Digital marketing strategies became more crucial than ever this past year, especially when many businesses realized an effective digital presence was a key factor in maintaining successful operations. Dynamics 365 Marketing takes the guesswork out of campaigns and makes it easy to put together polished digital marketing content while managing it all in one cohesive interface.  

New customization features will also become available to use with the upcoming 2021 Release Wave 2, coming to Dynamics 365 in the fall. Check out some of the key functionalities of Dynamics 365 Marketing that allow for a high degree of customization to branded marketing content. 

Customer data

Customer journeys can be customized and tracked down to the smallest details with an array of abilities in the Dynamics 365 Marketing interface. The journey designer helps create automated multi-channel campaigns that can send personalized emails, generate follow-up activities, launch workflows, and more. Contacts in target groups travel down a tailored path based on interaction history and identifies the best prospects at each step in the journey.  

Powerful segmentation breakdowns allow for a 360-degree view of each contact. Segment customers with information based on demographics, firmographics, behaviors, and more. Segments can be used to create unique campaigns to target contact attributes like all contacts in New York, add recent clients to newsletter lists, or target the primary contact of each account with a budget over $1 million.  

Permissions

Create unique permissions to manage user capabilities within Dynamics 365 Marketing and optimize workflows by making sure the right people have access to the right functionalities. Grant custom permission levels for each entity to allow viewing, creation, and publishing access for each user. For example, some users may only need to view content or draft social media posts, while others may need to edit and publish web pages, push out email campaigns, or create custom-fit customer journeys.

Custom templates

One of the most crucial aspects of managing digital marketing is upholding company brand standards and ensuring content has a cohesive look and feel. Custom templates can be created for journeys, pages, forms, and customer segments.  

Customer journey templates can simplify announcements, event marketing, monthly newsletters, email blasts, customer onboarding, and sales follow up for high-value deals. Creating reusable, branded templates will provide users with an easy way to create approved campaigns. 

Marketing forms are powerful tools to be used in targeted email campaigns, events, and beyond. The drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to get them up and running in no time. Embed Dynamics 365 Marketing forms on any external webpage to collect prospect data and update current contact data. Prefer forms built on your website? Use form capture capabilities to push form submissions from other form providers to Dynamics 365 for Marketing. All forms automatically send data submissions to Dynamics 365, minimizing manual data entry and automating the sales funnel as much as possible.

Choose from pre-built landing page templates or build unique pages that best support marketing goals. Utilize the drag-and-drop builder to add content like text, images, and forms. Customize page styling with ease in the builder, or dive directly into the page HTML to make advanced changes. Multiple versions of landing pages can be built that recognize the viewer based on behavior or contact attributes and show them personalized content including text, images, and links.

Email marketing

Email marketing is an effective tool to send branded and targeted content to a wide range of valuable contacts. The recently updated interface of the drag-and-drop email designer is intuitive enough for beginners but savvy enough for pros to edit HTML code snippets and further customize email design. Simplify email campaigns and landing pages with easy-to-embed text boxes, images, buttons, video players, dividers, QR codes, and other code blocks. Add, configure, and arrange graphic elements by creating a tailored image library, and use HTML color codes to customize text and buttons. 

Fine tune message content to each recipient, monitor how recipients interact with emails, drive customer journey automation, and present aggregated statistical results for individual contents to make the most of valuable customer data. Emails can also contain links to external webpages, Dynamics 365 Marketing pages, event registration pages, Customer Voice surveys, and more.  

Segmentation

Contacts can be segmented into lists and broken down into details like event registration, attendance, and primary contacts, basic click interactions in marketing emails, leads and journeys, and even when a customer’s birthday is— allowing for a high degree of customization for each experience.

Social posts

A crucial part of any business’ marketing strategy is effective social media presence, and Dynamics 365 Marketing easily schedules posts across multiple channels and accounts. Add media to posts and keep track of them in the calendar layout. Automated scheduling capabilities can be implemented in any marketing strategy to streamline workflows- no matter if there is a dedicated social media manager or if the task bounces to whoever has capacity at the moment.

Event management

Event management capabilities provide a single interface for nearly every aspect of the event timeline. Keep information about venues, logistics, ticketing, sessions, speakers, sponsors and more all in one place so the whole team can coordinate while working on them. Host webinar events with ease using built in Teams integration by generating online event websites where attendees can review event information and register online. Events can be integrated into marketing email messages and customer journeys to get the word out.

Customization features coming with Release Wave 2

Dynamics 365 Marketing users can expect two new personalization features with upcoming Release Wave 2 updates. Augment customer journeys with end-to-end integration of Power Automate into Dynamics 365 Marketing for limitless customization of the customer experience. Power Automate leverages first and third-party data sources to aggregate important customer interactions through actions from hundreds of apps, as well as proprietary and external business systems. Receive real-time updates of these interactions via a Microsoft Teams channel.

Create segments for leads and custom entities in the new segmentation builder. The redesigned experience is powerful and easy to use and can build personalized engagements for each customer with fine-grain control. Segments will be able to include leads and custom entities within the customer profile, as well as attributes and behavioral data for each contact.

Get started

Dynamics 365 Marketing can equip your company with the tools it needs to take its growth to the next level. Fill out the contact form to schedule a discovery call with a Dynamics 365 Marketing Consultant to see how you can elevate your marketing strategy using Dynamics 365.