Itās that exciting time of year againāthe first release wave for Customer Insights Journeys 2025 is out! I always look forward to these updates and love exploring all the new features.
For Customer Insights, weāve been getting monthly updates, mostly focused on the transition to real-time marketing. So the lines between the monthly updates and bi-yearly release wave get blurry. Also, every time I check the release planner I find new features and publish dates. While those updates are great, Iāve been hoping for something completely newāso let’s see.
The key areas are the same as in the last two or three release waves: Copilot & AI Innovation, Moments that matters and Unify Sales & Marketing.
To read more about each topics, check out the release waves documentation here.
Let’s dive right into them and start with the only feature for the Copilot & AI Innovation area.
Create journeys by using Copilot to describe them
āInnovation: 2/5
š ļøEase of use: 5/5
šFun factor: 4/5
The first feature is one that we actually already know. It was published as a public preview in May 2024 and helps us create journeys. With the Copilot in journeys, we can use everyday language to create a journey. Copilot gives us a preview and a summary before we can make the final touch. This is a nice feature and I think the Copilot works very well. But I am just looking more forward to the journey templates we can expect in February hopefully.
Pause and resume journeys to handle unplanned events
šAdoption Likelihood: 4/5
š ļøEase of use: 5/5
āInnovation: 1/5
Instead of stopping a campaign entirely, copying the journeyĀ and manually adjusting the audiences, we can now pause customer journeys to prevent new customers from entering. Once the situation is resolved, the journey can be resumed, or stopped completely if necessary. This allows us to manage unplanned situations easily and stress-free.
I am interested how this looks like in real life. For example, when we want to adjust a segment in a paused journey. In live journeys, this is currently not possible. But I’d love to see it in the future, e.g. to exclude contacts who are at a specific point in the journey.
Allow individuals to reenter a one-time, dynamic segment journey
šAdoption Likelihood: 4/5
š ļøEase of use: 5/5
āInnovation: 1/5
I really like this one. Previously, once a customer completed a one-time segmentbased journey, they were blocked from repeating it. Reentering a journey was only available for triggerbased or repeating journeys. Now, we have the flexibility to design journeys that allow customers to reenter if they qualify for the journeyās dynamic segment multiple times. For example, if a journey is triggered by a completed purchase, a customer can go through that journey every time they make a new purchase. This ensures a seamless and consistent customer experience across repeated interactions.
Other capabilities for moments that matter
Respect quiet times, and engage based on location and time zones: We can use quiet time already for a few months. At the moment the quiet times are connected to the timezone of the journey. But now we will be able to also align quiet times with the customers’ time zones and regions. And this is actually a really good idea, especially for global companies. Also when collaborating with sales or service it is crucial to contact customers at the right time. Not respecting the correct timezone or region is an avoidable volatility error.
šImpact Potential: 3/5
Export your data to your own storage for custom reporting: We also know this from last year. But I really need it! We can soon directly export insights data, including details such as email opens, clicks, and bounces. This functionality allows us to transfer interaction data to our preferred storage solution. So Fabric is not needed anymore. Once exported, we can integrate the data into our favorite reporting system.
š°Business value: 5/5
Wait on segment membership to trigger next step in a journey: Also not a new thing. We can now wait for customers to join a specific segment before progressing in their journey. Before we were able to use the attribute path in journeys and ask for the segment membership but we couldn’t wait for them to join a specific journey.
š ļøEase of Use: 5/5
Set up and execute pre and post event communications
š¤Automation Excellence: 4/5
šImpact Potential: 4/5
āInnovation: 3/5
This new feature from the Unify Sales and Marketing area might just be my favorite! Event management in real-time marketing is already a great feature, especially with trigger-based journeys. But with this new functionality, creating pre- and post-event communication becomes simpler. It streamlines the process of setting up journeys for tasks like surveys or registrations, all directly integrated into the event record and supported by ready-to-use templates. I donāt have all the details yet, but the screenshot looks promising.
Create an event portal on your own website
šIntegration: 3/5
š°Business value: 5/5
šAdoption Likelihood: 3/5
To make it easier for attendees to discover and join our events, we now offer a centralized event portal on our own website. The hub provides all the details customers need to register. It integrates with existing websites, either through a simple JavaScript snippet or the new event API. Then we can list upcoming events, share detailed summaries, and provide a smooth registration experience, all in one place.
Other capabilities for unify sales and marketing
Create event portals with event and registration details using Power Pages: Something at least I have been waiting for some time already since it was pushed a lot to the future. The functionality gives us the capability to use Power Pages and a ready-made template for event management. Really looking forward to this.
šIntegration: 5/5
Maximize event capacity with waitlist registrations: We can now ensure our marketing events are filled to capacity with waitlist registrations, which automatically register attendees from the waitlist when a spot becomes available.
šAdoption Likelihood: 4/5
Collect extra customer information without updating your data model: Not new either, but important. We can gather additional customer information by adding custom questions and fields directly in the form editor, without creating new attributes in the database. This allows us to collect details like meal preferences or contest answers, keeping the data tied to form submissions.
āWaited for this feature: 10/10
My wish for release wave 2
Iād love to hear your thoughts on this release wave! Personally, I donāt find it as thrilling as the ones weāve had in previous years. While there are certainly some useful updates, I canāt help but feel that the āwowā factor is missing this time.
A few of the new capabilities are already in preview status, so weāre just waiting for them to become generally available. While those are promising, they arenāt really groundbreaking. Other features are nice-to-haves but donāt feel as innovative as I had hoped.
It seems like the focus is still on closing the gap between real-time marketing and outbound marketing, which is absolutely important. However, I was hoping for more features that could surprise and inspire me.
Ā Iām keeping my fingers crossed for whatās to come. By the time June 30 rolls around, Iām optimistic weāll have exciting new functionalities to explore.
What do you thinkāare there any new capabilities youāre particularly excited about? Letās discuss!
***Please be aware: The content is accurate at the time of creation. It may be that Microsoft has made changes in the meantime.***
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One Response
Excellent summary my friend!