Leverage your leads in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Every organisation has different goals when it comes to marketing, but lead generation is almost always near the top of the list. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights automation for lead generation makes it easier to attract the right people and keep track of their interest. Leads are essentially signals that someone is interested in what you offer. These can be captured, managed, and followed up on, all within one streamlined system.

Within Dynamics 365 Customer Insight- Journeys, there are several ways that leads can be used, which we explore below…  

Leads as a basis for Customer Segmentation

Effective customer segmentation can make a significant difference towards how successful your marketing efforts are. However, creating smart customer segments can be a challenge if you are not using all the customer information available within the system.

The Segment Designer in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a powerful feature that helps your team categorise contacts effectively and group them for targeted outreach. While segments are primarily contact-based, leads can also be included within the query logic – making it a valuable component of marketing automation for lead generation.

Additionally you can utilise Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights alongside the Segment Designer to create personalised and targeted customer segments using natural language queries. Copilot can even provide suggestions about additional segments you may not currently have for improved performance.

For example, you could segment all leads that expressed interest in a particular event, so you can send them relevant marketing communications before and after the event.

Prioritise leads with Scoring models

Once leads are linked to contact records, organisations can take this further by introducing lead scoring models. Within Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys, lead scoring helps prioritise leads based on behaviours and interactions. such as form submissions, email opens, and event attendance.

This allows marketing teams to nurture the most engaged leads and ensures sales teams focus on those with the highest likelihood of converting, improving outcomes across the pipeline

To understand more about segments within Dynamics 365, read our blog on Marketing List vs Marketing Segments.

Automatically identify orphan leads 

Within Dynamics 365 Marketing, features such as Segments and Customer Journeys require that each lead is associated with a contact. However, in sales scenarios, leads are often created as the initial point of contact without requiring a contact record to be linked to them.   

Manually identifying all orphaned leads and creating contacts would be a time-consuming task. To overcome this, Dynamics 365 can identify orphaned leads and link a contact record for each new or existing unmatched lead record, using custom workflows. 

As a result, organisations can be confident they are reaching all the necessary people with their marketing efforts. 

Align marketing and ales workflows

To support seamless handovers between marketing and sales, Dynamics 365 enables teams to define qualification criteria and automatically progress leads through the pipeline. Workflows can be configured to update lead statuses, assign records to the correct sales team, and log qualification actions- ensuring that every lead is handled efficiently, and nothing falls through the cracks.

This alignment between departments helps drive better collaboration, improves follow-up consistency, and ultimately boosts conversion outcomes

Categorise marketing leads

More often than not, leads may be used by various departments across your organisation. Especially if contacts are being automatically generated from leads (marketing or other areas), it can be hard to keep track of which team should be handling particular data.  

You can easily avoid this confusion by applying a marketing flag on the contact entity, to clearly differentiate the automatically generated contacts from other types of contacts. This makes it easier to quickly tell the two types of contacts apart, and to set up the necessary views for sales teams, and other departments. 

Easily avoid this confusion by using a marketing flag on the contact entity, making it easier to gain an overview of what leads are related to what team. These flags can either be added manually or be a part of the workflow. 

Further features can be applied, such as: 

• Flags can be removed or added automatically based on certain actions. For example, a marketing flag is removed from a contact once the lead associated with it is turned into an opportunity 
• Create specific lists related to flagged contacts, making it easier for marketing teams to have an overview of the data 

Using this functionality provides your business with a more organised database, making it easier for teams to work with the correct information. 

Reach leads through multi-channel campaigns

After creating targeted segments, you can reach these audiences using a variety of channels within Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys. Whether through email, social media, SMS, events, or landing pages, multi-channel campaigns enable you to meet leads where they are and deliver consistent messaging across touchpoints.

This helps drive stronger engagement and ensures a more cohesive experience for potential customers throughout the journey

Track and optimise lead performance 

To ensure your marketing efforts are delivering real outcomes, Dynamics 365 offers performance analytics through built-in dashboards and reporting. These tools help track KPIs like lead source effectiveness, campaign conversions, and engagement trends.

For deeper insights, Power BI can be connected to visualise and analyse lead data at scale, enabling continuous optimisation of your marketing strategies

To summarise, it is known that Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is strongly focused on using contacts. However, we hope that this blog has demonstrated that leads are useful throughout the process and can still be used to support marketing efforts. Discover more about the benefits of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights in our expert blog.

To summarise, it is known that Dynamics 365 Marketing is strongly focused on using contacts. However, we hope that this blog has demonstrated that leads are useful throughout the process and can still be used to support marketing efforts. Discover more about the benefits of Dynamics 365 Marketing in our expert blog. 

Get in touch!

For more information on Dynamics 365 Marketing, please email us at info@pragmatiq.co.uk, call us on 01908 038110 or fill out the form below and our expert team will be in contact with you shortly.