As your business grows, so does your customer data. Managing information in disparate systems can be a challenge when coordinating campaigns and building an accurate view of who buys your products and services.
What if there was a way to unify behavioural, transactional, and demographic data across platforms and use it for reporting and exporting into other systems? Additionally, how could you enrich that data to provide further important information to help with scenarios such as ad targeting?
Here’s where Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data can be your solution, a customer data platform to help you understand your customers better.
It does this by enabling you to unify data across touchpoints, including transactional, demographic, and behavioural data across teams such as sales, marketing, and customer service. You can use your unified customer data to help personalise journeys and ad targeting across channels, improving customer retention.
This application is included in your Dynamics 365 Customer Insights licence, in addition to the Real-Time Journeys application.
How Customer Insights – Data Works
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data collects information from various sources like CRM, websites, and social media to create a complete profile of each customer.
It uses AI to analyse this data, find patterns, and predict customer behaviour. The platform then groups similar customers together, making it easier to personalise your marketing messages for specific segment groups. It provides easy-to-understand reports that show what’s happening with your customers, helping you make informed decisions.
You can supplement your business data with external sources such as Experian. Enrichment services help you build a deeper understanding with additional demographic data such as household size and income.
It includes the capability to export specific data profiles and tables to external systems and tools such as Facebook Ads, Mailchimp, and Adobe Campaign. This data can be used for precise targeting in your marketing campaigns for improved performance.
Let’s look at how some businesses can improve their marketing campaigns using D365 Customer Insights – Data.
1. Personalised Email Marketing for Higher Engagement
By unifying customer data from multiple sources, businesses can create highly targeted customer segments based on past purchases and demographics. Customer Insights – Data analyses historical purchase behaviour and browsing history to automatically segment customers.
With created segments, marketers can develop personalised email messages, such as sending targeted product recommendations to specific customer groups, resulting in higher open rates and conversions.
In eCommerce scenarios, you could also identify customers who have abandoned their shopping carts and send them a personalised email with product recommendations and a limited-time discount. This level of personalisation and timeliness increases the likelihood of conversion.
You can configure prediction models based on your data, which will help you refine your segments for precise targeting in your email campaigns.
Customer Insights – Data segments are automatically synchronised with your Real-Time Journeys environment. This enables marketers to send communications to these segments without additional configuration.
2. Optimised Ad Targeting
Utilising AI-driven insights on customer preferences and behaviours helps you allocate ad budgets more effectively. For example, the platform might identify that a certain customer segment responds better to social media ads than display ads, allowing for budget reallocation to maximise ROI.
You can use export these segments to platforms like LinkedIn Ads or Google Ads. This intelligence enables you to run highly targeted campaigns showcasing relevant products and services to people that are most likely to convert.
This approach helps maximise ad spend efficiency and improves marketing ROI.
3. Cross-Selling Products Based on Customer Data
The platform identifies customers who have purchased Product A but not the complementary Product B. Marketers can create targeted campaigns to promote Product B to these specific segments, increasing the likelihood of additional sales. For example:
- Cross-Sell Email Campaigns – A customer who recently purchased a subscription or service might receive an email suggesting an upgrade to enhance their experience and grow account value.
- Targeted Digital Ads – Customers who have bought a high-value product but skipped related accessories could be served dynamic ads showcasing the benefits of completing their setup.
- Loyalty and Retention Strategies – Identifying frequent buyers who haven’t engaged with a specific service can trigger exclusive offers or incentives to encourage adoption.
4. Churn Prevention Campaigns
Predictive analytics helps marketers identify customers at risk of churning before they leave. These insights means you can proactively intervene with retention strategies by analysing behavioural patterns, engagement levels, and transaction history.
How It Works:
- Early Warning Signals – The system detects declining engagement, reduced purchase frequency, negative sentiment in customer interactions, or long gaps between logins.
- Customer Segmentation – At-risk customers are grouped based on their behaviour, allowing for more precise targeting.
- AI-Driven Recommendations – Customer Insights – Data suggests the best retention strategies based on past successful interventions.
By leveraging predictive insights, marketers can shift from reactive churn management to proactive retention, improving customer lifetime value and reducing attrition.
5. Event-triggered Marketing
Customer Insights – Data can automatically trigger marketing actions based on specific customer behaviours or events.
For instance, if a customer browses a particular product category multiple times without purchasing, it can trigger a limited-time discount offer for items in that category sent by SMS text or email, increasing the prospect of conversion. You could follow this up with social ad targeting if they still haven’t converted.
You could also trigger an action when a customer leaves a review. For example, a bad review triggers an alert to your customer service team, enabling them to take action, such as acknowledging their concerns and offering a resolution.
You could also trigger an email with resources such as FAQs and Knowledge Base articles when a customer reaches out to customer service for support. This encourages self-service and drives down your business’s need for human intervention.
Unify Data and Take Action with Customer Insights – Data
These are just a few ways to improve your marketing campaign performance using Customer Insights – Data. It’s a powerful tool but requires initial configuration to map your existing data for unification.
At ServerSys, we have deep experience supporting D365 Customer Insights. If you want help importing data, creating segments, profiles, or consultancy to maximise its capabilities, please get in touch.
Related
- Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys and D365 Marketing Glossary
- Best Practices for Dynamics 365 Data Import
