Transitioning from Outbound Marketing to Real-Time Journeys

Real-Time Journeys offers much of the functionality marketers are familiar with from Outbound Marketing while introducing additional options for personalization, automation, consent management, and customer engagement. If you primarily use Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys for email marketing, the transition may not require dramatic changes to your existing processes. However, understanding the differences between the two experiences can help you decide what needs to be migrated, rebuilt, or reconfigured.

Working with segments

Existing Outbound Marketing segments can be used with Real-Time Journeys. However, Microsoft recommends rebuilding frequently used segments with the Real-Time segment designer because of improved performance when refreshing dynamic segment membership. Real-Time also allows you to target leads directly. In Outbound Marketing, contacts served as the baseline, requiring you to work through related tables when targeting leads. The Real-Time segment designer also makes it easier to incorporate related information, such as events and event registrations, and provides more responsive options for behavioral segmentation.

Creating and personalizing emails

The Real-Time email designer works similarly to the Outbound designer, but provides additional styling and personalization capabilities. Design options include:

• Text styles
• Buttons and links
• Custom fonts
• Color palettes
• Reusable styling options

One of the biggest improvements is the ability to create conditional and personalized content. Instead of limiting personalization primarily to individual fields, you can change entire sections of an email based on information associated with a contact or lead. For example, you could display a different image and introductory paragraph depending on where a contact or lead lives. You can also create conditions that check whether information exists before displaying personalized content, helping prevent unwanted blank spaces when a recipient's record doesn't contain a particular value.

Using segment-based and trigger-based journeys

Real-Time supports both segment-based and trigger-based journeys. Segment-based journeys work similarly to journeys marketers may already be familiar with in Outbound Marketing. Trigger-based journeys provide additional possibilities by responding to actions taken by a contact or lead. Depending on your configuration and channels, these actions can include interactions involving:

• Websites
• Forms
• Emails
• Text messages
• Mobile applications

Real-Time Journeys includes a variety of triggers by default, and custom triggers can be configured for additional scenarios.

Using triggers to exit journeys

Triggers aren't limited to starting journeys. They can also provide alternative ways for someone to exit a journey. For example, if a contact performs a particular action or becomes a member of another segment, you could remove that person from the journey rather than continuing to send messages that may no longer be relevant. This can help make your customer journeys more responsive to the actions customers take along the way.

Reviewing cross-journey analytics

Real-Time includes built-in cross-journey and cross-channel analytics through Power BI dashboards. Instead of opening each individual journey or email to review performance, these dashboards provide broader visibility across your marketing activities. A custom Power BI report may still be appropriate when you have specific reporting requirements, but the built-in dashboards provide a useful starting point for analyzing performance across journeys and channels.

Understanding the change to consent management

Consent management is one of the areas where you'll encounter a more significant difference between Outbound Marketing and Real-Time. In Outbound Marketing, consent is primarily associated with the individual contact record. Real-Time focuses consent at the contact-point level, such as an email address or phone number. For example, suppose two contact or lead records have the same email address. If that email address is unsubscribed, Real-Time can use the contact-point consent record to prevent messages from being sent to either record using that address. Real-Time consent functionality also incorporates features such as:

• Compliance profiles
• Double opt-in
• Preference centers
• Subscription management

When transitioning from Outbound, the class recommends first focusing on journeys and emails, followed by setting up the appropriate compliance profiles, preferences, topics, and contact-point consent records. Emails can then be updated to use the appropriate compliance profile.

Rebuilding marketing forms

Marketing forms work differently in Real-Time because marketing forms and marketing pages have effectively been brought together. With Outbound Marketing, you could create a marketing form and either embed it on an external website or place the form on a marketing page hosted through the marketing portal. Real-Time no longer relies on that marketing portal infrastructure. Forms can be hosted through Real-Time or embedded on an external website. Because of this fundamental infrastructure difference, Outbound Marketing forms cannot simply be transitioned automatically. Forms you intend to continue using will need to be recreated in Real-Time. Form capture is also available, although it may need to be enabled through feature switches in the Settings area.

Transitioning events

The overall process of setting up events remains familiar, but event registration is affected by the move away from the Outbound marketing portal. Instead of depending on the traditional event registration page, a registration form can be hosted using Real-Time's infrastructure or embedded on an external site. Trigger-based journeys and personalized content can also simplify event communications. Rather than creating separate journeys for every event's confirmations and reminders, you can create a reusable journey that responds to an event registration trigger. Information from that trigger can then be used to personalize the email according to the event the customer registered for. The same approach can support registration confirmations, reminders, webinar join information, and other event-related communications.

Planning your transition

The key areas to consider as you move from Outbound Marketing to Real-Time Journeys include:

• Review your existing segments and consider rebuilding frequently used dynamic segments in Real-Time.
• Move your email marketing processes into the Real-Time email designer and explore its additional personalization capabilities.
• Identify opportunities to use triggers to start and exit customer journeys.
• Configure compliance profiles, preference management, and contact-point consent.
• Rebuild any Outbound marketing forms you need to continue using.
• Update event registration processes to use Real-Time forms and hosting.
• Consider consolidating event communications with reusable trigger-based journeys.
• Take advantage of built-in cross-journey and cross-channel analytics for broader performance reporting.

Real-Time Journeys preserves many familiar marketing workflows while expanding what you can do with personalization, customer behavior, consent, and automation. Understanding where the two experiences differ can help make the transition more manageable while giving your organization an opportunity to rethink and improve existing marketing processes.