Dynamics 365 Marketing 2021 Release Wave 2

Here is our update on a few of the exciting new features within the October release for Dynamics 365 Marketing, now available.

Over the past 4 years, we’ve seen the sturdy foundation of the Marketing app being established and we have been excited to see where Microsoft was heading with the product. With 2021 release wave 2, the product is focused on improving experiences and capabilities for creating moments-based and segment-based customer journeys that span all customer touchpoints and for taking personalization to the next level, all with less effort. The true power of the Common Data Service has been realized; a completely integrated CRM + Marketing automation tool has allowed Microsoft to incorporate functionality that is superior to competitors, and the gap is going to continue to widen. Here is our summary and some sneak peek screenshots of what is behind the curtain for this upcoming release. It’s a long list of updates, but we encourage you to read through them because there are some big ones!

If you have any questions about how these features can be incorporated into your strategy, want training on some of the latest updates, need assistance with the update, or just want to chat (we are always game to chat marketing automation), book some time with us here.

If you aren’t already using Dynamics 365 Marketing, or your hitting a wall with your current marketing solution, book a demo today!

Release Highlights: Engage your customers in moments that matter across all customer touchpoints

Connect Customer Insights and your data lake (Azure Data Lake Storage) with customer journey orchestration. Send SMS messages using Twilio and TeleSign integration. Easily create webinar registration experiences in Teams, then design the participants' journeys in a few clicks using Dynamics 365 Marketing. Use account-based profile data from Customer Insights as part of your customer journeys. Visualize customer journey interactions on the Customer Insights activity timeline. Personalize engagement for each customer: Create segments for leads and custom entities with a new, easier-to-use segmentation builder. Call Power Automate flows from customer journeys for advanced customization. Make faster and better decisions, leveraging the power of Analytics and AI: Create email content easily and efficiently with AI-based content ideas.

Analytics and AI

AI-based content ideas automatically generate a set of content snippets (based on provided key points) to serve as an inspiration for your email. You'll be able to review, select, and fine-tune generated content ideas based on your needs.

Real-time, event-based customer journey orchestration

A Customer Journey (Microsoft language for a marketing automation workflow) no longer needs to begin with a segment, form submission, or subscription list. Journeys can be triggered based on real-world interactions, like walking into a store and connecting to Wi-Fi, an abandoned shopping cart, a meeting with a client, etc. There are several templates for these “events” that are provided. Plus the ability to create custom triggers. You can target customers based on real-time event-triggered customer journeys and deeply personalize your engagement using rich Customer Insights data. Plus, close the feedback loop with customer interactions from Dynamics 365 Marketing customer journeys available in the Customer Insights activity timeline

Send SMS messages using Twilio and TeleSign integration

Integration with Twilio and TeleSign happens through a common Omnichannel service shared with Dynamics 365 Customer Service. You can purchase or reuse existing SMS accounts with Twilio or TeleSign, and it'll be possible to purchase Azure Communication Services phone numbers in the regions where Azure Communication Services SMS phone numbers are supported. For more information, go to Phone number types in Azure Communication Services

Visualize customer journey interactions on the Customer Insights activity timeline

When Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing are connected, all marketing interactions (such as message sent, opened, clicked) are available as activities in Customer Insights. Admins can add any or all of these interactions into the Customer Insights timeline. You can include this combined timeline in Dynamics 365 apps with the Customer Card add-in solution or in a Power BI dashboard. Marketing interactions can be viewed alongside other data sources like CRM, ERP, popular data warehouses, POS systems, your websites, and so on.

Create a webinar registration experience in Teams, then design the participants' journey in Marketing with a few clicks

Create branded registration pages in Microsoft Teams that are integrated out of the box with Dynamics 365 Marketing. Manage registrations, including approve, decline, and waitlist functionality. Easily trigger journeys in Dynamics 365 Marketing based on user behaviours in Microsoft Teams.

Deliver rich customer experiences across Dynamics 365, Office and other apps by augmenting customer journeys with Power Automate

Use Dynamics 365 Marketing as the hub of your automation, leveraging first and third-party data sources through Power Automate triggers to react to important customer interactions with your brand. Then, use Power Automate connectors to deliver the best experience with a digital or physical channel.

Create segments for leads and custom entities in the new segmentation builder

Directly create segments based on attribute and behavioural data for contact, lead, and custom entities. A redesigned experience for segment creation that is powerful, yet easy to use. Use natural language to specify an attribute-based segment

Learn more about Real-time marketing and the Dynamics 365 Marketing app in our blog post Marketing in Real Time - A Customer Story

A new journey designer experience

The new journey designer is intuitive, flexible, and infused with AI-powered capabilities throughout. It will also include new elements like SMS notifications. Based on each user’s behaviour there is also the ability to use AI to optimize the channel each recipient is notified by. As an example, if I tend to check my SMS messages more frequently than my emails, AI will pick up on that and begin sending me my communication via SMS.

A new and improved email editor 

Some of the highlights of this new editor are the expanded editing capabilities including more flexible layouts, easier image resizing, and text line-height adjustments—no HTML coding skills required. There is also an improved experience within the HTML editor if that’s your thing. One of the headaches We’ve experienced has been with how borders render within certain email clients – this is also an improvement that has been promised, so we’re curious to see that as well. Perhaps the most critical update is an improved experience for Personalized Content. Now, you can incorporate behaviour insight data that will also make recommendations based on a customer’s interactions. This is huge.

Teams webinars and Dynamics 365 Marketing integration

In case you had not heard, Teams is now offering a complete webinar experience with no additional license required. Check out the details here. The event module offers complete native integration with webinars now appearing on the list of Teams meeting types that can be scheduled.

The new Teams webinars automatically track attendee engagement information. You now have insights into which registrants attended, cancelled, or did not attend, plus the join and leave time for each attendee, as well as summary data for the event, like the total number of attendees.

For Dynamics 365 Marketing customers who use Event Management, you can use this new data to fine-tune segments, create specific messaging for each of those segments, and launch each off on the journeys you create in the new journey designer.

Several other releases were announced (see complete roadmap here), but these are the most impactful in our opinion. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!