Microsoft renamed the Dynamics 365 Marketing module in September to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. This was to bring Marketing and the Customer Insights attachment closer together, which brings deeper insights to your communications. You can read the Frequently Asked Questions guide for further information on the changes.
The real-time module will be named Customer Insights – Journeys, and the analytics module will be named Customer Insights – Data. Many marketers are new to the Data module, but you can take a guided tour of Customer Insights for a quick introduction. For a deep dive, you can read the full documentation to learn how to leverage it to its potential.
Existing solutions on this platform will not see any immediate change other than a relabelling of the application.
Transition from Outbound Marketing
If you are a Dynamics Marketing user, you will not need to take any action at this point, but you may want to familiarise yourself with the benefits of the real-time module and plan a strategy for your own business to move to the real-time module in your business solution roadmap.
The Outbound Marketing module will no longer be updated with new features, but you will continue to be able to use it as before. Microsoft will focus their efforts on improving the existing real-time module.
Currently, some capabilities exist in Outbound Marketing which does not in Real-time such as Marketing pages and Social Posting. If you wish to import these, there is a pathway to perform this, illustrated below:
A few months ago, we compared the differences between Outbound and Real-time marketing in a video, and what we believed would be the future of Marketing and considerations to take when deciding which module to use.
Create a support ticket requesting outbound marketing
If you are in the position to migrate features from outbound via support ticket, you can do this by following these instructions:
Do you see the Enable link on the Settings > Versions page? If yes, don’t create a ticket. Use that link to provision outbound marketing.
If you create a support ticket, you must include the following information:
- What is the TenantID? (TenantID)
- What is the OrgID of the org that needs outbound marketing? (OrgID)
- Is this a new org or an existing org that was updated? (New or existing)
- Is this org a “solutions only” org? (Yes or no)
- Is this the only org in this tenant? (Yes or no)
- If no, include the OrgIDs of other orgs. (OrgIDs)
- Why do you need outbound marketing? Select the reason(s) from the list below and include the requested details.
- There are features in outbound marketing that I can’t live without. (Include a list of the features)
- I’m not ready to transition to real-time journeys yet, I plan to transition later. (Include the planned timeline)
- I have customization that I can’t move to real-time journeys. (Include details)
- I’ve tried the real-time journeys module and had issues with it. (Include details)
- Other reasons. (Include details)
Dynamics 365 Real-time transition resources
These changes have not impacted the events module and will continue to deliver the same features and functionality as before.
If you are using Dynamics Marketing or are interested in integrating it with your business, we suggest you learn more about about these changes in the published transition playbook.
Licence changes for new solutions
New solutions will have a new, single SKU that includes both data and journey modules.
The licensing cost for Customer Insights is £1,397.30 per tenant, per month.
If you have a qualifying module such as Dynamics 365 Sales, the price is £821.90 per tenant per month.
This includes 4 possible environments and has an allowance of 100,000 Unified People and 10,000 Interacted People per month. Microsoft defines Unified People as a uniquely identified individual that is created through a collection of defined data source sets from multiple systems, represented by a profile. Interacted People refers to any Dataverse entity (such as a contact, lead, account or an Insights profile) that is interacted with. A person is considered interacted when they are interacted with via either an outbound interaction or an inbound one such as filling out a form via a marketing website.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will also benefit from 2023 Wave 2 release
In addition to the rebranding and transition to Real-time marketing, Customer Insights will benefit from a wave of new monthly updates from October 2023 to March 2024. This will bring new capabilities to the module, as well as the Dynamics and Power Platform ecosystem. With a particular focus on Copilot, Microsoft’s flagship AI solution, the module will benefit by supporting marketers to be more productive. For example, Copilot will assist users to optimise messaging to different audiences, and styles. Whether you’re creating content for email, text messages, push notifications, or forms, using Copilot, you can easily rephrase messages, adjust the tone of voice, and shorten or lengthen copy, increasing productivity and delivering better results.
Marketers can also benefit by quickly creating real-time customer journeys simply by describing them to Copilot. Simply describe in everyday words what you want to create and rely on generative AI to build the journey for you. This empowers you to do more with less. Instead of spending time getting the mechanics of the journey right, you can now ensure that you’re delivering the most personalised experience for your customers by collaborating with your entire team and quickly driving stakeholder alignment.
You can discover the full list of capabilities on the new interactive Microsoft Release Planner. You can pick your own highlights and share these with your teams to focus and stay updated on which improvements are most important to you.
