Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing has amazing capabilities that allow you to build a complete customer journey from scratch utilizing a simple drag-and-drop interface.
Marketing campaigns are one of the core activities needed to gather prospects and convert them into customers. The most popular practice to bring awareness of a brand or a newly released product is an Email Campaign. Companies usually acquire an email list from an online provider. In other cases, companies build an email database utilizing a newsletter approach.
However, having a massive email list doesn’t mean a campaign will be successful. Several factors determine its success, but one of the most important is the customer journey’s design.
Today, I will show you how to create a complete Customer Journey in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing.
Segments are the contacts with whom you will engage with your Marketing Campaign. You cannot launch a Customer Journey within Dynamics 365 for Marketing without creating a segment first, so let’s get started:
On the main panel, go to the left menu and select Segments.
Click New and then select between Dynamic and Static segment.
Dynamic Segment: This type of segment follows a query designed to automatically bring your CRM contacts based on your search criteria. This is the best approach if you plan an extensive email campaign (at least one with 100 or more contacts).
Static Segment: Manually choose each contact utilizing a filter. This one is recommended for small email campaigns (with less than 20 emails).
We are going to use a Dynamic Segment as an example.
Once you click it, a templates list will deploy:
You can start by using any of the system templates to save some time, but we will click skip to build it from scratch, for example. Then, you will be prompted to the following screen:
Choose a name and select the type of block you want to work with.
The image shows a simple query block that allows you to choose each field and filter your segment accordingly. For this example, we will create a segment for all our contacts that live in Miami.
Once completed, click on Check for errors at the top bar, and if everything is okay, click on Go live.
Our segment is ready to go!
1) Create the Email
Go to the main dashboard of Dynamics 365 for Marketing and select Marketing Emails > New.
You can create an email from scratch utilizing the drag-and-drop designer canvas. However, Dynamics 365 for Marketing provides several email templates segmented by Market Type, Purpose, or Visual Style. Let’s use a default template for this example:
Double-click to change the email text from the template.
Click and use the search icon to upload or find the images you want.
Remember to give the Email a name and subject.
Once you finish personalizing your Email, click on Check for errors and then on Go Live.
1) Create the Customer Journey
Now that we have our segment and our Email, we are ready to launch a simple Customer Journey on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing.
In the main dashboard, go to the left bar and click on Customer Journey > New.
Like emails, Dynamics 365 for Marketing provides several Customer Journey templates based on the goal and the market type; for this example, we will select a blank one and create a straightforward journey.
Dynamics 365 for Marketing has the same drag-and-drop designer canvas for almost every capability to facilitate user adoption.
Click the + sign on the first tile to set your audience. You must start with a segment in every Customer Journey.
Go to properties on the right. There, click on look for the segment and select the one we just created.
We have defined who will receive our emails created with Dynamics 365 for Marketing; now, let’s build the journey.
From the right side of the audience tile (next to “start”), click on the small blue + sign. A drop-down list will show up. Select send an email.
A new menu will populate on the right side of the screen. Click on the blank box and look for the marketing email we just created.
With this information, your Customer Journey is ready to go. However, Dynamics 365 for Marketing lets us add an if/then variable.
Adding it allows the Customer Journey to automatically execute an action based on your criteria’ prospect interaction.
Add another tile by clicking the small blue + sign and selecting the if/then option.
Click on the if/then tile in your canvas and go to the properties tab on the right. Here, we can choose the criteria we want.
You can set several conditions within Dynamics 365 for Marketing, such as clicks, opens, or forwards.
In this example, I’m setting Has been opened, which means the contacts who opened the Email are going to the “Yes” route. The ones who didn’t, to the “No” route.
Wait up to is how much time after the email delivery you want to wait for the Trigger to act. For example, if we set 1 Day1, the Trigger will act 1 day after the first Email was delivered.
As you can see, your journey will be divided into two routes. You can assign criteria for each one. In this example, we will divide it as follows: prospects who opened the Email and prospects who did not.
You can also decide what is going to happen with each one of the new behavioral segments. For the yes path, contacts who opened it will receive a new email in the image above. For the no path, a workflow will be triggered to deactivate those contacts from the CRM.
Don’t forget to give it a name and schedule it using the start date and time tab at the top.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing has many powerful capabilities for your company to enhance your customer journey.
