Microsoft has recently released the preview of the updates coming with the Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 1 this spring. There are a variety of features coming to the Dynamics 365 ecosystem with general availability for many beginning in April and continuing to roll out through September. Early access for new features becomes available on February 1st. We have picked out some of the highlights for Dynamics 365 applications that are included in the release.

If your organization uses Dynamics 365 for Sales, you can track emails from clients, vendors, leads, opportunities, etc. right from Outlook and those emails will automatically sync up to the associated record in your Dynamics 365 CRM system.

Dynamics 365 Marketing is a powerful digital marketing application that help users create marking content and distribute it manually or through automated processes. Its wide variety of tools make it effective for most marketing campaigns. Dynamics 365 Marketing has its own insights and analytics tools to help marketers learn what has proved effective and what can be improved.

However, with the use of Microsoft Dataverse and Power BI, interactive, highly customizable reports can be created to boost the visibility of important marketing data. Power BI is also a low-code solution, so, while coding knowledge can be helpful, an extensive background in development is not needed to make effective, good-looking reports.

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is Microsoft’s premier solution for customer feedback management. Customer Voice provides organizations with effective solutions to build and analyze customer surveys and identify metrics they need to improve the experience of their customers.

Before making the move to Dynamics 365, Custom Education Solutions kept sales and marketing data in separate systems causing sales and marketing efforts to be slowed and disjointed. With Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing, the sales and marketing teams can work together to reach targeted audiences and focus on the opportunities most likely to close.

The lines between sales and marketing continue to blur. If sales and marketing teams are not on the same page or unaware of what each other are doing to further the sales funnel, valuable time and effort can be wasted. For organizations that are using Dynamics 365 Sales, the Campaigns entity provides an introductory way to create and track marketing campaign performance and activity without a dedicated marketing application.

For salespeople in the field that spend most of their time on the road, it can be difficult to find the time to make sure their CRM data is up to date. Frankly, it is difficult to use most CRM applications on the road. The latest release of Dynamics 365 Sales expands the mobile experience to help salespeople to quickly access and update customer information on the go.

Dynamics 365 Marketing is Microsoft’s premiere digital marketing application built directly into the Dynamics 365 ecosystem. For those of you using Dynamics 365 Marketing already, you may see changes here and there as Microsoft pushes out new releases as part of Dynamics 365 2020 Release Wave 2.

Some of these features are not very visible and require additional steps to enable. We’ve put together a list of 5 new features in Dynamics 365 Marketing that can immediately impact your marketing operations and make life easier for your marketing team.

In the work-from-home era, companies like professional service organizations have been forced to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Engaging with audiences without in-person interactions can seem like a daunting task. However, applications like Dynamics 365 Marketing do the work to help companies keep their customers engaged.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing has proven itself a powerful catalyst for creating and maintaining strong customer relationships. Microsoft’s update release wave 2 further enhances Dynamics 365 Marketing by giving users better tools for, and better control over, the processes they already do so well.

There are big quality of life and UI enhancements coming to Customer Journeys, increased functionality and performance monitoring for social post, and integration with Microsoft Teams for easy webinar and event management.

Microsoft recently announced that Internet Explorer Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported by Microsoft 365 applications. Don’t panic – Internet Explorer users have until August 17, 2021 before the tried and true browser is officially retired, however it is important for organizations using Dynamics 365 and Office 365 to begin developing a plan to use another browser for day to day access.

Coming soon, the Customer Journey entity will see a revamp making it even easier to create and manage automated marketing campaigns. These campaigns range from a simple email blast to an extended drip campaign that reacts to how the target interacts with the campaign content. Learn more about building more complex customer journeys here. Here is a glimpse at what’s coming to early release in September and general availability in October.

Twice each year, Microsoft gathers all projects under the umbrella of the Dynamics 365 label and hashes out a roadmap for every moving piece of the suite. The result is a huge document covering all Dynamics apps including Marketing, Sales, Finance and Operations, Human Resources, Commerce, Fraud Protection, Business Central, and Customer Voice, and a number of smaller subdivisions under each of these apps.

The May 2020 Update for Dynamics 365 Marketing was recently released. With this release come new features, performance upgrades, and bug fixes. If you have been watching Dynamics 365 updates closely, you’ll know there have been regular, monthly updates over the last 6 months.

The May release marks the final point in the Dynamics 365 Marketing 2020 release wave 1 plan. All features mentioned in release wave 1 plan are now generally available to all Dynamics 365 Marketing implementations. So what are the new features you should be aware of? Let us go through them.

An accounting team may be able to successfully enter sales orders or compile financial reports, but an outside sales team may struggle to interact with prospects remotely. For under-utilized departments like sales that are stuck at home, now is the perfect opportunity to train them on CRM processes that will improve their performance and data tracking when they have the chance to hit the field again.

Digital marketing technology and strategies are constantly evolving. With new technologies, many new marketing strategies develop quickly to help make use of the new mediums we now have access to. One such marketing strategy, drip marketing, is a modern way to market to a specific set of potential customers through targeted emails with relevant information that can help convert them into an opportunity and ultimately a customer.

Microsoft’s new marketing platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing, can help provide businesses with the tools they need to execute complex marketing strategies like drip campaigns.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is an important part of the Dynamics 365 Suite. It is used to manage leads and opportunities and facilitate more conversions for your business. There are license types that are currently offered which can be somewhat confusing to a first-time buyer who may not know all the different options available to them.

Utilizing an integration between Dynamics 365 Portals or Power Apps Portals, Dynamics 365 Marketing can provide a front end to interact directly with a potential customer. Marketers can use marketing pages built on these portals to engage with their audience by registering for events, filling out forms, or performing other marketing actions and have it sync directly with the marketing platform behind it. This blog will explain how exactly the integration between Dynamics 365 Portals and Dynamics 365 Marketing works and what can be accomplished with it.

Monitoring online behavior associated with a website, social media pages, and landing pages is essential for marketers. Tracking this behavior can give insight into what messaging your audience is connecting with and how they are accessing it. Dynamics 365 Marketing gives marketers the tools needed to track their audience and learn more about what content they connect with.

Companies making an evaluation for a new Microsoft partner can often be confused about a prospective partner’s qualifications or what they may offer. For many partners, they may be certified in one area or another by Microsoft. They may also have a tier of qualification on each of their certifications.