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Synchronise marketing preferences for Microsoft Dynamics
Synchronise marketing preferences for Microsoft Dynamics

Marketing preferences let you improve the targeting and effectiveness of your communications.

Gareth Burroughes avatar
Written by Gareth Burroughes
Updated over a week ago

You can create unlimited marketing preferences and categories, and then use them to organise your contacts based on their likes and interests. By managing your contacts in this way, you're on track to boost engagement rates and improve ROI.

Learn how marketing preferences work in Dotdigital in Using marketing preferences.

Marketing preferences can be synced two ways for Contacts, Leads and Accounts between Microsoft Dynamics and Dotdigital. We use the last modified sync when deciding which direction Marketing preferences sync in. This lets us identify whether Microsoft Dynamics or Dotdigital holds the most recent preference and update the other system accordingly.


Before you start

Things you need to know:

  • Two-way synchronisation for Marketing preferences is available for all supported Microsoft Dynamics versions. Supported versions are Microsoft Dynamics 365, 2015-6, 2013. Dynamics 2011 is not supported.


Sync Marketing preferences

Dotdigital only syncs Marketing preference data to Contacts, Leads, and Accounts that are known to Microsoft Dynamics. We sync Marketing preferences for every record that has ever existed in an email activated marketing list.

Marketing preferences and email address

The Marketing preferences functionality is built around using email addresses to identify a contact record; this is key for the sync of data between Dotdigital and Microsoft Dynamics.

Changing an email address for a record in Dotdigital or of a Contact, Lead, or Account in Microsoft Dynamics results in the Marketing preferences being lost or updated to the original email address.

Instead of changing the email address, we suggest you remove the previous record and create a new record with the new email address.


Schedule a Marketing preference sync

  1. In Microsoft Dynamics, go to Email Accounts under Settings in the left side menu.

  2. Select the account name.

  3. Select Scheduled Sync Settings.

  4. Expand the drop-down menus for the synchronisation Interval and Sync Window for the Marketing preferences synchronisation type and select your desired setting. By default, the synchronisation setting is manual.

    marketing_pref_sync.png

Marketing preferences does not have a Sync now icon, but you can still do an on-demand sync:

  1. For Interval select Once a day.

  2. For Sync Window select Specific Time.

  3. For Next Sync select Now and then Done.

    sync-prefs-now.png

  4. Select Save.

Once the on-demand sync is run, you can set your scheduled sync window as required.

Sync limitations

There are some limitations to the Microsoft Dynamics two-way sync process:

  • Multiple Dotdigital accounts don't sync across to one another
    If your Microsoft Dynamics instance is linked to multiple Dotdigital accounts, Marketing preferences won't be synced across accounts. If you want to have the same Marketing preferences in more than one Dotdigital account, you can use a Microsoft Dynamics workflow to achieve this.

  • Marketing preferences do not sync for suppressed contacts
    If a contact is suppressed in Dotdigital, their marketing preferences won’t be updates during the sync process. If you need to sync these preferences, you must to add this record to an email activated Marketing List. If the contact confirms their re-subscription, we update their Marketing preference data during the next synchronisation.

Learn how to trigger the re-subscribe process in Suppressions and resubscribes in Microsoft Dynamics.


View Marketing preferences in Microsoft Dynamics

Once synchronisation completes, you can view Marketing preferences on an individual Contact, Lead, or Account record in Microsoft Dynamics, on the Marketing Preferences tab.

marketing-prefs.png

You can filter the marketing preferences section by:

  • All Marketing Preferences

  • Opted in preferences

  • Opted out preferences

  • Private preferences

  • Public preferences

    filter-prefs.png

Update opt-ins and opt-outs

To update Marketing preference opt-ins and opt-outs on a Contact, Lead, or Account in Microsoft Dynamics:

  1. On the entity record, select the Marketing Preferences tab.

  2. Select the checkbox next to the Marketing preference, then select Edit.


    edit-pref.png

  3. On the Marketing Preference Subscription screen, expand the drop-down menu for Status and select Yes or No as required.


    pref-opt-in.png

Next time the Marketing preference sync runs, the updated opt-in or opt-out syncs to Dotdigital.

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