What is Dynamics 365 Marketing?

Imagine a digital tool that transforms your marketing strategies into well-orchestrated symphonies through cutting-edge automation! This is the power brought to you by Dynamics 365 Marketing. From crafting engaging email campaigns and guiding customers through personalised journeys to analysing each interaction, it’s your all-in-one solution for driving business growth and connections. 

With global marketing automation industry revenue set to rise over £6 billion, there’s no better time to ride this innovation. This blog dives deep into the world of Dynamics 365, illuminating its features, benefits, limitations and more! Read on and step into the future of marketing!

Table of Contents 

1) What is Dynamics 365 Marketing? 

2) Features of Dynamics 365 Marketing 

3) Benefits of Dynamics 365 Marketing 

4) Limitations of Dynamics 365 Marketing

5) Dynamics 365 Marketing Use Cases

6) Conclusion  

What is Dynamics 365 Marketing? 

Dynamics 365 for Marketing can be defined as a purpose-driven marketing application that falls under the Microsoft Dynamics suite. It is considered to be the perfect tool for a marketing team to generate and distribute out-of-the-box marketing campaigns across Social Media. By using Dynamics 365, you can track potential leads, schedule your events, and track your activities and performance whenever you want with the extensive range of tools available. 

In simpler terms, Dynamics 365 for Marketing is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that is designed for the purpose of improving communication and nurturing leads with minimal effort. It can be integrated with other Dynamics 365 suite capabilities such as Sales, Teams, Customer Insights, and more – allowing you to make better and quicker decisions with the use of analytics and artificial intelligence. Additionally, it allows sales and marketing teams to collaborate efficiently.

The application is best suited for medium-sized businesses that are ready to put more time and money into their marketing efforts, as smaller businesses may find the app too complicated. The application is suitable for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing – but especially the former.



 

Features of Dynamics 365 Marketing 

The core elements of Dynamics 365 Marketing enable you to properly harness the power of AI and data to succeed in today’s digitally competitive environment. The top features of Dynamics 365 are as follows: 

Customer Journey Creation 

Every marketing enthusiast knows the importance of mapping a customer’s journey before starting a campaign. 

The answers to the following questions will help you gain clarity regarding your target audience:  

a) How did the customers arrive at your website?

b) What sources did they use? 

c) How did they interact with the content?

d) Were they able to complete the purchase?

Thus, creating a journey map from the prospect to the customer will show you what you need to do in order to keep the prospect on the road to purchase. You can either construct your customer’s journey using a drag-and-drop interface or use templates and tweak them as necessary with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing. Each stage of your client’s journey can be automated to help carry out a particular activity. For instance, you can schedule an email to have it sent in response to customer action.   

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Unified Platform 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers you a unified view, meaning that it enables one to get a sneak peek at multiple insights on the very same page. This feature of the application enables you to swiftly understand customer behaviour and efficiently create personalised communications for each of your customers. It must be noted that you now have access to Dynamics for Marketing as well as Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service analytics.   

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Simplified Multi-channel Campaigns 

The simple drag-and-drop user interface of Dynamics 365 facilitates easy channelisation of your campaign based on what your customer prefers. Whether it is the creation of a landing page, a professional e-mail or a Social Media campaign, one can create a multi-channel campaign and attend to your audience in accordance with their interests.

Dynamics 365 allows you to reuse content blocks and videos, personalise landing pages, forms, and websites, and help integrate your Social Media presence with simple clicks. The application includes everything that an organisation or company needs to have a stronger and more influential grip on Social Media.  

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Event Management 

One of the best ways an organisation can offer great value to its customers is by organising events for its customers. Event Management is one of the important features of Dynamics 365 for Marketing, as it makes organising a physical event a much less time-consuming chore than it usually is.

The Event Management feature present in the application offers all the things you need to host an event, including scheduling, venue and speaker management and registrations. It also works as a great portal management tool where you can create a personalised event site where attendees can manage their profiles, registrations, and attendance using Dynamics QR codes – as well as gather all the information that they need about speakers and schedules. 

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Nurturing Leads 

The primary goal of any marketing campaign, irrespective of the product or service, is driving leads. Dynamics 365 for Marketing provides you with powerful lead management features and makes it easier for you to track, score and nurture leads.   

As stated previously, the app also creates the customer journey so we can learn about leads at every stage of the journey based on rules such as e-mail engagements, page visits, Social Media engagements, webinar registrations and more. The automated lead scoring system then qualifies these leads and assigns them grades based on their readiness to purchase the product or service. 

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Webinars 

Webinars are an excellent Content Marketing tactic that is used by organisations to generate leads. Through the integration of third-party webinar platforms, Dynamics 365 allows you to plan, manage and deliver webinars. 

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Extensive Customer Insights 

Data analytics is known to play a dominant role in capturing leads, engaging them and converting them into customers. With the right customer insight data, one can target the right customers based on real-time customer journeys and completely customise the experience. You can also make use of Microsoft Forms Pro to conduct surveys to gain more important insights about your customers. It also helps segment your target audience properly, meaning that it allows you to segment your customers or prospects based on specific criteria or filters. 

You can also use Azure Data Lake Storage Data to help create a more personalised journey while also preserving complete control over data – in addition to the traditional customer insights connected by the Microsoft suite. The application also includes Power BI, an app that allows you to perform complex and customised analytics and lets you deliver exceptional customer support – helping you to retain your customers.  

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Benefits of Dynamics 365 Marketing

There are several benefits that Dynamics 365 Marketing offers to an organisation’s marketing process, some of which we will discuss as follows: 

1) Personalises the Customer Experience: Dynamics 365 helps build specific customer journeys targeted at certain customer segments. It adds customer-specific data to real-time e-mails that are taken automatically from the CRM database. It also helps a business add the element of personalisation across channels, e-mail, SMS, and more. Dynamics 365 helps create segments using natural language and embeds them within customer journeys for a more fine-tuned targeting of customers.  

2) Reduces Administrative Time: Dynamics 365 helps cut down administrative time, as all data is stored within a single system – therefore reducing the time spent in switching and collecting data from different applications. The information is updated in real-time, ensuring all messaging is updated with the most recent changes. All marketing communications are also tracked against a record, which ensures that nothing is lost. 

3) Ensures GDPR Compliance: Dynamics 365 helps ensure GDPR compliance, as it combines multiple notifications and confirmation requests into a singular message. It helps one conveniently access the history of subscription lists and GDPR consent-level changes with the historical view feature. Dynamics 365 also suggests fixes and provides guidance regarding the accessibility of e-mails, forms and pages that were created using the marketing Content Designer. 

4) Simplifies Event Management: Dynamics 365 helps manage all areas of an event seamlessly, including contacts, attendance, registration and more. The platform hosts an online hosting capability with the integration of Microsoft Team Webinars and live events. It also helps one create and publish a website specifically for a specific event, for event details, attendee registration, session planning and more. It facilitates the building of event registration forms in the marketing forms section with the use of a simple drag-and-drop interface and also helps embed any registration form into other third-party content management systems. It also helps design forms while in the event entity.   

5) Ensures Seamless Collaboration Across Departments: Through the many features it provides, Dynamics 365 facilitates seamless collaboration and transparency across departments. With Dynamics 365, every user has access to the part of the system that they need using the security roles feature. Microsoft Teams can be seamlessly integrated with Dynamics 365, giving your team the ability to plan, chat, host and more all within the system. All the necessary information is updated in real-time and is available to relevant users making sure that no data is lost, miscommunicated or misinterpreted. The cloud-based system that Dynamics 365 provides allows the staff to access the system from anywhere – be it from home, at the office, or on the go.    

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Limitations of Dynamics 365 Marketing

 While Dynamics 365 Marketing is a versatile tool for managing and automating marketing campaigns, it does have some limitations. Here are a few to consider:

1) Complexity for Small Businesses: Dynamics 365 Marketing can be complex and overwhelming for small businesses or teams with limited technical expertise. Setting up, configuring, and managing campaigns requires a good understanding of the platform.

2) Customisation Limitations: Dynamics 365's customisation options can be limited compared to more specialised marketing platforms. Customisation often requires advanced knowledge of the platform or additional development work, which can be a barrier for some users.

3) Cost: Dynamics 365 Marketing is often considered expensive, especially for small—to mid-sized companies. The cost includes subscription fees as well as potential costs for customisation, training, and ongoing support.

4) Integration Challenges: Despite being part of a broader Microsoft ecosystem, integrating Dynamics 365 seamlessly with non-Microsoft tools can sometimes be challenging. This requires custom connectors or third-party tools, which adds to complexity and cost.

5) Limited A/B Testing Features: Compared to other marketing automation platforms, Dynamics 365 Marketing's A/B testing capabilities are underwhelmingly basic. This limits how effectively you can test and optimise your marketing campaigns.

6) Limited Third-Party App Marketplace: The app marketplace for Dynamics 365 is growing, but it still needs to catch up to other major marketing platforms in terms of the variety and quality of third-party integrations available.

Dynamics 365 Marketing Use Cases

Dynamics 365 Marketing is typically adopted by companies with clear marketing-led initiatives that entail various activities: website publishing, event management, email and phone campaigns, and more. While these companies are invested in marketing strategy, planning, and labour, they struggle with their employees’ capacity and accurate revenue attribution.

Companies seeking to boost the marketing team’s abilities without compromising on the current team size will find Dynamics 365 for Marketing particularly suitable. The system allows users to create personalised interaction models that can run without day-to-day oversight and can be paused or edited whenever needed.

These companies seek proof that their marketing efforts produce revenue which justifies their investment. They want brand and messaging quality control while maintaining their unique voice. Additionally, they need to consolidate disparate marketing tools, such as web page analytics and Social Media into one fully integrated platform.

Implementing Dynamics 365 Marketing  

Successful implementation of Dynamics 365 Marketing needs configuring the:

1) Automation

2) Interface

3) Customer journeys 

This configuration process must fit your target audience, strategy, and business processes. 

Therefore, implementations need a thoughtful approach to ensure the system is installed in coordination with your other business technologies and marketing strategy. Collaborating with a partner who boasts a proven track record in Dynamics implementation and integration can ensure that your system launches successfully the first time.

Conclusion 

All in all, when integrated with Power BI and other elements of the Microsoft Dynamics suite, Dynamics 365 for Marketing is the ideal choice for B2B marketing for medium-sized companies.  Dynamics 365 Marketing not only helps you maintain a consistent relationship with your prospects but also helps you gain their loyalty. Hope this blog  helps you expand your marketing horizons! 

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