The ability to create static and dynamic marketing lists is a basic marketing feature already available in some Dynamics 365 apps, even without Dynamics 365 Marketing installed. But in Dynamics 365 Marketing, marketing users will primarily leverage marketing segments instead to target its customer journeys, which is another feature unique to Marketing. As a result, there exists some questions amongst Dynamics 365 users around how marketing lists differs specifically from marketing segments and their respective use cases. 

First off, segments are a collection of contacts that are grouped together based on various demographic, firmographic, or behavioral characteristics and can be targeted via a customer journey. Segments can also only be created with the Dynamics 365 Marketing app. Unlike marketing lists, marketing segments runs directly on the marketing-insights services which collects large amounts of data around how each contact interacts with your marketing assets and inititatives. As a result, you can create a segment that, for example, finds all contacts who may have opened/clicked a specific email, or registered for a webinar/event, or visited a specific webpage. Conversely, this engagement information would not be available for marketing lists. You also can mix several segments and combine them with various logical operators (i.e. union, include, exclude) to create compound segments. As a result, marketers can leverage segments to run more personal and targeted marketing campaigns.

Unlike marketing segments, marketing lists are accessible across different Dynamics 365 apps and can be used with the quick campaigns feature that are also included in these apps. Within Dynamics 365 Marketing, static marketing lists can be set up as subscription lists which enables contacts to sign up for various mailing lists i.e. newsletter, event invitations, etc. Subscription lists in turn can be used as targets in customer journeys.

More questions around how your Dynamics 365 instance can be leveraged to achieve your marketing goals? Send us a message or contact your account manager.