Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – What is it? And how will it support your marketing?4 min read

Starting from the 1st of September 2023, Microsoft has renamed Dynamics 365 marketing to become Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys. The biggest change to come from this is that any new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Journeys licenses will only contain real-time marketing features, and won’t feature outbound marketing.  

Today we will explain what this change will mean for your business, and how your marketing team can take full advantage of the features available. 

How will Dynamics Marketing change? 

Prior to September 2023, Dynamics 365 featured two separate customer insights tools. Dynamics 365 Marketing, which could be used to send outbound marketing materials, as well as real-time marketing which was introduced in 2021. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights was a separate module that used data to suggest and deliver more personalised and accurate customer profiles and experiences. This service will now be called Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Data. 

Now Dynamics 365 marketing is being brought under the same roof as Customer Insights, becoming Customer Insights Journeys. This new module will contain all the real-time marketing features from Dynamics 365 Marketing, and will soon benefit from AI-powered Copilot integration, but it will not feature the outbound marketing features. 

If your business already uses Dynamics 365 Marketing, you can still access outbound marketing, but Microsoft is encouraging users to migrate their existing customer journeys and other processes over to real-time marketing.  

Dynamics Customer Insights Data and Journeys will now be sold together under a single product SKU called Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. This means you will now be able to access the benefits of both services, in one place. 

Why is this change taking place? 

. The move to Customer Insights Data and Journeys allows marketers to take advantage of the latest AI-enabled data to create better customer journeys while enhancing outbound scenarios.  

Ultimately, Microsoft renamed Dynamics 365 Marketing to align the overall benefits provided by the two applications. Journeys will enable marketing automations using email, SMS and push notifications, while also offering easy simple web forms, landing pages and event management. 

This is further enhanced by Customer Insights Data, which works to establish, enrich and keep building profiles of your audiences by enabling you to ingest data from various sources, map and match the data to existing sources within your system, enrich your existing data on your customers and then to build powerful segments and insights that can help further personalise your offerings and enrich your communication.  

The move to combine these two services represents a move to bring together two services designed to support more personalised and engaging marketing. 

What are the benefits of making the most of Dynamics Customer Insights? 

In every promotion of Customer Insights Microsoft have made emphasis on personalisation. It’s for good reason. Whether in B2B or B2C environments customers are more marketing-aware than ever before. Just getting their name right on an email just isn’t going to cut it anymore. 

The personalisation options in Customer Insights Journeys are designed to deliver contextually relevant content to customers and prospects in real-time. Whether it’s sending event reminders at the right time, every time, or delivering product information based on the items you know each customer is most likely to enjoy. 

Copilot integration is also on its way to Customer Insights, which helps take marketing productivity to new heights. Using Copilot, you don’t have to have a detailed knowledge of marketing automation to create a personalised customer journey. All that’s needed is a simple language prompt and Customer Insights will build a custom journey to match your request, allowing you to gather insights and create content at the touch of a button. Copilot can also be used in Customer Insights Data to foresee future opportunities in real-time. 

How to transition from Dynamics Marketing to Customer Insights? 

For new customers, there will be no need to transition as they will immediately deploy with Customer Insights Journeys.  

For customers currently using Dynamics Marketing, the advice is to slowly move all outbound journeys and processes over into Real-time Marketing. To make the transition easier, Microsoft has designed an email transition tool, made outbound segments available directly in Customer Insights Journeys and embedded AI-powered Copilot features across functionality to empower marketers.   

Below are resources to help you with the transition: 

The transition from outbound to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journey's playbook. The playbook covers key information, including: 

• Setting up and configuring journeys 
• Migrating your marketing artefacts 

• Identifying potential challenges 
• Retiring the use of outbound marketing 

TechTalk: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys: OBM to RTM Transition Playbook 

To find out more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, get in touch with the team at Cloud9 Insight today.