If you’re a marketer or a business owner who’s been using Dynamics 365 Marketing, you might have noticed a significant change recently. Microsoft has rebranded Dynamics 365 Marketing as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, a move that was officially announced at Microsoft Inspire 2023 and became generally available on September 1, 2023. As part of Microsoft’s broader initiative to unify and enrich customer data, this change is designed to deliver smooth, customized, and connected customer experiences across sales, marketing, and service. It’s more than just a name change; it’s a bold step into a new era of customer insights, where every interaction is tailored to meet the unique needs and preferences of each individual customer.
What is behind the name change?
Customer Insights integrates data from CRM, ERP, and marketing automation platforms. The integration brings together two powerful capabilities under one umbrella: Customer Insights—Data, a customer data platform, and Customer Insights—Journeys, a real-time marketing solution that helps you design and deliver personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint.
What does this mean for you?
Want to know what makes your customers tick? Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provides a 360-degree view of your customers, which can help you with the following:
- Use advanced analytics to anticipate customer needs and preferences and predict behavior.
- Tailor your marketing, sales, and service efforts to individual customers for personalized interactions.
- Create smooth and engaging customer experiences across all touchpoints of a customer journey.
- Identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities to increase revenue.
- Build stronger customer relationships through personalized engagement.
- Leverage actionable insights and make data-driven decisions.
- Gather and consolidate customer data from various sources to create a single, unified view of a complete customer profile.
What elements are new and improved?
Get a clearer picture with custom reports
With Microsoft Fabric integration, you can now create custom Power BI reports that bring together data from various sources for a comprehensive view of your campaigns and customer engagement. This means you can visualize and accurately analyze data, making better decisions and driving more targeted marketing strategies.
Craft Emails that convert
Understand how your customers interact with emails across different devices and tailor your content accordingly. With insights into customer behavior, you can ensure your messages are readable and engaging, leading to higher open rates, click-through rates, and overall customer engagement.
Capture every click
Capture high-intent signals, such as page views and e-book downloads, in real time and create personalized experiences based on immediate customer data. For example, if a customer downloads an e-book, you can follow up with relevant content or new offerings to enhance the customer journey and increase conversion rates.
Personalize without coding
Combine insights from Customer Insights with Optimizely audience targeting to create tailored experiences based on browsing activity, loyalty status, and past engagement history. No coding is required, which means you can quickly implement personalization strategies.
Shield your data from Bots
Keep your data clean and accurate. Advanced bot protection detects and filters out bot-generated traffic, ensuring that your data represents real human interactions. You can trust the accuracy of your insights and direct your marketing efforts towards genuine customer engagement.
Benefits in a nutshell
Robust data security
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights employs advanced security features such as encryption, access controls, and regular security audits to safeguard your data while also ensuring the integrity and quality of the data itself through advanced bot protection and data validation measures. The platform complies with industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS and helps you maintain regulatory compliance by meeting data residency requirements, providing data subject access, and maintaining audit trails.
Scalability and flexibility
Customer Insights is designed to offer unlimited application installs and scalability across departments and locations. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, this platform can accommodate your needs and provide consistent and reliable insights that inform your decision-making. It grows with your business.
Simplified licensing and cost efficiency
In addition to its impressive feature set, Customer Insights also offers simplified licensing and cost efficiency. The transition to this platform simplifies the licensing process, reduces administrative overhead, and enables businesses to efficiently manage marketing tools and resources. Cost-effective licensing options and flexible plans ensure that you only pay for what you need.
Integration with Microsoft ecosystem
As part of the Microsoft ecosystem, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights easily integrates with other Microsoft tools and services, such as Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. This enhances data accessibility and usability, allowing you to leverage the full potential of the Microsoft ecosystem for comprehensive analytics and reporting.
Enhanced collaboration and team productivity
What really sets Customer Insights apart is its ability to foster collaboration and team productivity. By providing a unified platform for customer data and insights, marketing, sales, and customer service teams can work together more effectively, aligning their efforts toward common goals. This collaborative approach leads to more cohesive strategies and improved overall performance.
Future-proof technology
Finally, with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, you can rest assured that you are future-proofing your business. The platform is built on cutting-edge technology, with regular updates and new feature releases that allow you to innovate continuously and adapt to changing market conditions.
The road ahead
Dynamics 365 Marketing is quickly moving to Customer Insights, and the possibilities are endless. To make the most of this powerful tool, it is important to prioritize a smooth data migration, upskill your team, and integrate Customer Insights with your existing systems. Our team of experts is here to guide you every step of the way.
The road ahead is exciting, and with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, you will be driving in the fast lane. Contact us to begin your customer-centric journey.
