Dynamics 365 Marketing will merge with Customer Insights – Here’s what you need to know

Microsoft has announced that on September 1, 2023, Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will be combined into a single product offering called Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. The new unified application will help users continue to deliver excellent customer experiences and harness customer data in ways that further brand loyalty and growth.

Microsoft has made huge investments in Real-Time Marketing capabilities and cites increasing demand for features that drive value and allow you to manage and reach customers in meaningful ways as major selling points of new real-time features.

Although this sounds like a major change, there’s no need to panic. We’ve broken down everything you need to know about the unified app and how you can benefit from it.

For new customers

For anyone who doesn’t currently use Dynamics 365 Marketing (or Customer Insights) but has been considering it, you’ll now be purchasing the unified application. New customer environments will not include Outbound Marketing, which is currently the default area that shows when opening the app. Outbound can still be purchased as an attached product, however!

So, new environments will include Real-Time Marketing and Event Management, and the application will default to Real-Time.

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For existing customers

Nothing is changing for existing customers just yet. Dynamics 365 Marketing will now be called Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys, and although the name is changing, the application itself and its functionality won’t change. You’ll still have access to your outbound marketing abilities, but note that outbound won’t receive any new features, updates, or improvements—all new features and innovations will be rolled out in real-time marketing only. Really, all you need to adjust to is the new name.

Per a Microsoft FAQ on this change, “Existing, standalone Dynamics 365 Marketing and/or Customers Insights customers will have an opportunity to renew their existing licensing for one contractual cycle before transitioning to the new Customer Insights combined licensing. This renewal, however, must be contracted before September 1, 2024.”

Will it cost more?

To get technical, Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will be sold under a single product SKU, and within the unified application, it will be broken up as two apps:

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data

This will allow you to save 40% on the base licensing cost compared to the previous license packaging.

What’s happening to Outbound Marketing?

Outbound Marketing will still be supported, but no new features or enhancements will be introduced going forward. But, current customers can continue to use Dynamics 365 Marketing as-is, with no interruptions to Outbound functionality.

For current customers who utilize both Outbound and Real-Time areas of the application, making the switch to the real-time default will feel pretty intuitive. You’ll still be able to update your contacts, create journeys, build emails, create social media posts, and more. The big benefit is that you’ll be gaining access to new features and abilities across all new customer touchpoints,

What about my existing contacts? Forms? Segments?

Since existing customers aren’t seeing direct changes yet, you don’t have to worry about losing your existing data and assets. And since the application functionality won’t change at all, you can continue using your existing contacts, forms, and segments as-is for the time being.

Contacts and leads in the context of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will now be known as “People Interacted” – Microsoft defines People Interacted as “…a rebranding of the "marketable contact" meter in the existing Dynamics 365 Marketing app. An interacted person is any Dataverse entity (such as a contact, lead, account, or Insights profile) who is interacted with.” (Microsoft)

In this new context, person is considered "interacted" when they somehow have contact with outbound or inbound marketing efforts through the app, such by filling out a form through a marketing website.

“The interaction can be sent through out-of-box channels available in Customer Insights - Journeys (for example, emails, SMS, or push notifications), other Microsoft channels (for example, ACS), or third-party systems integrated with Customer Insights - Journeys (for example, other SMS providers).” (Microsoft)

Monthly interactions will now be known as “People Unified” – Microsoft defines People Unified as a “rebranding of the existing Dynamics 365 Customer Insights app's ‘profile’ meter. A profile represents a uniquely recognized individual that is created through a collection of defined data source sets from several systems.” (Microsoft)

The new application will actually let you reach more people, with the base tenant allowing for 10,000 People Interacted (currently understood as your contacts or leads) and 100,000 People Unified (currently understood as monthly interactions).

And if that isn’t enough, you can now scale to up to 100,000,000 People Interacted and 300,000,000 People Unified, and contact and interaction capacities can be increased separately from one another—so you only pay to upgrade what you need.

What else should I know about Real-Time Marketing?

Microsoft will continue to invest heavily in capabilities and features that center around using data to generate insights and create deeply personalized customer engagement experiences. The unified Customer Insights application will help users deliver excellent results with predictive real-time insights and customer context, granular customer journey orchestration, and built-in AI tools. Real-time features will allow your team to optimize every little bit of customer data and touchpoints with advanced segmentation.

The new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights aims to be a wholly integrated marketing solution that brings formerly isolated processes into the fold, allowing you to break down organizational siloes and connect processes across your sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

Even if you don’t make the switch right away, you’ll still benefit from familiarizing yourself with the Real-Time Marketing area of your Dynamics 365 application. Real-Time Marketing allows you to create real-time journeys using both segments and moment-based triggers, offers better lead scoring tools, better form creation, enhanced personalization tools using audience, trigger, and compliance sources, and allows you to harness the latest generative AI capabilities with Copilot – use features like content ideas help your marketers craft on-message content with refined tone and predictive text.

 Still have questions about the new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights? Our consultants are here to help.