Tip #10 One app but two functions?

Why?

Double digits!! I have officially reached double digits on the D365 Marketing tips series. That is so cool 😀

I have now reached the first goal with this series and I guess it is time for the next one. To reach triple digits! I know the goals from there on should be revised. Otherwise, it will take some time to reach them 😀

But that was not what this post is supposed to be about. Today, I am writing about the recent changes to the D365 Marketing app and how that will affect the users of D365 Marketing module.

With the October release in 2021, we got added a new section and set of functionalities – “Real-time marketing”. This also triggered that the area with regular email marketing/ forms / pages etc. Has also changed name. It is now called “Outbound marketing”.

Real-time marketing and Outbound marketing

How?

The Outbound marketing area will function like it did before. It will also receive updates and new functionality like it did before the change.

The Real-Time Marketing area is a whole new area of functionalities that build upon the way automation works in D365 Marketing. The primary area is Journeys.

But what is Real-time marketing and what more does it give us?

Real-time marketing helps you engage with your customers in real-time. There are various event and custom triggers that can reach out to your customers right when something happens on your platform.

A prime example for that is when a customer has started a registration process for a new webinar. But for some reason, they move away from the page before they have pressed the “Submit” button.

These reactions doesn’t have to be emails, but can also be push notifications or SMS. All flows and process paths can be configured in a nice drag-and-drop canvas. It is very similar to the Customer Journey designer in the Outbound Marketing area.

Besides the functionality of real-time interactions with your customers. You can also pull in data from your various prediction models and segments from Customer Insights. Making it possible to target customers with information and offers that are both interesting and relevant. This way, you also increase the pool of loyal customers. Which makes you able to increase the number of subscribers to your content.

To be honest, one of the biggest issues for marketing departments after GDPR came in 2018, has been that they are not able to send out to as many contacts as they would like to, because people do not subscribe.

With being able to identify specific target groups and being able to control that you only send out relevant information to relevant people, then this also gives a message to your subscribers. This says that you care about the information you send out to your followers and aren’t there just to spam them with all sorts of irrelevant information.

But as it is a new area and everyone is still trying to understand it and learn the good, bad and ugly 😀 Then there are also things that are either not yet available or doesn’t work at the moment.

I will bring out a subsection of the ones, I feel should definitely be mentioned, but I will also link to the MS documentation below, where you have the possibility to see the whole list.

Examples of issues in real-time marketing

The Real-time marketing functionality is currently only available in the USA, Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada and Asia-Pacific geographies. Other areas will become available in the future.
The AI model can’t currently read the consent for channels. If someone has blocked/ unsubscribed from for example, text messages, then the system might still lead the customer down that path and send them a text message. This is because the AI model just doesn’t have access to this information at the moment.
One way of getting a phone number to send out SMS is using Azure Communication Services. Other ways can be Twilio or TeleSign for example. The only issue wit using Azure Communication Services is that it only supports USA phone numbers at the moment to send out SMS.

It will take a bit of time to understand the way you can take out most value from real-time marketing area, but I will also bring out tips and trick along the way 🙂