Microsoft has made no delay in getting started with planning updates to Dynamics 365. Recently, Microsoft put out its plan for the 2021 Release Wave 1. A multitude of enhancements and features are coming to the Dynamics 365 applications, including Dynamics 365 Marketing.

The updates to Marketing aim to make content creation easier, allow it to be distributed through more channels, and give users better tools to analyze their data. Many of these updates are expected to become available in April with the rest rolling out in the months after.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The variety of list types can be confusing, so it’s important to understand the difference. There are two main list types: the marketing segment and the marketing list. Marketing segments are designed to be paired with customer journeys so a marketer can guide members of a selected subset of contacts through a journey of content that can include marketing emails, marketing forms & pages, events, and more.

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.

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Marketing contains a comprehensive lead scoring system that helps marketers do exactly that. With an easy-to-use UI-based scoring module, it is simple to create scoring models that rank leads and automatically target them.

Account Based Marketing has shown it can be a high-value element of any team’s marketing initiatives. See what you can do, and how to do it, with Account Based Marketing in Dynamics 365 for Marketing.

Live events require significant time and resources to figure out the logistics and ultimately put on a successful event. Dynamics 365 for Marketing makes it possible for organizations of any size to organize and manage everything that goes into a live event.

Virtual events are cost-effective and can be highly valuable for any company. Dynamics 365 for Marketing simplifies the huge number of logistics and details necessary to make an event worth it. See how the comprehensive marketing solution can help manage your digital events.

On April 5, 2019, the Dynamics 365 April release was made Generally Available to customers. Learn about upgrades made to the suite of Dynamics 365 apps, Business Central, the Microsoft Power Platform, and how they’ll all be affected. Sign up for a free 30-day trial to get started with Dynamics 365 for yourself.

Attracting, capturing, and closing on high-quality leads has become an art form in today’s ultra-competitive digital age. What used to be a combination of cold-calling, print ads, and a bit of luck has shifted to social media, personalized messages, drip campaigns, and an overall focus that’s more on the customer, not your company. Companies must adopt at least some form of most of these practices in order to stay competitive in today’s environment, but that’s a lot easier for large corporations than small and midsize companies.

Dynamics 365 is Microsoft’s combined ERP and CRM platform. The system consists of seven applications to serve various business functions: Sales, Customer Engagement, Field Service, Talent, Finance and Operations, Retail, Project Service Automation, and Marketing. Dynamics 365 for Marketing will be the focus of this blog as we delve into its capabilities, functions, and what it can do for your business.