Dynamics 365 Marketing Solution

Dynamics 365 Marketing is Microsoft’s answer to requests for the addition of a marketing-focused application to their business technology suite. Launched in 2018, it’s a relatively new, but robust competitor on the scene that continues to grow in its capabilities. The solution is particularly strong in its email marketing and event management offerings, and it utilizes a unique and powerful customer journey-focused model for campaign automation.

Dynamics 365 Marketing centers around the idea of defining the journey your customers take based on their interactions with your business (as well as demographic and firmographic information) using targeted, automated campaigns. A Customer Journey can range from a single email campaign to a full lead nurturing process, complete with automated task assignments for your sales team to follow up with the potential lead. It may time to configure the model for your specific needs, but the customizable drag-and-drop interface is intuitive and easy to use, and the effort to align it with your goals and processes is well worth the effort. 

• Email marketing and automation
• Event management
• Marketing forms
• Custom landing pages
• SMS messaging & push notifications
• Lead Management & Scoring
• Marketing automation
• Social media posting
• Real-time analytics
• And more

Since its launch, Microsoft has demonstrated a continued investment in Dynamics 365 Marketing with significant, regular product upgrades. The March 2022 Wave 1 Release was no exception. Here are a few of the most interesting recent updates:

• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights with customer journey orchestration when using your own Azure Data Lake
• Use of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights data, such as customer profile and segment information, that is stored in Azure Data Lake Storage in the same way you do today with standard Customer
• Insights connected to Microsoft Dataverse.
• Quickly create customer journeys triggered by marketing interactions such as webinar check-ins and form submissions
• New out-of-the-box triggers for creating customer journeys triggered by marketing interactions such as webinar check-ins and form submissions.

Dynamics 365 Marketing can be used as either a standalone platform or in tandem with another Customer Engagement Plan (Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, etc.) Using it with an existing Customer Engagement Plan comes with a discount.  The Dynamics 365 Marketing pricing model is different from other Dynamics 365 products; rather than a per user, per month price, D365 Marketing operates on a per “marketing” contact model.

The standalone product offering is currently priced at $1,500 per month and includes 10,000 contacts. Any tenant with an existing D365 app receives a discounted price of $750 per month with 10,000 contacts.  Additional contact volume can be purchased in increments of 5,000.