2024 wave release is here!
LinkedIn is going crazy! And that can only mean one thing! It’s another wave release!
I cannot tell you how happy I am about some of the features in this one! I’m not going to discuss the whole thing because at the end of the day, that’s what the release plan is for and you can find the full information here : Release Plan for Customer Insight Journeys
However, I am going to point of the 3 features that I am happy to see and cannot wait to see in action!
Feature 1 : Send Scheduling
So this was a feature that I loved in Outbound Marketing and Microsoft have delivered! Thank you!!!!
A big challenge to the Marketer is making an impact. Marketing teams need to deliver a message at the right time to build relationships, improve open rates with ROI in mind.
Send scheduling feature will allow teams to apply specific a time and day windows for sending a message tile. The send times will continue to respect the frequency cap feature and messages that have not been sent during the time window will be held until the next window!
Now this for me really does help the marketing team with getting the balance of too much or too little communication right. Marketers will be able to ensure that communications are only sent during the time that their collective dashboards are informing them that they have the most likely open rates etc.
Microsoft’s screenshot is only showing the email tiles, but I’m hoping that the term Message Tiles includes SMS too!
Send Scheduling : Public Preview April - General Availability July
Feature 2 : ALM !!!!!!!
OK so this is my personal favourite! As a consultant, there’s been so much conversation around testing and building marketing journeys, and having to use XRM toolbox to move records through the environments.
I am so happy and relieved to see that from JUNE 2024 we can move triggers, segments and journeys via ALM. This feature is for the consultants, we don’t have to manually be worrying about the status of records before manually moving and importing them using XRM Toolbox! We can move them in a published state! Woooohooo!!! Life just got a little bit easier for us!
But this also goes two-fold for clients! Maybe now this will allow them to have more confidence in the system, and not try and test in their training environments first. Maybe they build something so amazing and they too can move things across more easily!
THANK YOU MICROSOFT THIS ONE MADE ME DO A HAPPY DANCE!💃 I can’t dance and have two left feet, so visually more like a happy jump, but still… you get the point 😂
Feature 3 : Double Opt In
Double opt in is here for Real-time Marketing! GDPR and Data Protection Regulatory prayers have been answered!!!
For those who don’t know, Double Opt in requires subscribers to confirm their subscription through a follow up email. This leads to increased open rates, click through rates and brand experience as those who opt in via double opt in are more likely to be engaged with the content.
Double opt in is enforced at Compliance Profile Level and triggers and journeys are used to orchestrate the process.
One thing to note here is that Microsoft mention that new contacts or leads won’t be created until customers confirm their opt in.
Now the positive here: rich engaged data
Now for the slight negative : sometimes customers think “I’ll do that later” and can forget. So until they’ve confirmed their opt in… they won’t be there🙈 so for instances where customers are downloading a brochure for example, they would need to have confirmed the opt in to receive it as part of a journey if it’s commercial attachment etc
