Transition from outbound to realtime events
The conversation of transitioning from Outbound Marketing to Real-time Marketing is becoming more and more popular. Originally clients were a little hesitant/skeptical but with each wave release , showcasing additional real-time features, the transition across becomes more plausible…. Let’s face it it’s a no brainer with the additional features that are available and by far more user friendly.
Transitioning to Real-time Events
At this stage it’s important to know the difference in features that are available in Outbound v Real-time.
The key thing to note is the features that are not yet available in real-time marketing as of 12/02/2024.
Recurring Event
It is expected that when available in Real-time journeys we will be able to see this feature under the Schedule Section within the General Tab
Event portal landing page
In outbound marketing users could create an Events Website, known as the event portal. This feature is not yet available in real-time journeys. However Microsoft have advised that it is planned, and have proposed that Marketing Forms (which are used for registration) can serve as a viable alternative to showcase the event details whilst facilitating the registration process
Waitlist
In outbound we are familiar with the term wait list. This is where the marketing team could set an event or session capacity and when enough registrations had been received the session would be marked as sold out. If marketing teams enabled the waitlist, then registrants could choose to join the waitlist should someone cancel their registration. Hopefully this is something we see available soon!
Lead entity registration
At the moment Customer Insight Journey documentation from Real-time journeys events only refers to sending event invites to contacts
Custom registration fields
Now my assumption is that this is referring to being able to create custom attributes that would exist on the registration form such as meal preferences, which you wouldn’t necessarily want held against the contact record polluting the data. If this assumption is correct we can expect to see this feature available in Public Preview from July 2024 More information here
Event level templates
Support for On24 and other ferric webinar providers
Payments
Set register
10. Action end date
For more information on events and real time transition visit :
Microsoft blog here
Microsoft documentation here
The good news is Microsoft mention here that they are already actively planning the following as part of their next wave release:
Event portal
Session capacity
Reoccurring events
