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Sending out email newsletters in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM)

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One of the queries that I normally get when it comes to running email campaigns is 'Is it possible to send attachments via email campaigns?'. The short answer is 'No', but it should be looked at more from an mass email best practices perspective than from a product constraint perspective. Attachments are possible in the case of email messages or internal emails, for example, when sending email messages to contacts with estimates, invoices, requests for quotes, purchase orders, and expenses or sending a document internally to a select set of people. Sending emails with attachments to your prospects might not be a good idea because some mail servers will actively block, or mark as spam certain emails if they all contain an attachment.

Then the next question would be: 'We understand that attachments are not possible in email marketing messages. But is it possible to add documents in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing itself and send out the link via the email campaign? Will external users have access to it if the document is uploaded in Dynamics Marketing?'

Imagine your team is working on a newsletter that needs to be sent to your prospects. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing offers you the Digital Assets Management Functionality, which means that you can create, save and manage your newsletter within MDM itself, route it for review/approval and get feedbacks. So if you create your newsletter (or if you don't want to do that, work on your newsletter else where and upload the final version into MDM) within MDM, it makes perfect sense to share it from within MDM itself, right? Yeah, it is possible to upload the newsletter into MDM and use the link in the email marketing campaigns. Let's see how it can be accomplished:

In MDM, there is an option to publish a library for viewing by external users. A library is just like a folder that you can publish as a webpage to make its contents available to people who don't otherwise have access to Microsoft Dynamics Marketing. When viewed outside of Dynamics Marketing, libraries are read-only, so users can download the files but can't edit or delete the originals or upload new files. However, when working in the Files window in Dynamics Marketing, users can work with libraries and their contents just as they can with regular folders.

The following rules apply to libraries:

  • Libraries must be located either at the root of the file structure or inside of another library.

  • You can't create a library inside a folder.

  • You can transform existing folders into libraries, provided the target folder is in the root or inside another library

  • You must enable publishing for your site before you can publish any libraries. Go to Settings > Administration > File Options and mark the Enable Publishing checkbox to enable publishin

  • You can't transform the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing folder into a library. This is a special folder that contains files that support Dynamics Marketing functionality.

Other than the above restrictions, and their ability to be published as a web page, libraries work just like folders.

So the idea is to create a Library, add the final version of the newsletter there and use the link in the email campaign.

Here are the steps.

  1. Go to Settings > Administration > File options > Check the Enable Publishing checkbox                                                                                                                                                                                                               
  2. Now go to Assets & Media > Files. A new pop-up window will open. Click on Files (root folder) and create a new folder by clicking on the + button at the top
  3. A new pop-up will open. You can name the folder as ‘Newsletter’ for example. Remember to check the Library and Publish checkboxes. Click on Submit.
  4. Any file you drag and drop into this new folder will be accessible to anyone with the link. Drag and drop a file into this new library. To get the link of the file, select the checkbox next to the file and click on the Properties button at the top
  5. You will get the document link at the top
  6. Copy the link and place it in your email as a hyperlink (the link might be pretty long; you could add it as a hyperlink behind something like 'Click here' to avoid including it directly in the email content). External users will also be able to access this link now.

The only thing that we need to be careful about is that this folder should have only the relevant files (since anyone with the link will have access to it) and it should not be used as a location to store all the files.