What are marketing topics?

Topics are a way to categorize the marketing messages you send under a commercial purpose or another custom commercial purpose in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys. A commercial purpose separates optional marketing communications from transactional communications. Transactional messages include essential communications such as order confirmations and shipping updates, while commercial messages can include promotional content, newsletters, sales notifications, product launches, and similar marketing outreach. Topics create additional categories within that commercial purpose. By setting up different topics, you can allow contacts to opt in or out of specific types of marketing communications. For example, someone might want to receive your newsletter but not webinar invitations or product updates. This gives your audience more granular control over the messages they receive and allows you to organize contacts based on the content that's relevant to them.

How to create a topic

To create a topic:

1. Go to Settings in Customer Insights - Journeys.
2. Under Customer Engagement, open Compliance Profiles.
3. Select the appropriate compliance profile.
4. Go to Consent Purposes.
5. Select your commercial purpose.
6. Scroll to the topics associated with that purpose.
7. Select Add Topic.
8. Enter the topic name.
9. Select Save and Close.

Once you've established the topics your organization needs, you generally won't need to create new ones very often.

Add the topic to your preference center

After creating a topic, it's important to add it to your preference center so contacts can subscribe or unsubscribe. Edit your preference center and add the appropriate topic. You can configure the topic's behavior as either opt in or opt out. Make sure the language shown to contacts matches that behavior. For example, an opt-out option might say "Unsubscribe me from product launches and updates," while an opt-in option should clearly indicate that the contact is choosing to subscribe. Giving contacts this flexibility can support audience engagement and retention while demonstrating that your organization respects and follows the communication preferences people select.

Apply a topic to a marketing email

Once the topic and preference center are configured, you can associate the topic with individual marketing emails. In your marketing email:

1. Open the email's settings.
2. Open the compliance options.
3. Select the appropriate compliance profile.
4. Select the commercial purpose.
5. Choose the topic that applies to the message.

For example, a marketing email announcing a new product could use a Product Launches and Updates topic. The topic then becomes part of determining whether a contact has the appropriate consent to receive that message.

Create a segment based on a topic

Topics can also help you build segments that work similarly to marketing lists from outbound marketing. To create a topic-based segment, create a new segment targeting contacts and add an attribute group based on the topic or purpose information. You can then specify the topic you want to use, such as Product Launches and Updates. After saving the segment, it can be used as the audience for a customer journey. You can add an email with the corresponding commercial purpose and topic, creating a workflow that targets contacts subscribed to that type of communication. This approach can mimic the marketing-list workflow that users of outbound marketing may already be familiar with.

Choosing the right topics for your organization

Your ideal topic structure depends on your organization's products, services, audiences, and approach to marketing. Before configuring topics, consider questions such as:

• Do you offer one-time purchases, subscription-based purchases, or both?
• Do you host in-person events, online events, or both?
• Do you have regional offerings or promotions?
• If someone purchases one product, are they likely to be interested in another?
• Are some products or services different enough that they should have separate marketing categories?

Answering these questions can help you determine which categories will be meaningful to your audience.

Use topics to manage communication frequency

Topics don't have to represent only products or types of content. You can also use them to let contacts indicate how frequently they'd like to hear from you. For example, you could establish options for contacts who want:

• Frequent or daily communications
• Weekly or biweekly communications
• Monthly roundups

These options can appear in the preference center as opt-in choices, giving contacts another way to control their experience with your marketing communications.

Use topics for products, services, or regional interests

Another strategy is to organize topics around the products, services, or regional considerations relevant to your audience. For example, an organization selling plants, seeds, and garden supplies could create topics for different plant hardiness zones. Contacts could select the zone that's relevant to them, while additional topics could cover general news, promotions, or sales notifications. This type of granular topic structure can help contacts select communications that more closely match their individual interests and needs.

Be intentional with your topic strategy

Topics work best when they reflect the actual content your organization sends and the choices that matter to your audience. Whether you organize topics around newsletters, product launches, communication frequency, regions, products, or services, the goal is to give contacts meaningful control over the marketing messages they receive. An intentional topic structure can help you create more relevant outreach while building trust, engagement, and retention with your audience.