In September 2023, Microsoft unified Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights into a single, AI-powered solution: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. This offering is built to both understand and engage customers more effectively, using data-driven insights and intelligent automation.
The solution includes two distinct apps:
- • Customer Insights – Data: formerly Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, which provides a comprehensive, 360-degree view of each customer.
- • Customer Insights – Journeys: formerly Dynamics 365 Marketing, which enables personalized, real-time engagement based on customer data and behaviors.
As part of this evolution, Microsoft is officially retiring outbound marketing in favor of real-time journeys. While real-time capabilities were first introduced in 2021, this transition is now formalized and in motion:
Transitioning to real-time journeys not only ensures continuity but also unlocks a wide range of new capabilities that deliver faster, smarter, and more relevant customer experiences.
Important: Understand the Differences!
- • Outbound Marketing: Batch-based, email-centric, relies on static segments, less personalization.
- • Real-Time Marketing (Live): Event-driven, AI-powered, uses dynamic data, journeys trigger instantly based on behavior or conditions.
For organizations still relying on outbound campaigns, the time to prepare is now. With June 30, 2025, set as the official retirement date for outbound marketing in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys, the clock is ticking. If your organization still relies on outbound campaigns, now is the time to act.
Real-time journeys offer most Outbound marketing capabilities. Still, it also provides a lot more: the ability to respond and react in near-real time, a large scale of 100 million contacts/300 million interactions in public preview (with even more on the roadmap), as well as generative AI capabilities and Copilot on board. These features (and more) are only available in real time and will not be added to the Outbound marketing module.
Real-time marketing includes trigger-based customer journeys, custom triggers, and SMS and push notifications. In addition to segment-based marketing, it allows you to trigger customer journeys in real time based on the signals and rich profile data you collect from your customers, pick the right channel for everyone, and connect in the moments that matter with the ability to support higher volumes of communications.
Nobody can understand the rhythm and the needs of your business better than yourself. Thus, you need to take time to carefully evaluate the capabilities you use in Outbound marketing as well as the availability of resources you currently possess. Depending on the results, you will be able to see what’s best in your case: transitioning all at once or gradually.
If you decide to go with a one-shot transition, you will need to recreate all your journeys, segments, and other assets in Real-time journeys and switch to them within a few days. On the other hand, you can opt for transitioning gradually over time by creating new campaigns in Real-time journeys while letting your current campaigns run in Outbound marketing until they finish. This gradual approach helps your team build confidence with the new features and develop their skills steadily.
No matter which approach you take, it’s important to review the Outbound marketing features you’re currently using, check if they’re supported in Real-time journeys, and decide if you need to transfer any data or assets. If you discover that some Outbound marketing features you need aren’t available on Real-time journeys, keep in mind that Microsoft is working on additional features that customers have requested.
Migrating from Outbound to Real-Time Marketing in Dynamics 365 involves a structured, six-step process designed to ensure a smooth transition while preserving data integrity and campaign continuity.
1. Define the Transition Scope
Begin by identifying which marketing journeys are worth migrating to Real-Time Marketing. This could include existing journeys that are underperforming or new ones you want to launch that would benefit from the improved responsiveness and personalization of real-time interactions. Focus on those that would bring measurable value through better engagement, speed, or automation. This step is essential for setting clear goals and boundaries for the transition process.
2. Configure Real-Time Marketing Settings
Once you’ve defined your scope, you’ll need to set up the environment for Real-Time Marketing. This includes activating the necessary feature switches and configuring foundational components such as your SMS provider and associated keywords. You should also set up push notification capabilities and define brand profiles. These settings form the technical baseline that allows Real-Time Marketing journeys to function correctly and deliver seamless user experience.
3. Migrate Marketing Artifacts
The next step involves moving your visual and content-related assets from outbound to real-time. This includes marketing emails, templates, content blocks, text messages, and forms. Some assets may need to be recreated to ensure they work optimally in the new environment, especially if they were previously designed with static logic. This is also a good opportunity to modernize your content and optimize it for dynamic use.
4. Migrate Segmentation
Segmentation in Real-Time Marketing is more flexible and event driven. Review your existing segments from Outbound Marketing and identify the logic behind them. Then, rebuild these segments in the new system to ensure they reflect real-time behavior and conditions. For more complex segmentation needs, Real-Time Marketing supports segment combinations and behavioral triggers, which can significantly enhance targeting accuracy.
5. Create Triggers and Journeys
With your segments and assets in place, it’s time to design your Real-Time Marketing journeys. Start by determining the trigger conditions — these could be based on user actions, form submissions, purchases, or other custom-defined events. You can use out-of-the-box (OOTB) triggers or create your own, depending on the use case. Then, map out the journey logic, including messages, wait conditions, and branching paths. This step brings together all previous efforts into live, responsive journeys.
6. Rebuild Custom Reports and Analytics
Finally, evaluate your existing reports to see which ones are tied to outbound processes and need to be updated or rebuilt for Real-Time Marketing. Real-Time journeys offer more detailed engagement insights and analytics options, so this is a chance to enhance your reporting capabilities. Rebuilding reports will help stakeholders understand performance better and provide data that supports continuous improvement.
Testing is a crucial part of transitioning from Outbound to Real-Time Marketing in Dynamics 365. Before launching any live journeys, you need to confirm that everything behaves as expected—from triggers and content to data tracking and personalization.
The first step is to install Real-Time Marketing (RTM) in your development environment. This gives you a safe space to build and test without affecting your live setup. If you’re already using Outbound Marketing, this parallel setup helps compare workflows and results more effectively. Once Real-Time Marketing is enabled in your dev environment, you can create and configure your first journey. This should be based on a real use case, such as a lead capture, event registration, or product follow-up flow. Define the trigger, build the sequence of actions, and test the personalization logic using internal test contacts or safe segments. Simulate the full experience as if you were a real customer: submit the form, receive the email or SMS, click through, and monitor the outcomes.
As you test the journey, focus on accuracy and behavior. Do emails render correctly? Are the right contacts being triggered? Is the journey logic consistent across different scenarios? Check that dynamic content pulls correctly, conditions are respected, and customer goals (like a form submission or link click) are properly tracked. This is also your moment to confirm that email deliverability and performance metrics (opens, clicks, conversions) are flowing into the Insights dashboard.
Once the journey works as intended in the dev environment, you’re ready to install Real-Time Marketing in your production environment. This mirrors your test setup and ensures that all key configurations – like compliance settings, domains, and customer profiles – are aligned and production-ready.
After verifying the production setup, you can run the journey live in your PROD environment. Again, start with a limited or internal audience if possible. Monitor how the journey performs, both from a technical and user-experience perspective. Pay attention to any differences in behavior between environments and ensure that all customer interactions are tracked cleanly.
It is nice to know that switching from Outbound marketing to Real-time journeys not only involves some hustle but also brings real benefits that can improve the quality of life for both your customers and employees. These benefits include AI capabilities, optimized interactions with customers, sales and marketing working as a single unit, and more.
Generative AI features to provide more for less
If you work in marketing, Real-time journeys with several built-in Copilot capabilities are always there to help you improve your day-to-day results:
- • Use natural language to achieve different goals, just like when talking to a coworker: target the right audience, rewrite the existing content, create new journeys, etc.
- • Get image recommendations to complement your emails.
- • Prevent messages from being sent when you don’t want them to be.
- • Receive guidance on every step of your domain authentication.
Optimization of every interaction
- • Integrate with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data seamlessly and create journeys for contacts and leads in Dataverse or profiles from Customer Insights.
- • Use hyper-personalization features like dynamic text and no-code conditional content for personalized campaigns tailored to individual preferences.
- • Respond to customer actions immediately using built-in triggers, custom triggers, or any data changes in Dataverse, all without coding.
- • Improve audience targeting with advanced segmentation and unlimited segments.
- • Send messages through text, push notifications, and custom channels, using AI to choose the best one.
Sales and Marketing efforts combined
- • Easily create registration forms, find leads, organize events, and create nurturing journeys.
- • Use detailed criteria to better identify and prioritize leads with the new lead scoring tool.
- • Share a unified timeline of customer activities to align with sellers.
- • Transfer qualified leads to the sales team or involve sales representatives at the right time by scheduling calls or triggering sales sequences to increase the chances of closing deals.
Scaling your business
- • Use business units, brand profiles, and the new consent center to customize Real-time journeys for your business needs.
- • Scale your business with 300 million monthly interactions and reach up to 100 million marketing contacts.