Dynamics 365 Marketing FAQs : Creating emails

Dynamics 365 Marketing is now called Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

The questions we’re most often asked about building emails in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Can I check my email will look good on all apps and devices?

Yes, this is easy. Dynamics Marketing has a powerful built-in system from Litmus for previewing your email on all popular email clients, browsers and devices.

When you’re building an email, go to

Designer > Preview & test
Then choose Email Clients from the preview area
From there you can choose as many email clients and devices as you’d like to see a preview for

There’s more details in Microsoft’s documentation

As Litmus is a commercial service, you have a limited number of included email previews each month. Given a $79 a month account with Litmus gets you 1000 previews a month, the smaller number of previews included with Dynamics is a great bonus!

How do I add surveys to an email?

You’ve created a survey in Microsoft Customer Voice and you want to add it to a Dynamics 365 Marketing email

Create a new Marketing Email, using the template of your choice
Add a button to the email
From the link to box, select Survey
Choose the survey you’d like to link to

Continue to design your email as normal
Important: When you use a customer journey to send this email, look in the right pane for Email Elements
- Choose +Add Item and select the Customer Voice survey you created

I do I run an AvB test on my email?

If you have a Dynamics Marketing 365 email and you like to test and compare different content or subject lines

First of all, create your A email as you’d create a normal email

Select the A/B Test button in the top right corner of the editor.
Click +Add test
Choose the type of test you’d like to run

Now you can begin the design

For header tests, you’ll see this indicator showing which header version you’re editing.

For body tests, you’ll see each design element has an A/B on the top of its frame. Toggle this to add the element to the test. Now make the design changes. You can do this for as many elements as you like.
You can switch between test versions using the selector in the top right of the editor

Can I add attachments to a Dynamics 365 Marketing email?

If you’re sending bulk emails, it’s not good practice to include an attachment, and in fact, your email server may even reject the email.

The best way to attach a document like a PDF, Word document or Excel, is to send a link. If you use Office 365, it’s easy to make links to documents. See Microsoft’s guide to sharing files

How do I personalise emails?

Assuming you’re sending an email to a group of contacts, it’s easy to make simple personalisations.

In the email editor, click the personalisation button

If, for example, you want to add the recipient’s full name, you would choose these options

This is the simplest and one of the most useful personalisations. Given the tight integration with the Dynamics database, you could show a huge range of contact data, and related data from other entities – orders, leads, accounts etc..

What are transactional emails?

As well as sending bulk marketing emails, you can send transactional emails in Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Transactional emails are not marketing emails, and usually respond to a user action like

A purchase
Registering on a site
Updating user info on your website

or they could be

An account statement
Customer service information about a product

They must not contain marketing material

Transactional emails are never sent in bulk and are considered one-to-one communication, like a personal email sent from Outlook.

Transactional emails can be sent to contacts who have opted out of bulk email (in Dynamics the field Do Not Allow is set to Don’t Allow)

Tip: Resize your images before uploading

When you’re adding an image to an email, make sure you resize the image before you upload. This helps the mail open faster and increases the deliverability of your email. Also there is an occasional bug in Dynamics 365 Marketing which means images can be accidentally displayed at their original size, not the size you set.

To change your image size:
First decide how large your image needs to be. In Dynamics Marketing, a full width image is usually 600 pixels wide. Check the width of your email in the general styles tab of the editor.

Next, use an image editor like Photoshop, or a free online editor like Photopea to change the size of the image to fit the space you’d like it to display in. For example if you want the image to appear in a column that is a third of the width of the email, change the image’s size to 200px wide.

Now insert the image. The image should display at the correct size without needing to resize it.

How do I add the ‘view email in browser’ link?

Most Dynamics email templates will have a link at the top which allow recipients to view a version of the email in a web browser. This is really useful if the email isn’t displaying well, or if you want to send a link to someone.

If you’re building an email template from a blank, you’ll need to know how to add the view in browser link.

If you have some text you’d like to link to the view in browser version of the email, just select the text and press the link button. Then click the grey braces in the link box (as below)