A few days ago Microsoft published the Dynamics 365 April ‘19 Release notes with features and enhancements you can expect starting this April – September. In this post, we highlight the features that will be useful for your sales and marketing team.
According to Microsoft, they will move all Dynamics 365 customers to the latest version so make sure to learn what’s coming and preview it in your sandbox to get ready.
Dynamics 365 for Sales: What’s New
It’s all about data insights in this release. Leverage LinkedIn and get ready to pay if you want to use data enrichment providers.
#1 Get notified when contacts change their job
Around 30% of your database will expire every year as contacts switch jobs, the companies are acquired or closed. The good news is that you can leverage the Microsoft ownership of LinkedIn and access the LinkedIn profiles of your Contacts and Accounts right from Dynamics 365 for Sales.
What’s new: All Dynamics 365 for Sales users will access the LinkedIn profile information (for Contacts and Accounts) and can get alerts when contacts change their job.
How to get it: No actions are required. You’ll get it out of the box without any Dynamics 365 configuration or buying a subscription.
#2 Insideview and Versium are no longer included
Microsoft recently notified its users that it stopped providing Insights, powered by InsideView and Versium Predict for new customers while existing customers can use these data providers until August 15, 2019.
In the April ‘19 Release notes, they announced that users would be able to select the third-party providers to enrich their data. It means that you should budget additional costs if you plan to keep using the data enrichment providers.
Other Updates:
Microsoft Teams integration – access Dynamics 365 tab into the Teams channel, use Dynamics 365 bot for Microsoft Teams mobile app.
Receive content recommendations via playbooks– should help sales reps easily find the up-to-date sales and marketing materials and request changes or improvements
New configure-price-quote (CPQ) solution providers to swiftly help you generate accurate quotes.
For Sales Hub only: Upload your existing forecasting data to the Dynamics 365 and visualize them using new dashboards and reports
Dynamics 365 for Marketing: What’s New
Email marketers, the Dynamics April ‘19 release is for you! Personalize email templates based on multiple criteria, keep and track forms on your CMS, predict the best time to send emails and see the forecasted spam score and even leverage mixed reality for your emails!
#1 Identify the Best Time to Send Emails & Spam Score
My personal favorite feature of this release is smart scheduling. Dynamics 365 will identify the best time to send your emails for each contact! The time will show how it will work, but I am very enthusiastic about it. For large-scale campaigns, even a few percent improvements of your open rate may translate into a bunch of new leads.
Also, Dynamics 365 will calculate a spam score for each email template to help you to increase the email deliverability.
#2 Landing Page Personalization
Imagine that you can personalize your email message for each contact based on their location, product preferences, Job title or past behavior. Sounds exciting!
#3 Another AI Feature: Segment Boost
I am not sure if I like this feature and if I really want to let Dynamics 365 automatically add contacts to the segment for a custom journey, but this is what they can do since April ‘19 Release. The idea behind this is that the system will identify the most engaged contacts of your campaigns and can find people in your database with a similar profile to increase the success of your campaign. My thoughts are that your database should be very well-maintained with accurate data to leverage this feature or you can quickly lose more contacts due to unsubscribes.
#4 Mixed Reality Content
In this release, users will be able to embed mixed reality into their emails and landing pages.
Mixed reality combines virtual and augmented reality and produces new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Sounds complicated?
Watch this video to see the mixed reality in action:
What Else?
It should be easier to integrate your customer journeys and segments with external tools, Dynamics 365 for Sales users now can add contacts to the campaigns. Also, you can host Dynamics 365 forms on your CMS, e.g., WordPress blog . Nothing fancy, but you can collect data about web interactions with your forms (visits, registrations, duration, etc.).
Also, there are some helpful enhancements for event management that let you indicate when the event is at full capacity, embed QR codes into emails and create waitlists for individual sessions for free events.
Learning More
Check out the full Dynamics 365 April ‘19 Release Notes here.
Also, you can register to the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event April ‘19(April 2 at 8 AM PT) where Microsoft team will showcase new features for Dynamics 365, Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.
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Authored by
Valeria Kokina
CRM Geek & Marketing Director at Ascendix Technologies
Screenshots source: Microsoft
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