If you are familiar with Microsoft’s marketing platforms, Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights are now rebranded to Customer Insights- Journeys and Customer Insights- Data. Two environments under one license. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights FAQs answers why Dynamics 365 Marketing and current Dynamics 365 Customer Insights apps are being combined into one offering: “To provide the most value to users and empower them with the most personalized experiences, we're combining the power of a unified customer profile with the ability to orchestrate customer journeys in real-time, at every customer touchpoint, into one, simple, low-priced offering. The new, combined offering simplifies licensing to make it easier for customers to buy and use the applications as their business grows.”
Paired with AI capabilities, Customer Insights Journeys grows your customer relationships by utilizing emails, SMS, push notifications and events as trigger-based experiences. Data supplies comprehensive insights into these interactions. Customer Insights Journeys and Data combine the power of the customer journey with the crucial role in data to deliver engagement from leads and customers as well as retention.
Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader within the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms for the second consecutive year. The announcement from Microsoft quotes, “To meet the complex challenges of customer acquisition, increasing customer loyalty, and maximizing lifetime value… companies must shift their approach from traditional mass communication to personalized engagement based on a deep understanding of each customer’s preferences and actions. While ensuring their marketers have more time to leverage their creative and strategic skills to engage their customers. With this very goal in mind, Microsoft launched Dynamics 365 Marketing.”
Continue reading to learn more about the new update of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights- Journeys and Data.
The Power of the Customer Journey
The objective of Customer Journeys is to provide relevant and timely messages that address the customer’s needs and pain points. This is accomplished at the lower funnel to drive engagement and loyalty to the brand. Core functionalities for creating emails, texts, and push notifications include personalization capabilities, template, and content block creation as well as preview and testing features. Core automation features include a variety of triggers and conditions to send the right message to the right audience. The seamless connection to Dynamics 365 CRM allows for tasks to be created to the sales team based on an action a contact or lead took in an email, like opening or clicking. The segmentation and journey options are endless and can be shaped to fit any company’s communication needs.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Integrations
Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant is integrated into Customer Insights Journeys. Users can create prompts of natural language to describe your communication strategy to Copilot. Within seconds there is a drafted recommended journey with triggers and segments in place. The more data Copilot has, the more functions it can perform for you. Copilot also supports marketing users by providing copy ideas and rewrites.
The seamless integration of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights with Dynamics 365 Sales (CRM) allows for a large amount of data to be collected for email triggers and personalization. The timeline feature within Dynamics 365 Sales will show what emails have been sent and how the lead or contact has interacted with the business. Users can select their tracking preferences in the preference center. Additionally, Common Microsoft tools for tracking customer data are Power Apps and Power BI.
The Crucial Role of Data in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Data security and how it is leveraged and integrated with other Microsoft tools is what makes the new Dynamics Customer Insights a comprehensive platform.
Top data security and privacy is accomplished by restricting access to authorized users, supporting data protection regulations, and providing built-in privacy, security, and governance tools. Customer Insights- Data and Journeys meets the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), alongside adherence to accessibility guidelines. This enterprise-grade solution boasts an impressive portfolio of over 70 security and compliance certifications, encompassing ISO, EU Model Clauses, HITRUST, SOC, HIPAA, FERPA, and FedRAMP, ensuring a robust commitment to regulatory compliance.
By using data-driven techniques such as segmentation, automation, and timelessness, marketers can optimize their email marketing performance and increase engagement and conversion rates. By using data as the core of Dynamics 365 Customer insights, businesses are empowered to deliver relevant and timely email messages that drive customer loyalty and sales.
Overcoming Challenges and Maximizing Opportunities
Common challenges in implementing Dynamics Customer Insights Journey’s and Data often involve managing consent. There are many steps required to properly set up both the preference and consent center. Once completed, your organization can be confident in respecting the communication preferences of your contacts and leads. It is recommended that your organization implements Customer Insights Journeys and Data with a Dynamics 365 expert to avoid a lengthy integration process. Communications will be blocked if preference and consent centers are not properly connected.
Once the consent center and preference center are set up, organizations can maximize communication opportunities. The capabilities of the Dynamics 365 preference center allow for subscribers to stay engaged with their topics of choice. For example, a lead may be opted into all communication and before they opt out entirely, they can stay engaged in topics such as events, newsletters, webinars, or new releases. The system automatically segments these preferences and will send to every topic of consent to correspond with the email settings. This opens up many possibilities in your email strategy to tailor to these topics for timely and relevant information to your audience. To learn more about navigating the consent center with a JourneyTEAM Dynamics 365 expert here.
Want to Get the Most From Your Customer Data?
Customer Insights Data and Journeys is a leading system for communicating with customers. The powerful journey capabilities paired with rich data functions empower your business to provide personalized communication and optimal results. Contact us today to get started with Dynamics 365 Marketing, now known as Customer Insights Data and Journeys.