How Portals interact with Dynamics 365 Marketing

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.

There are several different integrations that can be synced with Dynamics 365 Marketing to create a portal for a potential client to use. The first is Dynamics 365 Portals which is a Microsoft app that allows any Dynamics 365 application to connect to the outside through an integration. Microsoft is moving away from Dynamics Portals and replacing it with Power Apps Portals. Dynamics Portals will continue to be supported for the time being, but any new customer who wants the functionality of Dynamics Portals will have to use Power Apps Portals. Thankfully, Power Apps Portals is already able to sync with Dynamics 365 Marketing while providing additional functionality over Dynamics Portals since it is integrated with more Microsoft systems and requires less rigid licensing in order to set up. It is also possible to set up a portal using a different content management system which would also require licensing from the other system. The other system would also need to be able to host the portal itself. The final option for creating a portal is through hosting it on an owned website, which would likely cut costs significantly, but requires extensive technical knowledge in order to operate.

Portal Setup

A portal connected to Dynamics 365 Marketing is relatively easy to set up by a system administrator. First, a website record must be created and named inside Dynamics 365 Marketing. This will be the main object that the new portal will be added to. The administrator will need to run the Marketing setup wizard and connect it with an existing Dynamics 365 portal or Power Apps portal in order to generate the new website record.

After performing the necessary website setup, a marketing page can be created under the Internet Marketing tab using the left-hand navigation of Dynamics 365 Marketing. After creating a page using the Content tab, the administrator can select the Portal Integration tab to begin the process of bringing the portal to the external user. The website selects which primary website this portal will be connected to. After filling out the Page Language and Container Page options, the new portal will be ready to connect . The Marketing page must then be set to Go Live for the portal to connect and the live web page to be established.

There are many useful applications of this portal. The portal will allow access to creation of web pages directly inside Dynamics 365 Marketing. If a customer is going to register attendance to an event like a webinar, for example, they could log in to the portal, click on a button that has been created on the page, and have an event registration be logged to their contact automatically. If there was an active lead scoring rule, this behavior would increase the heat of this lead, and the contact could log back in later, register that they had attended the event, and then increase their lead heat even more. This information can be incredibly vital in keeping track of where a prospective client may be in the sales funnel.

Another common use of a Dynamics Portal is to create a contact page or a landing page that is sent for a specific purpose or otherwise targeted ad. If a marketer is trying to focus their ads towards manufacturers, they can design a landing page explicitly to appeal to manufacturers. They can then design an email marketing campaign to send a targeted email with a link to that specific landing page in it. When a potential client visits that website, they could be greeted with targeted advertising and a form which can submit their contact information to the page. Dynamics 365 Marketing can then automatically create a new contact and lead record inside the system.

A final common use of a portal in Dynamics 365 Marketing is to create a subscription center for email marketing. This subscription center is required for all email marketing campaigns and provides the email respondent a way to unsubscribe from an emailing list.. Dynamics 365 Marketing can rate leads that unsubscribe from email lists as colder.

Portal Pricing

Microsoft has also been cutting prices for end users by switching to Power Apps Portals. Dynamics 365 Portals required either a monthly $500 fee to use or a Dynamics 365 license. Pricing per volume used to be per page view with Dynamics 365 Portals, as well.

Microsoft does provide 1 free subscription center with every Dynamics 365 Marketing instance. This is automatically created by default in the system and runs natively on the service fabric of the instance. If the default subscription center is removed for any reason, a Dynamics 365 Marketing customer will have to purchase Power Apps Portals to replace or add any new portals.

Power Apps Portals allows for a subscription based on log ins per page views along with a monthly fee per portal. Essentially, a Power Apps Portal customer pays for the actual logins that occur after their portal is used, rather than the paying based off how many users simply view the site. This allows for cheaper overall maintenance costs per month than with a Dynamics 365 Portal. For more on these pricing options, click here.