So, Microsoft made a big announcement earlier this month that the Outbound Marketing module in Microsoft Customer Insights – Journeys is being removed to make space for an improved marketing functionality in the guise of Real-time Marketing.

Here is Microsoft’s official notice statement.

Why is Microsoft phasing out the Outbound Marketing module?

To explain this in more detail, you’ll need a bit of background…

A few years ago, if you bought what was then the Microsoft Marketing App, what you got was their excellent Events Management functionality and their… well… not quite so good Marketing functionality. It worked, but it wasn’t easy to work with: if you were a Dynamics 365 or Power Apps specialist, then it was a lot easier; if you were a common or garden marketer, then it was quite painful to use, especially compared to other products in the market. It has gradually got better, but in the end, Microsoft needed a better solution. Cue the beginnings of the transition.

What had been the original Microsoft Marketing functionality continued as “Outbound Marketing.” In the meantime, users also started to see the new functionality take shape under the name “Real-time Marketing.” This new functionality has gradually been added to and now mostly replicates and exceeds the original.

Recently, Microsoft took the decision that there would be a development freeze of anything that formerly came under “Outbound Marketing”; further, new customers wouldn’t even be able to access it. This came with a combination of the Marketing App with another Microsoft product, Customer Insights. New customers now get both these products under one Customer Insights brand, separately what was known as Real-time Marketing has become Customer Insights – Journeys and what was plain old Customer Insights is now Customer Insights – Data.

The latest announcement continues this transition. Anyone who previously used Outbound Marketing must make the switch by the end of June 2025, when it will cease to function. There will be exceptions offered, but it’s not clear how long these will last—even with an exception, you will need to make the transition eventually.
What are my options?

So what are your options?

What does this mean for your organisation in practice? Bear in mind this only affects you if you are currently using Outbound Marketing.

Microsoft has lots of tools and guidance to help with the transition; some aspects had been separate (the image library and segments, for instance) but have gradually coalesced. Some aspects that are still separate have conversion tools which allow you to push your existing Email templates (for example) into Real-time Marketing (sorry… Customer Insights – Journeys!). You will need to rebuild some of your collateral from scratch; for example, if you have used any Power Pages to host forms relating to Events, you’ll want to move them over to pages hosted on your website.

There are a lot of advantages to the new functionality; it’s really powerful – you can do a lot with it. If you are a company that is 100% committed to the Microsoft stack and only the Microsoft stack, you won’t be disappointed with what you get… once your marketing team have learned how to use it… and therein lies the problem. It’s the same problem that the various iterations of Microsoft’s marketing platforms have had from the start. It’s not a bad solution; it’s just very complicated/powerful and not really designed with your average Marketer in mind, especially for SMEs where you probably wear more than one hat.

An alternative option – consider Click

At Rocket CRM, whilst you can consider the transition to Customer Insights—Journeys. We also recommend an alternative option; moving over to Click. Find out more about Click marketing software.

Microsoft is not the only one to have recently been enhancing their offering. Click (formerly known as ClickDimensions) has added lots of new functionality to its product. Built natively in Dynamics 365/PowerApps, it offers all the benefits of having your marketing data alongside all your sales and other data. Offering that coveted “single source of truth”. You also get a powerful marketing tool that is, well far more intuitive to use for the standard marketer.

Another benefit of Click is that the customer insights tools (not the Microsoft product) are also stored in the same database (the “Dataverse”), not in a separate cloud as with Customer Insights. That means you can trigger automations based on opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces, social clicks, form fills etc. The downside is it counts towards overall your capacity allowance, so there may be an increased storage cost. But you control how long you keep it, how you visualise it and what you do with it in a way that isn’t possible with Microsoft’s Customer Insights Journeys.

Click Pricing model

One more thing to consider when weighing up if Click might be a better option… pricing. Each comes with a basic allowance as part of a standard package but they have slightly different models.

• Click’s model is based on the number of emails sent.
• Customer Insights – Journeys is based on…

• “Unified People” – also known as a “Profile”, essentially centred on a unique email address from Accounts, Contacts and Leads in your system. The basic allowance is 200,000.
• and “Interacted People” – how many of the “unified people” you actually use the system with – that includes inbound form fills. The basic allowance is 10,000.

We’re on hand to help

As we stated, Microsoft Outbound Marketing users have until June 30 2025 to take action. But with marketing planning season almost upon us, we suggest that you start thinking about what you are going to do before the year ends.

We are here to help anyone who needs guidance with this decision. We can even support organisations transitioning to Customer Insights Journeys by helping them familiarise themselves with the fantastic new tools. Simply fill in our contact form and we’ll get back in touch in no time.

Or, we can show you the features and tools of Click and explain in more detail the benefits of this alternative option. Request a Click demo.

ABOUT ROCKET CRM

Rocket CRM is a Microsoft Dynamics 365, and a platinum Click accredited partner, helping small to medium-sized businesses and charities harness the power of scalable CRM technology. Our mission is to make powerful CRM software simple with custom-built, user-focused solutions.

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