Real-time Marketing made real in real-time

Demos are so fake. Let us count all the ways demos might be fake:

• They often involve fake data, fake companies, fake people. That’s normal, and expected.
• Even if you’re using real people and real data, like in my Meta Sales Demo™, it’s still in a non-production demo environment with no impact on the real world. That’s fine, too.
• Sometimes, functionality is faked. To me, that’s not okay; no feature is worth outright deceit.

This post says: what if your demo of Real-time Marketing was real? What if you put your prospect into a Real-time Marketing journey (RTMJ)…in real-time…with consequences in the real world? This demo idea blends a number of my favorite demo principles:

• It’s real. Unlike most of the Event Trigger samples that are available, this Event Trigger code is deployed, so when it’s triggered, your prospect is now participating in the journey.
• It puts the prospect at the center of the action (Commandment 4). If they weren’t paying attention before, they will be now when the main stakeholder gets a text message and what happens next is based on their response.
• It’s meta. Everyone in the demo meeting is now participating in the journey they’re seeing on the screen. “You’re looking at now, sir.”
• It’s high-risk/high-reward (Commandment 3). It’s provocative. You’re putting the prospect on the spot about the quality of your demo. Some will click the link just to avoid insulting you in front of the group. But if a team doesn’t feel like they’re seeing what they expected, or it’s not a fit for whatever the reason, isn’t it better to know that sooner rather than later?

https://youtu.be/4wofW6F7jwU

A story to tell in a demo Microsoft Dynamics Real-time Marketing

(Prerequisites: you will need the mobile number of whomever you want to text during the demo [I suggest main stakeholder] and to have set up Consent for tracking for the mobile number. Full instructions for this at the end.)

1. Login to Power Apps. Under Data > Tables, navigate to the Opportunity table. Under Columns, add a column of type Yes/No to represent whether or not the Marketing Demo has been completed. Save the table. Go to Forms and expose the field on whichever form you plan to use during the demo (I tend to use the Sales Insights form as my default so I exposed it there as well as the main Opportunity form just to be safe). I put it above the Timeline so I don’t need to scroll to find it, and it’s relatively innocuous in demos where I’m not showing Marketing. Be sure to Publish All Customizations.

2. Create a new Event Trigger. Because this demo requires a custom Event Trigger, this will be a little unsexy but it works. First, in Real-Time Marketing, create a new Event Trigger and give it a name (I call mine “Marketing Demo Complete”). You have the option to add other fields you may want to use with the trigger from the Opportunity table. If you do add any of the fields, you will need to make sure they are populated with data to work, so just keep in mind you’re making extra work for yourself. Hit “Save and continue.”

The next step deals with a code snippet that we don’t need to use, so click “Next” to get to the last step and hit “Ready to use” button at the bottom of the page. It’s that easy.

NOTE: Step #3 here is specific to this particular demo use case, but it can be generalized for any Dataverse table. If you want to trigger a Real-time Marketing event based on a Lead or a Case or any other table not provided out-of-the-box, these instructions will point the way for how to do it.

3. Login to Power Automate. Here is where we will create a flow that triggers the Marketing Demo event. Create a new automated cloud flow that is triggered by a modification to a row in Dataverse.

My preferred script for this is the marking of a Marketing Demo field on an Opportunity as completed so the Table name is Opportunities. Since I’m just looking to see if the Marketing Demo Complete field is flipped from No to Yes, I’ve set Change type to “Modified.” And just to ensure the flow is not triggered by any modification to the Opportunity, for Select columns I’ve entered the full name of the field (you could go a step further and filter the row to only look for modifications from No to Yes, but I find it easier to test by leaving it open-ended that way so any flip of the field triggers the event).

To trigger this type of event in Real-time Marketing, for the operation, we need to choose “Perform an unbound action.” That is, select the action that knows no bounds.

The action name you’re looking for is whatever you named the Event Trigger back in Step #2 (I named mine “Marketing Demo Complete”). Your action will already be in the list prefaced with msdynmkt_<your trigger name here>. Also, the list may take a while to load –be patient– it’s a long list but it’ll be in there.

You will then see a few new options added that you must fill out. For msdynmkt_signalingestiontimestamp and msdynmkt_signaltimestamp you will need to enter an Expression. Once the formula bar is active, just start typing “utc” and you will see an option for utcNow() which you use for both fields.

For both msdynmkt_signaluserauthid and msdynmkt_profileid, you will use the Contact (Value) value that will show up under Dynamic content.

Save and test your flow. At this point, assuming you exposed the custom field you created in the Opportunity form, you can create a quick Opportunity that has you as the Primary Contact, toggle your custom field (Marketing Demo Complete for me), and the flow should start.

You are also through the hardest part of creating this custom Journey; it’s all downhill from here.

4. (OPTIONAL, sort of): Create two Marketing Pages for what the Main Stakeholder will see upon clicking on one of the links in the Text Message we’ll create in the next step: one page if they want to see more, and a different page if they don’t want to see more. These can be as simple or as complex as you’d like to make them, but personally, I have an issue with the Main Stakeholder in my demo clicking on a link on their phone and being taken to a page that doesn’t exist. You can see an example of my simple landing page for prospects that want to see more. I don’t want the Main Stakeholder to focus on their phone and what’s on the page after they’ve clicked the link to see more so it’s really just a hero image and one sentence of copy.

A strong case could be made that you should actually populate the page with content for a prospect that has seen your Marketing demo and doesn’t want to see anymore. There’s no guarantee the Main Stakeholder will engage with the content, but it doesn’t hurt to try. For my soul-crushing page, I’ve added a Marketing Form to it to try to get some feedback from the Main Stakeholder as to why we missed the mark. Hopefully no one’s ever visiting this page, but if someone does, might as well try to get some honest feedback for next time.

5. Create the Text Message. For the link, you must start the URL with “https://” and upon finishing, Marketing will shorten it automatically to save you characters. As you can see in my example, I added in some personalization (first name, company name) to show that you can personalize SMS messages. I include two different links so I can get near real-time* feedback on which link the Main Stakeholder clicked on. And I also threw in some emojis because that’s what all the kids are doing these days. Make sure you do everything necessary to mark it “Ready to send.”

6. Create the “keep going” email. This is the one they’ll receive if the stakeholders like what they see. For mine, I use the company logo and some copy about Next Steps & Action items since that’s usually what would come after a demo — what do you need from us to make your selection? Obviously you can add in some Personalization here if you’d like, but since I’m likely showing this after I’ve already showed the Email Editor in Outbound Marketing, and I’ve already shown them Personalization in the text message, I assume they get the point. Make sure you do everything necessary to mark it “Ready to send.”

7. Create the “sorry we wasted your time” email. As above, corporate logo and some copy apologizing that we missed the mark. Make sure you do everything necessary to mark it “Ready to send.”

8. Create a new event-based Journey. Start it with the Event Trigger we set up in Step 3. For “Repeating this journey,” I choose Immediately for testing purposes. If you choose Never, you’ll need to create a new Opportunity every time you want to test it. In the real world, you might choose Never, but in your demo environment, Immediately is better.

Be sure to add a Goal. Everyone loves goals, but Marketers really love goals. Make sure they see the Goals that are provided out-of-the-box (e.g. Drive a purchase, Engage customers, Increase loyalty, etc.) as well as the fact that you can create Custom goals. You can see the Custom goal I use below.

Because we want to show this working in real-time, have the first action be the Text Message we set up in Step 2. Drop in an If/Then tile to watch for the link in the text message being clicked. After that, you’re free to do whatever actions you’d like. In my Journey, I have the “Next Steps” email sent to those that click on the link (i.e. they want to see more) the following day, and I have the “Missed the Mark” email sent to someone that doesn’t click on the link an hour later.

9. Go live!

10. Test the entire Journey by revisiting the Opportunity you created with you as the Primary Contact (and that you have a Mobile Phone number set on your Contact record, and you’ve created a Consent record…

In advance of the demo, mention to the prospect team that you would like to show off SMS capabilities within Marketing, and will anyone volunteer their mobile number? You might mention you’re only using it for the demo, and will delete it from the system after the demo. Create a Contact for that person and enter their Mobile Phone. Then, within Real-time Marketing, under Audience in the left pane, click on “Consent Center.” In the top navigation, click “Text message consent” and fill it out like below. Make sure to check both boxes or the demo will not work as intended.

Congratulations! You are ready to do a real-time demo of Real-time Marketing that’s 100% real.

Known Issues

Real-time Marketing is not always “real-time.” I’ve had it take up to 20 minutes to register a step in the process which obviously precludes trying this in the heat of an actual demo. I would strongly advise testing it over and over, especially at different times of the day and keep track of response times to (1) see if you can detect any patterns, and (2) determine how comfortable you’d be performing this in front of a prospect in real-time. For me, it *usually* takes a few minutes (2-4) for the first text message to be sent, and then another 2-3 minutes for the click to show up in the Journey Sankey diagram. Plan accordingly.