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From insights to action: Exploring journeys in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights 

December 12, 2023

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The latest Dynamics 365 Customer Insights release wave 2 has introduced a significant change: Dynamics 365 Marketing has been integrated into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, incorporating two distinct components: 

  • Customer Insights – Journeys (formerly Dynamics 365 Marketing) 
  • Customer Insights – Data 

This blog delves into the Customer Insights – Journeys side of the platform, exploring its capabilities and functionalities. 

Understanding Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys  

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, a part of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, serves as a robust customer data platform. It facilitates the consolidation and analysis of data from diverse sources, empowering businesses with a unified and intelligent view of customer information. The enhanced version of Customer Insights introduces compelling features tailored for marketing and sales, enhancing their capabilities and contributing to a more streamlined and effective customer engagement process. 

Speaking of the enhancements, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys has transcended its marketing roots. Now, empowered by AI and natural language assistance, business users of all backgrounds can build trigger-based customer journeys that engage customers across diverse touchpoints. This empowers them to nurture relationships from the initial prospect stage, through the sales process, and into ongoing support, fostering long-term customer loyalty and satisfaction. 

With Customer Insights – Journeys, you can: 

Engage customers in real-time 

Journeys supports trigger-based customer journeys using emails, text messages, and push notification channels.  

These trigger-based journeys empower you to respond to customers’ actions in real-time, whether they’re engaging in physical interactions like entering a store and connecting to Wi-Fi or virtual interactions like browsing an online shopping website. The real-time aspect ensures immediate responsiveness, allowing you to convert customer interest into sales promptly. 

This functionality allows organizations to trigger real-time customer journeys, selecting the most suitable channel for each individual and responding promptly to customer-led actions at critical moments, contributing to effective customer journey orchestration. 

Win customers and earn their loyalty  

Traditional marketing often operates in silos, leading to fragmented customer experiences. Customer Insights – Journeys breaks down these silos by enabling organizations to create real-time, end-to-end journeys that seamlessly span all touchpoints. 

Personalize customer experiences with AI 

Customer Insights – Journeys empowers businesses to deliver personalized experiences at scale. This is achieved through the powerful integration of AI, which analyzes vast amounts of customer data to provide insights and recommendations for every step of the customer journey. 

With data segmentation and profile integration, you can understand more about your customers and personalize your customer engagement using transactional, behavioral, and demographic data sourced from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data. With this information, you can create dynamic content, including personalized dynamic text in emails, text messages, and push notifications, based on various measures such as loyalty status, subscription renewal date, parent account, or any other relevant metric captured in the unified customer profile. 

Role of Copilot in Customer Journey Orchestration 

Customer Insights – Journeys harness the power of Copilot, streamlining the process of creating customer segments by removing the necessity for manual efforts through Query Assist segmentation.  You can effortlessly target the desired audience by describing the segment in plain language. Copilot takes your description, builds the segment, and allows you to easily review and adjust the list before launching your campaign. 

Furthermore, Copilot simplifies the process of generating content ideas for emails. You just have to describe your ideas in simple language, and Copilot will provide you with creative content suggestions tailored to a specific audience, allowing for easy editing for enhanced personalization. 

With Copilot Journey Creator, save time by communicating your business goals, target audience, or preferred flows to Copilot. Copilot will then offer suggested journeys for your approval or customization. This will allow you to create real-time, contextually relevant marketing journeys triggered by customer actions, and extend these journeys seamlessly into sales and service. 

Grow with a unified, adaptable platform 

Dynamics 365 Customer insights can seamlessly integrate with your existing tools, including ERP and CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, and data warehouses.  Crafted to evolve alongside your business, it provides unmatched flexibility and customization tailored to your unique requirements. The platform adeptly manages compliance requirements and adheres to accessibility guidelines, ensuring both efficiency and inclusivity in its operation. 

Engaging with customers in Customer Insights – Journeys 

When reaching out to your customers using Customer Insights – Journeys, there are 3 key elements to consider: who, what, and when

Who 

This refers to your target audience, the individuals you want to reach with your message. In Journeys, your audience is defined by segments. These segments are dynamic groups of contacts who share specific characteristics or behaviors. 

Examples of customer segments include customers over 60 years old residing in North America, customers exceeding an annual income of $100,000, or all active contacts in your database. 

Precisely defining your target audience ensures your message resonates with the right individuals, maximizing its impact and relevance. 

What 

This represents the content of your communication. What message do you want to convey to your target audience? What action do you want them to take? 

In Journeys, you can leverage a variety of content formats to engage your audience, including: 

  • Personalized email campaigns. 
  • Targeted SMS notifications. 
  • Relevant push notifications. 
  • Engaging web content recommendations. 

Tailoring your message based on your target audience’s preferences and interests is crucial for driving engagement and achieving your desired outcome. You can use these channels separately or together in one campaign.  

When 

This refers to the timing of your communication. When is the most opportune moment to reach your audience with your message? Journeys empower you to trigger personalized interactions based on an event that triggers communication as a part of a journey.   

You can combine emails, push notifications, and text messages into journeys. that can operate over either a segment of contacts at a planned time or that can respond to a trigger to reach customers in the moments that matter. You can: 

  • Create a segment-based journey 

Segment-based journeys involve creating outbound journeys like sending out announcements or a nurture campaign based on the characteristics of your customer segments. 

  • Create a trigger-based journey 

Trigger-based customer journeys enable you to react to customers’ actions in real-time.  

How to get started with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys? 

Experience the difference personalized customer journeys can make by signing up for a free 30-day Dynamics 365 Customer Insights trial for journeys. In just a few quick steps, you’ll unlock access to a wealth of powerful Dynamics 365 Customer Insights features. 

Note that from September 1, 2023, Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is being sold together under a single product SKU called Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. The individual applications are renamed Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data, respectively. 

To seamlessly deploy Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys for real-time customer engagement, initiate journeys driven by customer interactions, and harness AI for personalized customer experiences, reach out to us at marketing@confiz.com. As a dedicated Microsoft Solutions partner, our team boasts certified Dynamics 365 consultants with the expertise to maximize the potential of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys.