Outbound marketing is fully retired in 2026. Real-time journeys are not a feature parity replacement; they are a different paradigm built around triggers, not segments. Teams that try to lift-and-shift their old segment-driven nurture programs always struggle.
Triggers are first-class
In real-time journeys, the unit of orchestration is the trigger, not the segment. A trigger is a structured event (Order Submitted, Form Submitted, Cart Abandoned) with a payload you define. Journeys subscribe to triggers, branch on payload attributes, and send the next message within milliseconds.
This is a profound shift. Old-style “send email at 9am Tuesday to segment X” still exists but is the exception, not the rule.
Custom triggers unlock the system
The out-of-box triggers cover 30% of real use cases. The other 70% live in custom triggers. Define them in Customer Insights Journeys with a JSON schema, then fire them from anywhere:
Power Automate: "When a record is updated" -> "Send a custom event to Customer Insights"
External app: POST to the Real-Time Journeys events API with the trigger nameA custom trigger with a five-attribute payload supports branching, personalization, and frequency capping without segment recompute.
Segments still matter, just less
Segments in CIJ are evaluated continuously, not on a refresh schedule. They are cheaper than outbound segments at runtime but more expensive to author because the system needs to know what to recompute when underlying data changes. Keep segment count under 200 per environment as a soft cap; we have seen environments with 800+ segments grind to a halt during business hours.
Channel reality check
Email, SMS, push, and now custom channels via Power Automate. Microsoft’s “send via Microsoft Teams” channel is GA but rate-limited to two messages per user per day; ignore it for high-volume nurture.
Frequency capping is global, not per journey
Capping rules apply across all journeys and all channels in a given environment. If marketing and customer service both send transactional-feeling messages from the same environment, marketing’s nurture cadence will silently throttle service notifications. Either separate environments or coordinate caps in writing.
Migration tactic that works
Pick your highest-volume outbound campaign. Rebuild it as a single trigger-driven journey. Run both side by side for two weeks. Compare open rates, unsubscribe rates, and rendering across email clients. Cut over only when metrics match. Repeat for the next campaign.
What to do this week
Audit your trigger payloads. Every trigger should carry enough context that the journey does not need to call back to Dataverse to make a branching decision. Round-trip lookups are the silent latency killer in real-time journeys.
