Dynamics 365 Marketing was renamed and restructured into Customer Insights in 2024 and now ships as two distinct applications: Customer Insights — Journeys (the campaign-orchestration successor to the classic Marketing app, ~$1,700/month base) and Customer Insights — Data (the customer data platform / CDP capability, ~$1,700/month base). Each application is licensed at a base tenant level with a contact entitlement of 10,000 ‘interacted contacts’ per month included in Journeys and 100,000 unified profiles included in Data. Additional capacity is sold in contact packs ($250 per 5,000 additional Journeys interacted-contacts/month, $1,500 per 100,000 additional unified Data profiles). Both apps support an attach-style discount when the tenant already runs another qualifying D365 app at base price — reducing Journeys / Data to $1,000/month each. The biggest commercial fact for 2026 buyers: contact pricing is the largest variable cost and is consistently over-provisioned at deployment time. Contact-band right-sizing and segmentation discipline drive 30–50% of realised cost on most deployments.
From Dynamics 365 Marketing to Customer Insights (Journeys + Data)
The Dynamics 365 Marketing application was restructured in 2024 into the Customer Insights family with two distinct applications:
| Application | 2026 list price | With qualifying-app attach | Capability scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Insights — Journeys | ~$1,700/tenant/month | ~$1,000/tenant/month | Campaign orchestration, email/SMS/push, journey design (the renamed D365 Marketing app) |
| Customer Insights — Data | ~$1,700/tenant/month | ~$1,000/tenant/month | Customer data platform / CDP — unified profiles, segmentation, AI |
| Additional contact pack (Journeys) | ~$250/month per +5,000 interacted contacts | Same | Capacity overflow for Journeys |
| Additional profile pack (Data) | ~$1,500/month per +100,000 unified profiles | Same | Capacity overflow for Data |
The qualifying-app attach discount: if the tenant runs D365 Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, SCM, or another qualifying app at base pricing, both Customer Insights applications drop from $1,700 to $1,000/month. The attach is one of the cleanest discounts in the D365 portfolio and should be captured in every deployment that has any other D365 footprint.
Contact pricing: the largest variable cost
The contact-pricing structure differs between Journeys and Data and is the most-misunderstood area of the Customer Insights commercial structure.
Journeys interacted contacts. The Journeys 10,000 included monthly ‘interacted contacts’ counts unique contacts who received at least one journey-triggered message in the month. The same contact receiving five emails in a month counts as one interacted contact. Customers consistently over-estimate this metric at deployment time because they confuse total database size with monthly interacted contacts.
Data unified profiles. The Data 100,000 included unified profiles counts the total reconciled customer profiles in the unified table. A merged identity across CRM + e-commerce + loyalty equals one unified profile, regardless of source-record count. Customers that operationalise identity reconciliation aggressively often have fewer unified profiles than raw source records by 30–50%.
The procurement signal: don’t commit additional contact packs at deployment based on theoretical maximum — instrument the deployment for 60–90 days and commit against observed steady-state.
Real-time vs Outbound: the migration economics
Through 2024-2025, customers running classic Outbound D365 Marketing had to plan migration to the Real-time Marketing (now Customer Insights — Journeys) architecture. By 2026, the migration window has narrowed and Microsoft is actively retiring the Outbound Marketing surface. Customers still running Outbound need to plan migration before the deprecation date.
The licensing implication: Outbound and Journeys both fall under the same SKU, so there is no licence-level distinction. The cost lever during migration is in the contact-volume audit: Outbound deployments often built around large send lists with low engagement, which inflates the migrated contact base. Migration is the moment to right-size the journey-targeting strategy and reduce the realised contact volume.
Customer Insights — Data as CDP
Customer Insights — Data is positioned as a customer data platform (CDP) and competes directly with standalone CDPs (Segment, mParticle, Tealium, Treasure Data). The commercial comparison is non-trivial: standalone CDPs often price per monthly tracked user or per event volume, while Customer Insights — Data prices per unified profile.
For organisations deeply embedded in the D365 / Power Platform stack, the integrated nature of Customer Insights — Data carries operational value beyond the CDP capability itself — tight integration with Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing; native Power BI consumption; identity-management consistency. The procurement question is whether that integration value justifies the per-profile pricing relative to a best-of-breed CDP. For customers without a deep D365 footprint, a standalone CDP often delivers better per-unit economics.
EA negotiation levers for Customer Insights
- Qualifying-app attach capture. Audit the tenant for qualifying D365 footprint and capture the $1,700 → $1,000 attach discount on both Journeys and Data. The default LSP quote often misses this.
- Contact-band right-sizing. Don’t over-commit additional contact packs at deployment. Instrument 60–90 days, then commit against steady-state observed volume.
- Outbound-to-Journeys migration with volume audit. Migration is the moment to audit historical send-list sprawl and right-size the target journey-targeting strategy.
- CDP best-of-breed vs Data comparison. For customers without deep D365 footprint, compute the Customer Insights — Data cost against a best-of-breed CDP’s pricing on the actual data volume. Don’t default to Data without the comparison.
- Power BI consumption alignment. Customer Insights — Data feeds Power BI consumption that is separately licensed. Capture the combined cost in renewal sizing.
- MACC inclusion of Customer Insights consumption. The Azure compute and storage underlying Customer Insights flows through Azure consumption and applies to MACC commit.
Anonymised case study: $410K Customer Insights renewal reduction
A 12,000-employee B2C subscription business deployed D365 Marketing in 2023 and migrated to Customer Insights — Journeys + Customer Insights — Data in 2024. The LSP-proposed renewal: Journeys + Data at full $1,700 list each, plus 280 additional Journeys contact packs (1.4M overflow interacted contacts), plus 4 additional Data profile packs (400K overflow unified profiles). Total annualised: $1.18M. We audited. Qualifying-app attach: the tenant ran D365 Sales at full base — attach captured on both Journeys and Data, dropping the base $34K/year × 2 to $24K/year × 2, $168K annualised reduction. Contact-band right-sizing: instrumented Journeys volume showed 720K monthly interacted contacts steady-state, not 1.4M — additional contact packs reduced from 280 to 144, $204K annualised reduction. Data profile audit: aggressive identity reconciliation reduced unified profile count from 480K to 320K, eliminating 2 of 4 additional profile packs, $36K annualised reduction. Combined annualised Customer Insights renewal reduction: $410K against the LSP proposal.
Customer Insights pricing is one of the most-over-provisioned D365 areas at renewal because contact pricing is consistently sized against theoretical maximum rather than instrumented steady-state. Pair the Customer Insights audit with the D365 Commerce and D365 Field Service analyses, the broader 2026 EA tier-collapse landscape, and the license-optimization advisory that turns Customer Insights into a managed line item.