Getting started with brand profiles

Brand profiles in Dynamics 365 Marketing help simplify the process of creating unified, cohesive marketing content. They let you standardize important brand information, including email senders and social media links, so you can reuse it when creating marketing emails. Brand profiles are located in the Settings area of Dynamics 365 and must first be enabled by a system administrator. The feature can be activated under Email editor in the Feature switches section of system settings. Once enabled, switch from the Marketing area to Settings using the menu in the lower-left corner, then navigate to Brand Profiles under Customer Engagement Settings.

Managing your brand profiles

The Brand Profiles page lists your existing profiles and provides options to create, delete, and manage them. Like other Dynamics 365 list pages, you can customize this view by:

• Sorting brand profiles.
• Adding columns such as Modified By, Status Reason, or Status.
• Filtering profiles based on information such as status, owner, or keywords in the name.
• Saving your configuration as a custom view.
• Sharing custom views with teammates who have access to the same records and entities.

If you don't manage many profiles, extensive filtering might not be necessary. However, saved views can be helpful when you want a consistent way to find and manage specific profiles.

Creating a new brand profile

To create a brand profile, select New from the action bar, enter a name for the profile, and save it. The remaining fields become available after the profile has been named and saved. Next, open the Senders tab and select New Sender. Configure:

• The From email address.
• The From name.
• The Reply-to email address.
• Whether the sender should be the default for new emails.

Your From and Reply-to email addresses do not have to be the same. Save and close the sender when you're finished.

Adding social media links

You can also add social media URLs to a brand profile. These links can later be inserted into marketing emails as dynamic content. This is particularly helpful if your organization manages multiple brands or business units with different social media accounts. Rather than manually entering links whenever you design an email, you can associate the appropriate information with each brand profile.

Managing multiple brands or business units

Dynamics 365 supports multiple brand profiles, making them useful when a single application instance supports several brands, subcompanies, or business units. When creating multiple profiles, consider adding descriptions that make each profile easy to identify. You can then add the Description column to your Brand Profiles list view to make managing multiple profiles easier.

Authenticating your sending domains

Before sending email with a brand profile, your sending domain must be authenticated. You can enter sender information before authentication is complete, but authentication needs to be finished before sending emails using that domain. Domain authentication helps verify that you own the domain you're sending from and helps prevent your messages from being flagged as spam or blocked. A system administrator can manage domain authentication within Advanced Marketing Settings, and new domains can be added as needed.

Customizing brand profiles

The Brand Profiles table can also be customized with additional fields to fit your organization's needs. For example, you might add fields containing a website homepage or landing pages for seasonal offerings. This gives you another way to extend your brand profiles with information that's useful to your specific marketing processes.

Using a brand profile in an email

When you're working in the real-time marketing email designer, you can select a brand profile for an email. Navigate to Emails under Channels and create or open an email. In the email designer, use the Brand Profile dropdown to select the profile you want. Once selected, the profile can populate information such as:

• Sender.
• From name.
• From email address.
• Reply-to email address.

Once a brand profile is selected, these sender details are controlled by the selected profile rather than being edited individually in the email. This helps maintain consistency across communications using that brand.

Using social links as dynamic content

Social media URLs stored in your brand profile can also be inserted into emails as dynamic content. When editing text, select Personalization and create new dynamic text. From the available attributes, choose the brand profile and then select the social URL you want to use. The same approach can be used to link social media icons in your email. Select the image, work with its URL attribute, and use personalization to select the appropriate link from your brand profile. Using brand profiles this way lets you manage important brand information in a central location and reuse it throughout your marketing emails, helping maintain a more consistent brand experience across communications.