Importing existing Outbound emails into Real-Time in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights-Journeys
Creating marketing emails is a core part of any digital strategy, and a marketing platform like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Journeys (formerly known as Dynamics 365 Marketing) makes email campaign creation and management a breeze.
To best serve its customers, Microsoft has increased its investment in developing real-time avenues, and as such, will default the Customer Insights—Journeys application to real-time functionality going forward.
There are a few differences between Outbound and Real-Time, and if you’re a current Marketing application customer, you may be wondering what this transition means for your actual, day-to-day job functions and the things that you currently do in the Outbound area of the application. Namely, all the time and energy you’ve spent building and sending marketing emails in your Outbound Customer Journeys. But good news: you can very quickly and easily import your existing emails to use in Real-Time Marketing too!
What’s happening to Outbound emails?
If you currently use Dynamics 365 Customer Insights-Journeys, you likely do most of your actual work in the Outbound area of the application and may be aware of Real-Time as a separate area of the application. If you aren’t familiar with real-time marketing, the core appeal and draw is that it gives you many more opportunities and touchpoints to drill down and reach your audience through your various campaigns and journeys.
In case you really, really can’t live without Outbound, you’re still in luck, because you will be able to purchase and attach Outbound to the Real-Time application base as well. Microsoft hasn’t announced any plans to deprecate Outbound Marketing yet, meaning Outbound will still be supported, but no new features or enhancements will be introduced going forward. So current customers can continue to use Dynamics 365 Marketing as-is, with no interruptions to Outbound functionality for the foreseeable future. All-in-all, you’ve still got a great application at your fingertips with more potential than ever before to interact with your audience.
Learn more about the transition to Real-Time Marketing in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Journeys →
Importing Emails
When working in the Real-Time area of the marketing application, navigate to Emails under “Channels” to begin the email import process.
You can select up to 50 emails at a time to import, and when the import window opens, you’ll see a list of all your Outbound emails pop up. In this email selection window, you can not only filter the columns and search by keyword, but you can actually switch between any views you might use. This is going to be tremendously helpful since you can see your system views as well as any views you’ve made yourself.
Tip: In Outbound Marketing, create a specific view of the emails you’d like to import to Real-Time.
Once you’ve selected the emails you’d like to import, hit Next, where you’ll be asked if you’d like to import the content blocks included in any of the selected emails. Any content blocks imported over can be found under “Assets” within the Content Blocks section.
Then, you can hit Start and the import process will begin. Once the process is complete, you’ll be able to tell if any of your emails failed to be imported and were skipped.
One thing to know at this time is that any emails or templates you’ve created that include A/B tests in Outbound cannot and will not be imported. Real-Time will skip these emails entirely during the import process, so your A/B testing emails as well as any other emails that fail during the import will be compiled into a downloadable file for you to review after the import is complete.
There are other types of marketing content that can be imported, but due to the nature of importing complex email elements, you’ll need to review them and manually re-add the following elements as they will be removed during the import process:
Surveys
QR codes
Code elements
Compliance profile details
Personalization that includes if and else conditions
Content settings placeholders
Form double opt in submissions
Contextual message placeholders
View as a web page links
Once your emails have been imported in, a new view will be generated for you: Imported from outbound marketing.
Here you’ll be able to see all the emails that were just brought in, and the email name will say Outbound in brackets to clearly indicate that they were originally Outbound emails. They will set to a Draft Status and should be reviewed before making them live and using them as marketing assets going forward. It’s possible that certain elements reformatted during the import, so each email should be reviewed and edited as necessary.
Importing Templates and Content Blocks
If you wanted to import your existing email templates from Outbound Marketing, you can easily do that, too.
Navigate into the Email Templates section under “Assets” and select the import templates button. Then it’s the same process—just select the templates you’d like to bring over and again you can move between views and filter to find exactly what you’re looking for.
This process will be the same for importing content blocks, too.
It really couldn’t be easier to bring all your emails and templates over to Real-Time! Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Journeys is a great platform to help you connect with your audience and broaden your reach. If you’re ready to get started with a full-featured marketing solution, our consulting team can help.