Dynamics 365 for marketing segment manager is a new XrmToolBox tool allowing you to easily import an Excel sheet of crm contacts into your static segments.
The tool is not a threat to your organization data management, as it never creates contacts in your CRM. It only matches your excel uploaded file with any existing contacts and adds them to your static segment.
All the steps to be done are well documented through numbers in the tool, and right below in this blog:
1. Load Segments:
This will load all of the dynamics 365 static segments into the dropdown list under "2. Search for target segment".
2. Search for target segment:
Select your target segment. Watch out, dynamic segments are not shown there as we cannot attach members "one by one" to them.
3. Select Excel File whose 1st column = contact id or email:
Your excel file needs to be imported by clicking on the "Browse" button. The only column that will be considered is the first column of your file. It should contain one of both fields:
- contactid (this is the crm guid)
- emailaddress1 (this field is used by dynamics 365 for marketing in order to dispatch emails)
4. Search for contacts options:
After you have selected your excel file containing a big list of contacts, we need to make sure that these contacts are the "right" needed ones and that they exist in CRM. Our basic verification is related to making sure that those contacts:
- Are present in CRM
- Are active (Status)
- Have an email address (emailaddress1)
Why did I choose these as basic necessary verifications? Well simply because if any of these is not validated Dynamics 365 for marketing will not be sending any email to your contact.
If you think these verifications are enough then you can select : "Search only for active contacts with an email address". Otherwise, you can select "Search in a fetchXML of Contacts" and add your own fetch XML exported from a view of contacts in CRM.
Note that upon pasting your fetch XML a quick verification will apply to confirm that you have added at least the "emailaddress1" column to your view, and that it's a "contact" table view.
If your fetchXML respects these conditions, its color will be green (you're good to go!). Otherwise, its color would be red and it means you're probably querying over another table than the contacts one, or that you're missing adding the "Email" as a column of your view.
In which scenarios would I have to search by selecting "Search in a fetch XML of Contacts" ?
A typical scenario is whenever you need to make sure that the system doesn't pick someone else's contacts (checking for contacts yourself or your team don't own).
In which scenarios would I have to search by selecting "Search only for active contacts with an email address" ?
A typical scenario in this case is when system administrators would like to bulk import contacts from excel spreadsheets into segments (during a data migration for example).
Or whenever you don't have specific validations to be done.
5. First column of my Excel file is:
Indicate if in your excel file you have as first column "Contact ID" or "Email" of contacts. This will help matching with "contactid" or "emailaddress1" in CRM.
6. Search for contacts:
This is the final step before "really" importing your contacts into your segment! By clicking on this button the system will automatically search for the contacts present in your excel file among the CRM contacts specified in point "4". (either among contacts specified in your fetchXML, or among all active contacts with an email address)
7. Add members to your segment:
Final step! By clicking on this button all found contacts will be successfully added to your segment. Once done, refresh your segment page in CRM and there you go! Your contacts got added to the segment.
QUESTIONS REPOSITORY:
A. What happens if I'm searching through the emailaddress1 and the system finds duplicate contacts?
The tool would automatically pick them all and add them to your segment. You can then remove them manually from within your segment in Dynamics 365 for marketing.
Note that if you send an email to a segment containing duplicate email addresses, Dynamics 3365 for marketing only sends the email once. Yet, it is always recommended not to have duplicates in order to have a better vision over how many persons we really have in our audience (ex: expecting to invite 1000 persons to your event while having 50% of them as duplicates could impact a lot the size of your venue, meals ordering, etc..)
B. Tried to use the tool but I'm getting an error message
First reaction should be to double check that your fetchXML that you did input is correct (having its color as green only means that it contains the expected parameters)
Otherwise, please don't hesitate to send us your error message in the chat so that we could support and improve the tool asap!
HAPPY WITH THIS TOOL?
DID YOU ALREADY USE IT AND IT ACCELERATED YOUR JOB SUCCESSFULLY?
PLEASE DON'T HESITATE TO LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW, OR TO REVIEW THIS TOOL BY GIVING A 5 STARS!