MB-280 study guide
MB-280 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
MB-280 validates the skills needed to configure and operate Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys as a functional consultant - the person who turns marketing requirements into segments, emails, journeys, events, and reports inside a Dynamics 365 tenant. It suits consultants, marketing operations specialists, and power users who already work in the platform and want that experience recognized, plus candidates moving into a customer engagement role from a general Dynamics 365 or marketing automation background. The MB-280 study guide has 7 sections and about 2,031 words.
01Implement and configure Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys
Customer Insights - Journeys is a model-driven app installed into a Power Platform environment that already hosts Dynamics 365 apps. The first decision in any scenario question is which app: Customer Insights - Journeys (marketing) is a separate product from Customer Insights - Data (customer data platform), and mixing them is a common distractor.
318 words, about 2 min02Manage audiences, segments, and consent
Audience data comes from contact and lead records (and other tables once audience configuration allows them). Segments come in two flavours: dynamic (query-based, membership recalculated on refresh) and static (a snapshot taken when created).
308 words, about 2 min03Create and manage marketing email and content assets
Marketing emails sit in a library alongside templates, brand profiles, images, files, and reusable content blocks. The designer is block-based: layout sections contain text, image, button, and dynamic blocks, while a brand profile centralises colours, fonts, and logos so every email stays consistent.
285 words, about 1 min04Design and run outbound marketing campaigns
Outbound marketing is tile-based: a customer journey reads a segment or marketing list and pushes contacts through tiles - send email, LinkedIn action, create activity, wait, decision branch, A/B test, subscription center, and stop/end. Journeys must validate and be set live; a live journey's structure is locked, so changes mean stopping it and creating a new version.
275 words, about 1 min05Build and manage real-time marketing journeys and triggers
Real-time marketing inverts the outbound model: instead of pushing a segment through a journey, a trigger fires when something happens to a person and the journey reacts within seconds. Trigger sources: record created or updated on Dataverse tables (contact, custom tables), interaction events (email opened, link clicked, form submitted, event registered), and custom triggers invoked by Power Automate or the API.
300 words, about 2 min06Plan and manage events and webinars
Event management centres on the event record: title, dates, format (in-person, webinar, hybrid), capacity, waitlist behaviour, registration form, event website, team members, sessions, session tracks, and speakers. Registration creates an event registration record linked to the contact, and that record is what journeys and analytics read.
281 words, about 1 min07Analyze marketing performance and generate insights
Reporting spans channel, journey, segment, and event views, plus business-level pipeline and revenue reporting. Channel insights (email, text, push): sent, delivered, blocked or bounced (hard vs soft), unique vs total opens, clicks, click-through rate, unsubscribes, and complaints.
264 words, about 1 min