If you’ve been using Microsoft Dynamics 365 for your marketing efforts, you’ve likely heard the news: Outbound Marketing is being officially retired on June 30, 2025. This marks a pivotal moment in Microsoft’s evolution of its marketing platform, and it’s important for organizations to understand what this means, why it’s happening, and how to prepare.
Why Is Microsoft Retiring Outbound Marketing?
Outbound Marketing has served as the traditional backbone of Dynamics 365 Marketing, offering tools for email campaigns, customer journeys, lead scoring, and event management. However, as marketing strategies have shifted toward more personalized, real-time engagement, Microsoft has responded by investing heavily in Real-Time Marketing (RTM)—a more modern, flexible, and AI-powered solution.
The decision to retire Outbound Marketing is rooted in several key factors:
- Innovation Focus: Microsoft is concentrating its development efforts on Real-Time Marketing, which supports dynamic, event-driven customer journeys and integrates more deeply with AI and data analytics.
- Customer Demand: Marketers today need tools that can respond instantly to customer behavior, not just scheduled campaigns.
- Unified Experience: RTM offers a single, streamlined interface that combines data, automation, and personalization in one place.
What Is Real-Time Marketing?
Real-Time Marketing is not just a replacement—it’s a reimagining of what marketing automation can be. It enables marketers to:
- Trigger journeys based on real-time events (e.g., form submissions, purchases, or CRM updates)
- Use AI to personalize content and optimize send times
- Engage customers across multiple channels, including email, SMS, push notifications, and custom channels
- Build complex, branching journeys with intuitive drag-and-drop tools
- Leverage unified customer profiles from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
What Will Happen After June 30, 2025?
After this date, the Outbound Marketing module will no longer be available or supported. This means:
- You won’t be able to create or edit outbound journeys, emails, or segments
- Existing campaigns will stop running
- Support and updates for Outbound Marketing will cease
If your organization hasn’t started transitioning to Real-Time Marketing, now is the time.
How to Prepare for the Transition
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you make the switch:
- Audit Your Current Usage: Identify which features of Outbound Marketing you rely on most.
- Explore RTM Capabilities: Microsoft has significantly expanded RTM’s functionality to cover nearly all use cases from Outbound Marketing—and more.
- Use Microsoft’s Migration Tools: Microsoft provides a transition guide, feature parity documentation, and migration utilities to help you move assets and data.
- Train Your Team: Ensure your marketing team is familiar with the new interface and capabilities of RTM.
- Test and Optimize: Start small with pilot campaigns in RTM, then scale as you gain confidence.
Final Thoughts
The retirement of Outbound Marketing may feel like the end of an era, but it’s also the beginning of a more agile, intelligent, and customer-centric approach to marketing. Real-Time Marketing is built for the future—one where personalization, speed, and data-driven decisions are at the heart of every campaign.
If you haven’t started planning your transition, now is the perfect time. The clock is ticking, and June 30, 2025, will be here before you know it.
Ready to move beyond outbound marketing? Contact us to start your real-time marketing journey.
