NEIL PARKHURST

I am about to take the MB2-719 certification, this certification covers the Dynamics 365 for Marketing Application. I plan to create a series of blog posts that collectively should help anyone else preparing for this exam. In my first post we reviewed the initial install process. In this post I will explain the forward to a friend feature.

You can see an extract from the skills measured statement below, notice that it references the forward to a friend pages;

Forward to a friend allows us to give contacts an easy way to forward marketing emails to their friends. And therefore (hopefully) encourage greater engagement with our marketing messages. Below, you can see an example email containing a forward to a friend link. This is a very simple message! Yours will obviously look much better!! Notice that I’ve included a link to allow the receiver to forward the message to their friends. I’ll show what happens if someone clicks this in a second.

Also notice that I have included some personal data for this contact. (aka, their first name and email address.) I have done this to show what will happen to any personal data once a contact forwards a message to their friend(s).

And finally notice, that my email still contains a subscription center (unsubscribe link) and my physical address. These are mandatory on all marketing emails, with or without a forward to a friend link.

In my example, clicking the forward to a friend link opens a marketing page that is shown below. Notice that I have actually allowed space for two friends. And also given an option to enter a name. Both of these are optional settings, I will explain how to set these later in this post.

Having clicked submit my friends will receive an email similar to the one below. Firstly notice the personal information, a name field was still included but email and any other personal information would be removed.

Note: Name is only included as I optionally included a name field on my forward to a friend form.

And of course the message will still contain my physical address and unsubscribe link.

It is also possible for a friend to forward a message to a friend!

Viewing the email’s insights form will allow me to see when contacts have used the forward to a friend feature. The example below shows how a forward to a friend visit might look within the emails interaction timeline.

Important Note: Any email addresses entered into the forward to a friend form are NOT permanently stored in your database. The email addresses are not checked against existing contacts / leads. The emails addresses are only stored on a temporary basis. They are simply used to forward the email and then removed.

Creating an Email with a Forward to a Friend Link

The process of creating a forward to a friend “feature” is very similar to creation of a subscription center. In that we need to create a marketing form, include the marketing form into a marketing page. Next we add that page into our content settings and finally link the content settings to a customer journey. Any marketing emails including a forward to a friend link will then support opening your forward to a friend page defined in the content settings.

This process is depicted below;

The first time you attempt the above process it might seem quite complicated! But each step is quite simple. As part of your revision I suggest attempting each step and ensuring you understand that step before progressing. Importantly remember to check for errors and go live at each stage.

Marketing Form

You can see my example marketing form below. I have dragged the “forward to a friend” tile from the toolbox onto my form.

Notice that my form type is “Forward to a friend”.

Tip: I have opted to also include an image. I could have decided to keep my form plain and add any branding into the marketing page. Meaning I could reuse the same form on multiple marketing pages for different purposes.

Having added my forward to a friend tile, I can set various properties. Including if I optionally want to prompt for a name and also how many recipients to include.

Marketing Page

Next I created a marketing page, of type “Forward to a friend”.

I simply dragged a form tile onto my marketing page and used the lookup control to select my forward to a friend form.

Additionally in the properties of the form tile I need to set the error message and optionally a redirect URL.

Content Settings

Now I have my marketing page for forward to a friend I can include it into my content settings. Notice below that I have added the “full_page_url” for my marketing page into the forward to a friend field.

Marketing Email

Next, I created a marketing email. In my email I inserted a link. I used the “</>” icon to access my content settings and selected the “ForwardToAFriend” field. This will add a link to whatever forward to a friend url is included into my content settings.

Customer Journeys

Finally I created a customer journey. In my simple example my journey only included a segment and the marketing email I had created earlier. (Your journeys could obviously be more involved.)

Notice that the content settings field in the summary tab has been linked to the content settings I created earlier. This “in turn” will link to my marketing page for forward to a friend. Which will include my forward to a friend marketing form.

Once I had completed all these steps I was able to make my journey live and test my forward to a friend feature.

Hopefully I have described the “forward to a friend” feature in enough detail to help you experiment with it as part of your MB2-719 revision. Enjoy.