Top Features 

Taking control of the buyer journey: automation that pays off 

1. Smart journey automation for better Marketing & Sales alignment 

The Marketing team works hard to warm up leads, but in practice things often go wrong during the handover to Sales: context is missing, follow‑up takes too long, and leads cool off.

This new feature solves that problem in a relatively simple way. With this capability, Customer Insights – Journeys can create various sales actions and CRM records directly from journeys as soon as a lead shows strong buying signals. Think of tasks, phone calls, leads, or even opportunities — all created in real time and fully enriched with the right context.

Everything happens in real time, exactly when a lead is ready. Sales teams are able to follow up the same day, using complete context for a targeted approach. For example, a prospect opens multiple consecutive emails within a nurture campaign and clicks through to the pricing calltoaction in the email.

The journey recognizes this as a pattern of high‑intent engagement and automatically creates an opportunity, populated with, among other things: 

• Company name / contact details
• Product interest
• Campaign source
• Lead status and relevant engagement information 

At the same time, Sales receives a task linked to that same opportunity to follow up immediately.

2. Branded Content Links: more trust, stronger brand experience, higher conversion 

As a marketer, everything revolves around trust. You send newsletters, nurture flows, and campaigns designed to entice readers to click through to forms, downloads, or event registrations. Until now, those links appeared as long, technical Microsoft URLs — not aligned with your brand and, for many recipients, even somewhat suspicious.

With Branded Content Links, Customer Insights – Journeys now displays your marketing links under your own domain. This ensures that every click feels fully aligned with your branding and inspires trust. A link like marketing.yourdomain.com/download is clicked more often and directly increases your CTR. 

This creates one consistent brand experience, from the first email to conversion, because your own domain is visible in: 

• Newsletter links
• Forms
• Event pages
• Preference center 

From a technical perspective, it’s fortunately quite simple: 

1. Add your own link domain in the domain settings of Customer Insights, for example: marketing.yourdomain.com or info.yourdomain.com.
2. Add DNS records to verify the subdomain with Microsoft.
3. Done: Customer Insights automatically replaces all existing links with your branded variant. 

An additional benefit: mailbox providers trust domains that match the sender, which means your emails are more likely to safely pass spam filters. 

3. Relevant communication with an expiration date 

Some messages are only valuable within a specific time window. With the new option to add a validity period to an email in your journey, campaign marketers can ensure that messages are only sent while they are still relevant. If a contact reaches the step after the expiration date, the email is automatically skipped. 

Examples include: 

• Pre‑order campaigns: reminders are sent only while the pre‑order is open. After that, the message will automatically expire.
• Service or maintenance updates: updates are only sent before the scheduled maintenance window. If maintenance has already started or been completed, the customer’s inbox remains clean.

The resulting benefits are: 

• Relevant communication: only timely, uptodate messages are delivered.
• Professional customer experience: no late reminders or expired offers.
• Less noise: customers only receive messages that match the exact moment in their journey. Greater reliability: prevents situations where a message is no longer accurate when received. 

What’s in it for you? 

Marketeer 

• Better Marketing & Sales alignment: both teams work with the same real‑time signals and information.
• No noise, no manual work: every lead receives consistent, timely follow‑up.
• With Branded Content Links, marketing links are fully aligned with your branding and inspire trust, creating one consistent brand experience from first email to conversion.
• Relevant communication: only timely, up‑to‑date messages are delivered.
• Professional customer experience: no late reminders or expired offers.
• Less noise: customers only receive messages that fit the exact moment in their journey.
• Greater reliability: prevents messages from becoming outdated upon receipt. 

Verkopers 

• Faster follow‑up: Sales will automatically receive the right action at the right moment.
• Higher sales effectiveness: salespeople enter conversations with full insight into behavior and interests.
• Higher conversion: follow‑up happens precisely on the moment of maximum buying intent. 

Why act now? 

Smart journey automation enables a reliable, real‑time, and fully automated handover process that delivers better results. Activating this immediately allows you to close more deals from the same number of leads.

Branded Content Links: 

• Make it possible to deliver one consistent brand experience.
• Are increasingly important as digital trust declines.
• Are technically simple to implement, leaving no reason to delay.
• Help emails pass spam filters more reliably. 

The validity setting ensures that marketing flows remain clean and errorfree, especially for timebound campaigns or service communications. By activating this now, you prevent awkward “toolate messages,” improve the quality of your journeys, and deliver a more professional experience to your audience — without additional effort.