Customer Journeys in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys is Microsoft's marketing automation application, and it is the product that used to be called Dynamics 365 Marketing. It lets you build customer journeys that react to what people actually do, such as opening an email, submitting a form or registering for an event, and send the next message by email, text message or push notification without someone doing it by hand. If you are still thinking of it as Dynamics 365 Marketing with two separate modules, the product has moved on and the way you plan your journeys should too.

What happened to Dynamics 365 Marketing?

Microsoft renamed Dynamics 365 Marketing to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys, and it now sits alongside Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data, which builds unified customer profiles from your different data sources. The two are sold together as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, so the profile data and the journeys that use it come from the same place.

The bigger change is underneath the name. The old product had two modules, real-time marketing and outbound marketing, and a lot of planning used to go into deciding which one to use. Microsoft stopped giving outbound marketing to new customers in 2023, announced it would be removed after 30 June 2025, and removed it from all environments in May 2026. Real-time journeys is now the only way to build journeys in the product.

A few outbound features did not make the move. Social posting and the LinkedIn lead generation integration were removed in December 2024 and are not part of real-time journeys, so if your old process relied on either of those you will need a different approach.

How do customer journeys work in Customer Insights - Journeys?

There are two ways to start a journey, and most marketing teams use both.

• Trigger-based journeys start when a customer does something. That could be a built-in trigger like submitting a form or registering for an event, or a custom trigger you define so that activity in another system, such as a purchase or a support case closing, starts a journey.
• Segment-based journeys start with a group of contacts you have defined, such as everyone in a particular sector or everyone who attended last year's event, and are good for newsletters, campaigns and regular communications.

Once a journey is running, you design the steps on a visual canvas. You can wait for a set time, wait for a customer to respond, branch based on what they did or what is in their profile, and choose the channel for each message. Content can be personalised with dynamic text and images so each contact sees something relevant to them rather than the same email going to everyone.

Which channels can you use?

• Email, designed in the built-in editor with templates, brand profiles and personalisation
• Text messages, including through Azure Communication Services if you already use it
• Push notifications to your mobile app
• Custom channels, if you need to send through another service that is not covered as standard

Consent sits across all of these. You set up compliance profiles, purposes and topics so that contacts only receive the types of communication they have agreed to, and preference centres let people manage that themselves, which matters a lot if you are marketing in the UK under GDPR and PECR.

How does it help with lead generation and handing leads to sales?

Lead capture and scoring are part of real-time journeys. You build forms to capture enquiries and event registrations, and the lead scoring builder lets you score leads on both engagement, such as emails opened and pages visited, and profile fit, such as company size or sector. When a lead reaches the threshold you set, it can be handed to the sales team in Dynamics 365 Sales, which runs on the same Dataverse platform so sellers see the marketing history alongside the lead.

Can you run events and webinars with it?

Yes. Event management is built in, covering in-person and online events, registration forms, sessions, capacity and waitlists. Online events can be run through Microsoft Teams webinars, and registrations can trigger journeys for confirmations, reminders and follow-up afterwards, so the whole cycle runs from one place.

Where does Copilot come in?

Copilot features in Customer Insights - Journeys help with the content and setup work. You can describe a journey in plain language and have Copilot create a first version for you to refine, generate email content ideas from a few key points, and describe a segment in plain language rather than building the query by hand. It is a useful starting point, but someone still needs to check the content and logic before anything goes out. If you are looking at Copilot more widely across the business, our AI readiness assessment is a sensible place to start.

How should you plan your customer journeys?

The software is the easy bit. The work is in deciding what you want customers to do and what you need to know about them. Before building anything, it helps to:

• pick two or three journeys that will make a real difference, such as new enquiry follow-up, event registration and a welcome series for new customers
• agree the triggers and the data each journey depends on, and check that data is actually in Dataverse and up to date
• set up consent, compliance profiles and topics properly before the first send, rather than retrofitting them
• agree the lead scoring model and the hand-off point with the sales team
• decide how you will measure each journey, and review the analytics after the first few weeks

If you are moving from an older Dynamics 365 Marketing setup, treat it as a rebuild rather than a straight copy. Outbound journeys, segments and forms do not carry across as they were, so it is a good opportunity to drop the journeys nobody was using and rebuild the ones that worked.

How ThinkShare can help

We implement and support Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys alongside Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service, and connect it to the rest of Microsoft 365 and the Power Platform where that is useful. That includes setting up journeys, consent and lead scoring, rebuilding journeys from older outbound marketing setups, and reporting with Power BI.

Frequently asked questions

Is Dynamics 365 Marketing the same as Customer Insights - Journeys?

Yes. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys is the current name for the product previously called Dynamics 365 Marketing, and it is sold together with Customer Insights - Data as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Can I still use outbound marketing?

No. Microsoft removed the outbound marketing module from all environments in May 2026, so journeys, emails, segments and forms now need to be built in real-time journeys.

Does Customer Insights - Journeys work with Dynamics 365 Sales?

Yes. Both run on Dataverse, so leads captured and scored in Customer Insights - Journeys can be passed to sellers in Dynamics 365 Sales with their marketing interaction history attached.

If you would like to talk through how Customer Insights - Journeys would fit your marketing, get in touch with us.