Next, in my blog series, I visit all of the new features and functionality that we can expect to see in Release Wave 1 of 2023 for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. Today I will be discussing the updates in Dynamics 365 Marketing.
New features coming to Dynamics 365 Marketing and the key areas of focus in this set of updates appear to be enhancements around unifying the Sales and Marketing modules, along with introducing more and more Copilot functionality.
The Dynamics 365 Release Wave 2 for 2023 outlines all the new features that will be released between October 2023 through March 2024. You can either browse the release plan online or download the document as a PDF file. The PDF file also includes information about Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Pages, Power Virtual Agents, Microsoft Dataverse, Microsoft Power Platform governance and administration, and data integration.
The Microsoft Power Platform features coming in the 2023 release wave 2 have been summarized in a separate release plan as well as a downloadable PDF
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys & Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data
As I covered in one of my most recent Dynamics 365 Marketing will be rebranded to Customer Insights as of September 2023, check out my post on this below,
Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
The basic headline in terms of this update is that the two products are combined as a single solution called Dynamics 365 Customer Insights comprising 'Customer Insights - Data' and 'Customer Insights - Journeys' from 1st September 2023 with only the combined offer will be available for new customers.
Copilot AI features in Marketing
As with all the first-party application Microsoft have announced a series of Copilot features for Marketing that we should have access to by October/November 2023.
Copilot text editing is now commonplace and with it, Marketing users can quickly adjust text or the tone of voice on emails as well as content blocks, push notifications and SMS. This can include instantly rewriting text after choosing variants and changing the content tone between engaging, formal, casual, luxury or adventurous styles.
Copilot will also introduce settings to control days or times when customers should not receive marketing messages. Users can use quiet times to prevent emails, texts and notifications from being delivered during evenings, weekends and public holidays. All outbound messages are checked against quiet time settings automatically. If appropriate, these will be delivered just after the quiet time ends.
Users can now also create journeys using a combination of out-of-the-box templates and natural language processing for frequent marketing scenarios. Ready-made examples include journeys triggered by form submissions, post-event follow-up, and customer nurtures. You can also generate new templates from existing journeys.
Improved Visibility of Activities
Marketing emails were recently added to contact and lead record timelines. In the 2023 Release Wave 2 release, visibility is improved as users can view exact copies of each marketing email from the timeline, including conditional content and other personalisations.
Qualify leads and route to sales
Scoring models, already available in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys, are one of the main metrics that marketing teams will use to qualify leads and convert opportunities.
Users can now create more flexible lead qualification models based not only on scores but also on other signals that indicate a prospect’s likelihood to buy such as their fit with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), their intent to buy, recency, and engagement. Additionally, you can now define criteria to bring a prospect from a sales stage back into a marketing or nurture stage.
By identifying opportunities exactly when prospects are most likely to buy, the marketing and sales teams can now better qualify leads and speed up the sales process the opportunity pipeline and increase win rates, together.
Define lead qualification criteria using multiple signals: fit (based on a lead's profile), intent (for example, filling out a marketing form, watching a demo), recency (when the lead was created), and engagement (lead score crossing a certain threshold).
Enable a back and forth across Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys.
Take automated action every time a lead hits certain criteria.
Hope you all enjoyed this post on the Power Pages. I will continue this series with some additional content specifically related to Power Pages and how they work with other aspects of the Power Platform. Take Care, Speak Soon!
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