Issue #35

Issue 35 of D365 Marketing Weekly

Happy New Year! Welcome to the first issue of 2024. I took a bit of a break due to moving house, then Christmas and New Year (plus a little visit from Covid 🙄). Back again to start the year off with a little round-up of some of the content I’ve seen over the past few weeks that are well worth a mention!

As always, if you spot anything you think would be worth a mention, just let me know by emailing [email protected]. Always good to know of others posting about D365 Marketing or if you see anything else other marketers should know about.

Now let’s get on with the newsletter!

The following relate to news and articles about Dynamics 365 Marketing

December 2023 Update

MICROSOFT

We had a new release last month. It might be that it’s already been applied to your environments, so go ahead and check out the new features. We’ve got 5 items that are now Generally Available, 3 in Public Preview, and 3 other that have been included as part of the monthly enhancements.

Lookup Fields With Default Option in Realtime Marketing Forms

MEGAN V. WALKER

There are number of different types of fields that can be added to a marketing form in Customer Insights – Journeys (D365 Marketing). Most commonly used are text fields such as First Name, Last Name and Email, or even Choice fields for ‘How did you hear about us?’ to set the Lead Source. These can be added to the form and no additional steps are needed. Simple! What about those fields that are lookup fields? One of the most common I have seen is where organisations add a new type of record named Country which is then used to set the location of a Lead or Contact. This can be added to a real-time marketing form but does need a few extra steps to walk through before using that form. We’ll take a look in this post.

Quiet Times in Real-time Marketing

PAULINE KOLDE

Strength lies in tranquillity! Who wants to spam their contacts with messages? After all, in addition to the right content, the right place and the right target group, the right time is also extremely important in marketing. This is now also possible with the quiet times in real-time marketing. And above all, it goes far beyond the days and times we know from outbound journeys. Great post from Pauline!

View In Browser For Realtime Emails

MEGAN V. WALKER

This one has been a long time coming, and was a missing feature in Realtime Marketing that could be used in Outbound Marketing long ago. That’s the simple feature of providing a view in browser for realtime emails link so those you send emails to can open them online. This means, even if the email doesn’t display or there are issues with the person’s email client, they still have a way to see them as intended when you sent them. Let’s take a look!

What’s coming in Customer Insights-Journeys in December-March?

MALIN MARTNES

Keeping in theme with the December update, here is a post from Lain that covers a lot of the new features that are coming from December 2023 to March 2024… and there are A LOT! So take a look and make sure you know what is already now available, and what is scheduled to be on the way!

Help! I can’t get to a column in my segment?!

KELLY SIMPSON

In this post, Kelly has written about a common problem, not being able to find the right tables to add to a segment. She covers how to add new tables in both Outbound and Realtime, and also what is most important in terms of settings to make sure you can even FIND the table to add! A great post that helps solve this issue. Great post Kelly!

Include specific row (entity) references and all the data in Real-time marketing custom triggers

AMEY HOLDEN

A very informative post from my good friend Amey Holden that walks through custom triggers, and adding the new attribute type of ‘Entity Reference’. It’s not so simple and there things to consider when using it. In this post, Amey looks at creating the trigger, and then how to make sure it actually runs correctly using Power Automate. Thanks for documenting this Amey!!!

Customising Your Compliance Profile Preference Centres

MEGAN V. WALKER

I’ve written a series of blogs all about Compliance Profiles which walk through a series of steps for getting up and running with Realtime Marketing compliance. Part one shows how to create a new Compliance Profile and then make sure your Preference Centre looks good. This is the page someone will land on if they click on the link from the bottom of the email, giving your Contacts and Leads a way to update their preferences or opt out completely if needed. In this post, I will walk through how to modify those pages a little more using some CSS and a few tricks to make it look more appealing.

If there are any upcoming events relating to Marketing, they will go here!

UK D365 and Power Platform User Group

DYNAMICS 365 & POWER PLATFORM UK USER GROUPS

The UK User Group events in London are always a great one to attend, and gets a great turn out. The next event is on Wednesday 28th February from 9 AM to 5 PM at Microsoft London offices (2 Kingdom Street, London). If you can get there, make sure you keep an eye on it and register as soon as RSVP’s are open. So mark your calendars!

Other Marketing content you might find useful

In a world of Chat GPT and generative AI tools - Good content is still king!

DAVID BEESLEY - ITPR

I saw this article from David (I used to be a client of the PR form he heads up) and couldn’t agree more. I think more than ever, marketers are tempted to, and often are, leaning more on AI. While it’s not wrong, doing so without any kind of strategy for your content is a little foolish. Your content will quickly look ‘auto generated’ and can create content that just doesn’t hit the mark. Some great steps suggested by David here!