User Review
( votes)With the release of Dynamics 365 2020 Release Wave 2, Microsoft has substantially increased the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Marketing. This includes the introduction of Microsoft Teams as an approved webinar provider for events managed in Dynamics 365 Marketing. With this addition, organizations can now use Dynamics 365 Marketing to send webinar invites and follow-ups, collect registrations, track attendance, and host the virtual event via a Microsoft Teams meeting or live-event.
To utilize this functionality, organizations will need active Dynamics 365 Marketing and Microsoft Teams licensing. If you are unsure about existing licensing or need assistance with purchasing, let us know.
Enabling Event Streaming
When enabled in system settings, every event record in Dynamics 365 Marketing includes an option to stream the event online via Microsoft Teams or another established webinar provider. When toggled to “Yes”, Dynamics 365 will automatically create a Teams meeting and add it to the event owner’s calendar. If the webinar includes additional speakers or producers, speaker records can be created and associated with the event record. When added to the event, the teams meeting will appear on the calendars of all speakers.
Webinar Types in Microsoft Teams
When choosing a streaming provider for the event, Microsoft Teams includes two options: Teams Meeting and Teams Live Event. Teams Meetings are standard meetings that are typically used for virtual meetings conducted for day-to-day business.
Teams meetings can be used for webinars, however the host has limited options for restricting attendee actions during the meeting. Mute by default and Do not allow attendee to unmute themselves can be toggled in the meeting options when the meeting is created.
Teams live events are more in-line with other webinar solutions and give the host additional control over attendee actions. Attendees can view content, but cannot share any audio, video, or content by default. There is also a Q&A feature that allows attendees to submit questions via chat and have hosts approve questions and answer for all attendees to see or respond privately. It’s important to note that Teams live events are considered public and can be joined by anyone with a link – whether they register or not. There is also a slight delay in content streamed to attendees in live events. This delay is typically 15-30 seconds.
Send invites and track registrations
Other digital marketing features in Dynamics 365 Marketing can be utilized to run the entire webinar campaign in Dynamics 365. Marketing forms can be created and hosted on a marketing page to collect event
registrations. Links to these registration pages can be included in marketing emails designed in Dynamics 365 Marketing and sent via a customer journey.
Customer Journeys give users a way to create automated marketing campaigns that utilize content created in Dynamics 365 and send them to contacts based on their behavior. In a webinar campaign, a customer journey can send an invite to a contact and automatically either send them a reminder if they don’t register, or send a confirmation email if they do register. The confirmation email can include an automatically generated join URL that is unique to each registrant. When a contact clicks this URL to join the webinar, Dynamics 365 Marketing tracks them as checked into the event. After the event is over, event managers can go through both registrants and attendees to see how many people attended.
Beyond webinars, event management capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing are extremely robust and include tracking options for everything from session tracking and venue management, to sponsorships and event finance tracking.
If you need assistance with configuring Dynamics 365 Marketing or just get training on specific processes like creating webinars, we can help. Get in touch with us to get started.
