multiple entities on submission, leads with parent contact 

Please note that the above is not an exhaustive list. We release new updates every month. We use your feedback to revise our roadmap continuously to ensure you can transition with confidence.  

Conclusion 

A large number of customers are already using and benefiting from ease of use and scale offered by real-time. Over the next few months, we are prioritizing work to ensure transitioning to real-time journeys is easy and quick for every customer. While outbound marketing continues to be available and supported for existing customers, we strongly recommend everyone still using outbound marketing transition to real-time journeys to propel your business into the future of marketing and customer experience.

Resources

The post Transition to real time journeys – the time is now  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sequences in Dynamics 365 Sales is a valuable sales engagement tool for businesses looking to drive efficiency via standardized sales processes. When sellers engage with sequences, it’s important to understand if they are supporting the process effectively. This is where sequence insights come into play.

Sequence insights provide data on the performance of sequences and their steps. Businesses can use sequence insights to review and analyze the effectiveness of their current sequences by identifying bottlenecks, and take corrective measures. Also, they can update the wait times and steps to ensure that the overall process is efficient and working as intended.

Additionally, sequence insights can help businesses identify best practices that are working well across the sales team. By analyzing data on successful sales sequences, businesses can identify common patterns and strategies that are driving success.

Reporting and insights are available at two levels:

• Sequence level analytics that provide aggregate data for the entire sequence.
• Step level analytics that provide data for the selected step.

Let’s take a quick tour to see how you can use them to optimize and improve sequences.

Gain insights with sequence reporting

First up is the “Sales Acceleration Report” (available to sales managers/operations role only). Here, a dashboard is available to review how sequences are performing all-up:

You can review all sequences together for a team-wide view or set filters to select specific sequences for performance evaluation. Not only do you get common success measures such as conversion rate and opportunity to win ratio, but you also get success rates of each sequence, along with distribution of “status” for different customer segments.

This report and the view are optimized for business level analysis and when needed, drill down to a few selected sequences.  

You can also get an all-up summary report at the sequences page that provides a list view of all sequences. There you will find the “Sequence stats” tab that shows progress of each active sequence in terms of % completion for connected records, success rates, and average duration. This is a great view for operational excellence to keep an eye on sequences whose execution or success rate is out of the ordinary.

Improve efficiency with sequence insights

You can get even more insights at a sequence and step level. For this, open the desired active sequence. You will see sequence insights and analytics right away – the sequence itself is shown as a Sankey graph where each line shows how many records (leads, opportunities, etc.) were processed through the part of the sequence.

This is a quick and easy way to check overall performance of the sequence and spot points in the sequences where a larger than expected number of records is getting stuck or leaving the sequence.

Select the starting step of the sequence to get additional insights for it. Things to look for in this view:

1. Is there a particular stage in the sequence where the amount of incoming volume significantly surpasses the number of qualified records that move on to the next stage? This is a common occurrence if a step is designed to filter out unqualified prospects. However, it’s not necessarily expected in other steps. By examining the report, you can identify these drop-off points and conduct a deeper analysis. This will help you determine why most customers are not progressing past this stage, and whether the drop-off rate is in line with expectations.
2. Is the average number of days for completing this sequence within the expected range? If not, you can use step level insights to diagnose where most of the time is spent, and to identify what improvements are needed.
3. Review disconnection reasons for any abnormality (e.g., are sellers disconnecting sequences at a high rate?).

Deep dive for more analytics

Analytics is not limited to overall sequence only – you can select any step in the sequence and get detailed insights to understand how sellers are executing that step. Here is an example for the sending email step:

Email insights (and insights for other communication steps) are focused on measuring engagement – did the prospect receive the message, open it, and interact with its content?

All step level insights include details of their execution status. For example, how many records have completed this step, how many are in progress, or how many skipped, along with numbers and reasons for disconnection (e.g., manually disconnected, record inactivated, etc.). Finally, the “time taken” information is presented as a histogram – this view is great as it quickly lets you figure out averages as well as outlier buckets.

Things to look for in a step analytics:

1. Are the average time taken for completing the sequence and the completion rate within the expected ranges?
2. Are there any steps that are outliers for disconnections or “in-progress”?
3. If steps are about communicating with customers (e.g., email, phone call), are prospects engaging as expected?

Record level information

If you need to see progress for any specific record, navigate to the “Connected <record type>” tab (e.g., “Connected leads” if the sequence is for leads). You will see a list of all connected records and their progress in terms of steps completed, current step, days elapsed and which salesperson owns this record. This view enables you to quickly spot any outliers (e.g., records that are taking longer than others or a salesperson seems blocked on a step and requires assistance).

Final thoughts

Sequences can be an efficient and straightforward sales engagement tool for businesses that seek to provide guidance to their sales representatives. By incorporating automation (e.g., automated emails), sequences can reduce manual effort, making the sales process more streamlined and effective. Furthermore, with our new sequence insights, sales managers and operations teams can better understand how sequences are working for their sellers, including the identification of bottlenecks within the process. This data can be used to benchmark overall sequence execution velocity and success rates, allowing for more informed decision-making and ultimately improving the sales process.

Next steps

Don’t have Dynamics 365 Sales yet? Try it out now: Sales Overview – Dynamics Sales Solutions | Microsoft Dynamics 365

Learn more about sequences and how to create them:
Sequences in sales accelerator | Microsoft Learn

Explore our getting started templates to quickly create sequences and try them for yourself:
Sequence templates | Microsoft Learn

Learn more about sequence analytics:
View and understand sales acceleration reporting | Microsoft Learn
Understand the sequence stats page | Microsoft Learn

The post Improve Sales process efficiency using sequence insights appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Your customers’ inboxes are like a firehose that never stops. How do you make sure they’ll notice your communications in the flood? With personalized content tailored just for them. Generic, boilerplate messages make customers feel like they’re just another number. Personalized experiences make your customers feel heard and understood. Over time this builds trust and increases their loyalty.

You’ve collected data and insights that can be used to personalize your marketing content. However, most marketers find it hard to turn their customer data into personalized content at scale. It’s usually complex, and often requires HTML coding or learning database concepts. Lucky for you that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing makes it so easy. Discover all the ways Dynamics 365 Marketing offers to customize your content at scale with an easy-to-use interface—no coding required!

Personalized content increases customer engagement with tailored email marketing

Imagine you’re a marketer working for Fourth Coffee, an established coffee bean roaster that has relied primarily on its wholesale business relationships. Now you want to expand your business by going direct to consumers with a coffee club and curated digital outreach. A newsletter is a great way to keep your brand top of mind for coffee club members and other customers who have opted in to receive it.

Let’s discover how easy it is to craft a monthly newsletter that keeps your customers wanting more. We’ll create a newsletter template that uses dynamic text and content blocks to include personalized greetings. Then we’ll use conditional content to include a personalized offer that’s aligned to your customers’ interests and matches your business needs.

Create consistent templates with content blocks

Let’s start by making sure your newsletter complies with your brand requirements so customers know who it’s from with just a glance. It should always look consistent no matter who sends it out each month, too. We’ll accomplish both goals using content blocks. (Be sure to set up your brand profile to take advantage of more capabilities for maintaining brand consistency.)

Start in the email designer. Pick an existing email template or create your own layout. Include a section at the top (the “header”) with your brand logo. Include another section at the bottom (the “footer”) with contact information and any required legal text. Then insert sections with layouts that contain placeholder content. Save the entire email as a template.

You can also save the header and footer sections as individual content blocks. You can even protect them so that no one else can modify them. Anyone in your team can easily reuse these content blocks in other marketing assets. This not only saves them time; it ensures all required legal text is always included to meet regulatory requirements and provides the consistent look and feel that’s so important for your company’s brand image.

Use dynamic text to populate your customers’ information

Personalizing your newsletter to greet your customers by name and include unique details catches their attention right away. Dynamics 365 Marketing comes with commonly used dynamic text, such as “FirstName,” that you can insert in your newsletter. You can also define your own dynamic text, such as “Membership number.”

A best practice is to create a library of standard dynamic text so that anyone else on your team can use it to create personalized content.

Include personalized offers and visuals with conditional content

You don’t have to stop at personalized greetings. Use conditional content to include customized offers and visuals to pique your customers’ interest and make them more likely to click through.

Let’s return to our Fourth Coffee example. To reward your loyal customers, you’ve decided to make an exclusive offer to your coffee club members. You’ll use conditional content to offer members 30% off an Arabica selection, while non-members will get 10% off.  You have two options.

The first—and easiest—is to use two different images. Each image contains a different discount. You’ll use the customer’s coffee club membership status to display the correct image.

The second option is to use conditional content at the section level. This allows you to personalize images, columns, text, etc., in the section. In the example below, we overlayed dynamic text on the same background image. This way, the specific discount value can be inserted from any table in Microsoft Dataverse where discounts are stored. It can be updated automatically, and marketers don’t need to change anything in the email. This option is particularly useful for limited-time offers such as Black Friday discounts or a flash sale.

You can save the entire conditional section as a content block. You or your team can quickly and easily reuse this personalized offer in other emails and reduce errors.

And here’s the perfectly personalized newsletter your club members and non-members will receive:

There are countless other ways to use conditional content in your email marketing campaigns. For instance, you can include an image that reflects your customer’s interests or highlights a landmark in their city or state. You might customize your footer by including conditional social links, legal text, and unsubscribe settings based on your recipient’s country.

With just a few clicks, you can create a library of powerful and reusable content blocks that can help you personalize future messages in no time, while ensuring brand consistency.

Learn more

Learn how Dynamics 365 Marketing can help you use your customer data to create personalized content that engages your customers, strengthens your brand, and meets your business needs:

• Personalize content (Dynamics 365 Marketing) | Microsoft Learn
• Personalize content using pre-defined dynamic text (Dynamics 365 Marketing) | Microsoft Learn
• Work with reusable content blocks (Dynamics 365 Marketing) | Microsoft Learn
• How to use conditional content (Dynamics 365 Marketing) | Microsoft Learn
• Create consistent branding with brand profiles (Dynamics 365 Marketing) | Microsoft Learn

Not yet a Dynamics 365 Marketing customer? Take a guided tour and start a free trial!

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