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Salesforce Marketing Cloud Basics: Connect with Potential Customers

It’s a Salesforce Marketing Cloud basics 3-parter, y’all. In this three-part series, we’ll uncover the fundamental skills you should master when you’re getting started with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement (SFMC).

You’ll learn how SFMC allows you to easily connect with potential customers, nurture their interests, and convert that interest into sales. In Part 1, we review all the ways SFMC can help you connect with potential customers.

Connect with Potential Customers via SFMC

The word ‘connect’ can mean different things to different people. There’s connecting from a business lens perspective, which is where we’re making connections with prospects on different channels as well as connecting those various channels for a customer across a user journey, like Journey Builder from a platform perspective.

Connecting From a Business Lens

When we think about it from a pure business lens, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement allows us to connect with existing customers but can also help make a connection with prospective customers and leads via form capture.

Lead acquisition and generation is a top initiative for all marketers and a critical component of the Engagement platform. Over the years, the lead capture functionality has really evolved and is now pretty easy for a non-technical person to implement.

There are two main features of SFMC for lead acquisition and capture:

Lead Capture
Smart Capture

Lead Capture

Lead Capture is actually an app, available on the Salesforce AppExchange (click here to view the listing).

The app is free to use. It enables you to collect leads from Facebook and Google and have them enter directly into Engagement.

This lead capture app and functionality allows you to collect lead data from your paid ads, which is awesome by itself. But more importantly, you’re able to capture first-party data, which is the future when a cookieless world finally arrives. This first-party data in turn can be used to help nurture your prospects and drive transactions.

Lastly, highlights of the app include:

Capture is real-time via a secure connection (not like we would expect anything less)
Leads captured can get added directly to a lead nurture journey and therefore can create more targeted intent-based content
You can do both via a simple and intuitive user flow

Smart Capture

Smart Capture is another tool, this one native in Email Studio, that you can use to create lead capture forms that you can then include on your landing pages.

When a lead completes the form on the landing page and clicks the Submit button, the Smart Capture form automatically adds the information to a subscriber list, data extension, or outside data source such as an integrated CRM system like Sales Cloud. Smart Capture forms are super easy to use within a much better UI, unlike the previous form functionality.

Some common use cases for Smart Capture forms include:

Generate leads from people who sign up to receive a newsletter or attend an event.
Create tasks in Salesforce to follow up with leads.
Send automated emails to people who complete the form.
Send email messages through Salesforce CRM.

Connecting from a Channel Perspective

When we think of the concept of Connect from a channel perspective, Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to connect with prospects and customers through a variety of channels.

These channels include:

Email
SMS Messaging
Paid advertising
Direct mail

And while with Engagement you have access to all these channels, email still remains the workhorse.

Email

I’d like to focus on an underutilized feature of Email Studio that can help you better connect with prospects and clients: Interactive Email Content Block as well as Mobile Studio.

Interactive Email Content Block

If you are a long-time user of the system or industry, you will remember that this tool was an acquisition — formally known as Rebelmail. But, I digress.

The Interactive Email Form block in Marketing Cloud Content Builder allows marketers to receive subscriber information like profile data, product reviews, and sales leads directly from an embedded form in an email. Allowing subscribers to submit forms without ever leaving their inbox helps increase customer engagement and gives marketers more data to use for segmentation.

There are several templates available to solve these use cases:

The Empty Form Template allows you to start from scratch and create any type of form you want.
The Reviews Template allows subscribers to complete product reviews or other feedback surveys.
The Progressive Profile Template collects or updates subscriber preferences and demographic data, such as name, birthday, product preferences, and interests.
The Case Form Template allows subscribers to create or update a support case via Journey builder.
And finally, the Lead Form Template captures or updates subscriber information from your leads.

Yes, I’ll say it again — users can respond to forms, reviews, and update cases right from their inbox!

Mobile Studio

And yes, while Email is the bread and butter of SFMC Engagement, Mobile Studio is another great way to connect with your customers and prospects.

So, what do we mean by Mobile Studio? Well, at first thought most people automatically think Mobile Studio equals SMS. But, that’s really not true. (I, too, am guilty of using both these terms synonymously!)

There are three main offerings under this studio:

MobileConnect
MobilePush
GroupConnect

MobileConnect is where you can create, send and receive and track SMS and MMS text messages (this is what comes to mind for most folks). Typically these messages are transactional in nature to alert subscribers as well as allow marketers to automatically respond to incoming messages based on established keywords.

MobilePush as the name suggests allows you to send notifications to encourage the use of your app. A few examples to consider based upon industry include:

Flash sale from your favorite retailer that has an app to make purchasing on mobile a breeze
A strategically sent time of day message before dinner time from your favorite food delivery app provider
Time-based notification 24 hours before your flight letting you know you can check in on your airline carrier of choice
Proximity-based notification using beacon technology for in-store coupons at your local nationwide pharmacy

GroupConnect allows you to send messages via the LINE messaging app and Facebook Messenger via messaging API. (this offering is not as widely used as the others, but is still valuable — especially for those based in Asia – history of LINE)

(There’s also WhatsApp Chat Messaging. But that’s not truly considered part of Mobile Studio and is positioned as more of an add-on to Marketing Cloud.)

Connecting from a Platform Perspective

And finally, from a platform perspective, through Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement, specifically Journey Builder you can connect all your communications across varying channels to reach customers with the right message at the right time.

Journey Builder 101

Journey Builder is a campaign planning tool in SFMC Engagement that allows you to design and automate campaigns that guide customers through their journey with your brand. You can begin with a blank canvas or an existing template and select various activities based on how you want to communicate with your audience. These activities can range from types of messages (by channel), decisions, updates, or a combination of these elements and are grouped in the builder panel as the following categories:

Messages
Advertising
Flow Control
Customer Updates
Sales & Service Cloud
Custom

The possibilities of journeys you can create are quite endless.

Journey Builder – Marketing Cloud – 8 November 2022 – Watch Video

Messages

Messages supported in Journey Builder include email, SMS, LINE message, push notifications, inbox message, in-app message, as well as WhatsApp.

If you’re just getting started, we recommend starting simple with email. When you drag and drop the email message activity you will notice it is grayed out — this is because you need to finish configuring this activity. You have the option to select an existing email (we recommend this), or you can create from within Journey Builder from scratch.

You’ll also notice you can update the name of the email or really any activity by hovering over the text and clicking the pencil icon.

Advertising

There are currently only two activities under the Advertising section:

Ad Audience
Campaign

Ad Audience allows you to create an advertising Audience for any activated channel (Pinterest, Facebook, and so on) in Journey Builder. A common use case would be for targeting new customers who haven’t engaged with an email — perhaps a paid ad will be better suited for driving engagement. Don’t forget, you’ll need to navigate to the activated channel for further targeting and to complete the ad campaign setup.

Whereas the Ad Campaign activity will allow you to create a Facebook Ad Campaign directly in Journey Builder. This can be helpful if you have a new simple Facebook campaign you want to test out or one that isn’t already set up.

You configure the creative elements of your advertisement and set campaign specifications, including total and daily advertising spend settings, within Journey Builder. You can also set a Retention Period for campaign members to prevent oversaturating their social media feeds with your advertisement.

When you activate the journey, it creates an advertising campaign, too. As the journey continues, customers populate the advertising campaign and see your advertisement.

Two important things to call out:

Customers who exit journeys aren’t automatically removed from that Advertising Audience, so it’s important to add in a suppression step to avoid retargeting the same customers.

You can edit the campaign outside of Journey Builder, but not all changes will be reflected in that running journey.

These activities allow marketing teams to easily build cross-channel journeys that extend the reach of email campaigns.

Flow Control

Flow Control activities are by far the most numerous — with 15 to be exact options for ‘controlling’ the flow of your journey from splits and joins to wait by/until how your journey flows is up to the marketer’s discretion!

But builders beware, Salesforce Flows can get quite complex if you’re not careful. Thankfully the Validate function, which didn’t always exist, helps identify when you’re missing a Join or have a ‘dead end path of sorts’ occurring.

Typically for those just starting out, Decision Split and Engagement Split are good ones to include in your journey.

Did you know that using an Engagement Split to resend an email with an updated subject link to those that didn’t Open can result in tremendous payoff and engagement lift?

Check out these stats:

54.7% increase in the overall email reach
CTR is 51.1% greater than your first email
An email (with a different subject line) resent a week later has 30% more openings
Additional email open rates of 11%

Source: https://encharge.io/resending-emails-for-better-results/

To learn more about other flow actions stay tuned for Part 2 of 3 of this Series: Nurturing your Prospects & Customers

Customer Update

Customer Update Activities include:

Salesforce Personalization Activity
Update Contact

The Salesforce Personalization Activity will only appear for those customers that have purchased Personalization (formerly known as Interaction Studio). This activity allows you to pass data from Journey Builder to Marketing Cloud Personalization during the course of a customer journey. You can include custom action names that indicate the journey or journey step. After you share the data with Personalization, you can use it to personalize the experience your customers have with your website or mobile app based on recent journey interactions.

This integration allows you to tie all your customers’ experiences together — from the website as mentioned to calling your call center, or entering a loyalty number on point of sales.

A few use cases to consider are:

A retail customer recently purchased a snow jacket for the upcoming winter season. The Personalization activity could suggest matching a hat and gloves to complete the look based on the color and age/gender category of the snow jacket purchased.
A banking customer applies for a home mortgage. The personalization activity could suggest a credit card with 0% interest for 12 months to help with the moving expenses associated with a new home purchase.

Update Contact, as it sounds, allows you to update a contact to a specific attribute of a selected data extension.

Some common use cases for use of this function in a journey include:

Updating Customer Tier based upon a previous activity or perhaps based upon the length of time as a customer. For example, as an airline loyalty customer — after reaching x miles you update their status to ‘gold’.
Updating the date field using current time to timestamp for the most recent visit to a doctor’s offer perhaps so you can remind them of the next visit.

Lastly, Sales & Service Cloud activities require integration with Sales and/or Service Clouds to be able to leverage. Here’s a quick rundown of what each specific activity entails:

Activity	Details
Account	Create a New Record or Find and Update using a Salesforce look-up field whose data matches a Marketing Cloud attribute to identify the correct record to update. If you have a Person Account, you can create or update both Business and Person Account activities.
Campaign Member	Add a new or existing contact or lead to an existing campaign in Salesforce and optionally set their activity and status as you see fit. Use this activity to track important moments of engagement throughout the journey.
Case	Create a case and associate it to the Sales and Service Cloud contact that matches the Marketing Cloud contact’s ID. Or create a Sales and Service Cloud contact to associate to an existing case.
Contact	Create or update a contact from Sales or Service Cloud using Sales or Service Cloud data brought into a journey or Marketing Cloud contact data.
Convert Lead	Convert qualified leads from the Sales and Service Cloud into a contact or account. This activity schedules important actions, such as assigning a lead owner, creating an opportunity or task, and changing the lead’s conversion status.
Lead	Just like contact, except for Lead object – Create or update a lead from Sales or Service Cloud
Object Activity	Use this activity to create or update a standard Salesforce object record, such as a lead or task, or a custom object record.
Opportunity	Creates an opportunity record in Sales and Service Cloud. Use Marketing Cloud contact attributes to populate the fields in the opportunity record, or populate each record with a fixed value.
Task	Create a task in Sales and Service Cloud for each Marketing Cloud contact that reaches this activity based upon their assigned sales or service rep.

Common use cases include:

Create a lead when a Marketing Cloud contact enters a journey.
Update a lead based on engagement within a journey.
Create a CRM contact record when a Marketing Cloud contact reaches the activity.
Update a CRM contact record with Marketing Cloud contact data.
Update a custom object based on engagement within a journey.
Create a task when another object, such as a lead or contact, enters a journey.
Associate a case or task to an account.
Update a task based on a contact or lead’s response in a journey.
Update a person or business account.

Summary

As you can see, Marketing Cloud allows marketers to connect with potential customers in many different ways — from acquisition and driving engagement on various channels to uniting communications across a customer journey. My hope is your one takeaway is: it’s a pretty powerful tool that can meet the unique needs of any organization, regardless of size, vertical, or industry.

To keep it going, check out this quick reference that explains the basics things to know about each tool within SFMC Engagement.

Next up…

Part 2 of 3: Nurturing your Prospects and Customers. While you’ve got a sneak peek of what Journey Builder can do from our 101 section, we’ll discuss more of the how-tos: from concept to execution.

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Basics: Connect with Potential Customers

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Basics: Connect with Potential Customers appeared first on The Spot.

By Kirsten Schlau|2022-11-04T14:57:00+00:00November 4th, 2022|Categories: Getting Started, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, SFMC|

Does your marketing and sales data live in separate places? Do you want all customer details to live in one place? If so, Marketing Cloud Connect is the answer.

Marketing Cloud Connect combines the digital marketing capabilities of Marketing Cloud Engagement with the data management, segmentation, and campaign management tools in Sales Cloud.

What is Marketing Cloud Connect?

Marketing Cloud Connect is an installed package that integrates your Salesforce CRM (Sales Cloud/Service Cloud) with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement. By creating unitary customer relationships with more data-driven, personalized conversations and the ability to automate the customer journey, Marketing Cloud Connect provides access to powerful Marketing Cloud tools directly within Sales or Service Clouds and vice versa.

Connecting Marketing Cloud Engagement with Salesforce CRM

The overall process of connecting these two clouds together is relatively straightforward, and it can be summarized in a 6-step process. However, there are key items to consider along the way.

Connect marketing cloud to salesforce crm steps

Step 1. Review prerequisites for implementation

From system to user requirements, set yourself up for success by reviewing the prerequisites or requirements you’ll need for Marketing Cloud Connect implementation.

Step 2. Install the Marketing Cloud Connect managed package

Download the managed package for connecting the Salesforce clouds. To do that, you’ll copy-paste the URL below that relates to where you’ll install the package. Remember to log in to Salesforce using your administrator credentials.

Production Org: https://sfdc.co/MCC
Sandbox Org: https://sfdc.co/MCCSandbox

Step 3. Configure CRM settings

Ensure users can view email fields for contact and leads, as well as modify any additional permission sets within your Salesforce CRM account.

Step 4. Configure Marketing Cloud

Create the API user and configure the integration. This will enable core system communication activities between Marketing Cloud and Sales or Service Cloud.

Step 5. Finalize configuration

Make final configuration setting adjustments between both clouds to finalize the connection.

Step 6. Test the connection

Finally, complete a test to check for a successful connection. You’ll complete this step with a test email send. Then, you’ll confirm user setup. Once all the tests are successful, you can start using it.

Considerations for implementing Marketing Cloud Connect

Keep the following considerations in mind as you complete the implementation.

User Admin Level Access

The user setting up the connection should have admin access to both Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud.

1:2 Relationship

Marketing Cloud Connect requires a relationship between a single Marketing Cloud account and one or more Salesforce orgs. Your Marketing Cloud account must be provisioned and enabled for use with Marketing Cloud Connect before connection.

Subscriber Key

The Subscriber Key is required for Marketing Cloud Connect. If it is not enabled in your Marketing Cloud account, complete a Subscriber Key Migration before proceeding with the connection process.

Avoid using email addresses as the Subscriber/Contact Key in Marketing Cloud.

Instead, use something that is:

Unique
Persistent
Channel agnostic
Global

We recommend using Salesforce Contact ID as your Marketing Cloud Subscriber Key to deliver maximum synchronization between the two clouds. Learn more about contact model relationships here.

Important Note: If the email address has already been set as the Subscriber Key, please reach out to your Salesforce consulting partner or Salesforce Account Executive before connecting Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud. They’ll provide more guidance and help you to avoid duplicates.

Custom Tabs Available

Ensure that four custom tabs are available in your Salesforce org.

Multiple Licenses

To use most Marketing Cloud Connect functionality, users need a Marketing Cloud license and a Sales or Service Cloud license.

Lightning Experience

Salesforce Lightning Experience is not supported for Marketing Cloud Connect features. Those using Lightning Experience with Salesforce are automatically redirected to Salesforce Classic when any Marketing Cloud Connect tabs are clicked.

Using Marketing Cloud Connect

While the initial focus may be getting Marketing Cloud Connect set up properly, the real magic occurs in using these clouds together.

Top benefits include:

Syncing CRM data to make smarter decisions and personalize every message in Marketing Cloud Engagement. By tapping into the Synchronized Data sources and Contact Builder, marketers are able to create highly targeted communications while avoiding static or outdated data at the time of send.
Automating 1:1 cross-channel journeys across clouds and bi-directionally. You can listen and react to changes in any object across the Salesforce suite of cloud products for journey enrollment. Additionally, the sync can update tasks, open and close service cases, or update sales opportunities based upon interactions that have occurred in Marketing Cloud.
Empowering sales & service users to send Marketing Approved Emails within their native platform. – can be sent on a 1:1 basis, to a specific report or prospects/leads that are part of an existing campaign in Sales Cloud; users will also be able to see performance tracking results also from Sales Cloud
Sending triggered actions from Sales Cloud via Apex Trigger for a specific Object – typically for a contact based upon a set trigger such as new record is created or lead is updated

Benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connect Integration

By enabling Marketing Cloud Connect functionality, you’re helping to reduce previous data silos that may have once existed. Through a single source that consolidates your marketing and sales data, you’re able to send highly personalized, super-targeted data-rich communications more confidently.

To learn more about how to implement Marketing Cloud Connect for your organization and how to maximize Marketing Cloud Connect in your digital marketing efforts, contact us today.

Resources: Marketing Cloud Implementation Guide 2020

Original article: How to Connect Marketing Cloud Engagement to Salesforce CRM

The post How to Connect Marketing Cloud Engagement to Salesforce CRM appeared first on The Spot.

By Kirsten Schlau|2022-06-06T17:08:21+00:00June 6th, 2022|Categories: Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin|

If you were like us, you thought the Summer ‘22 Release was going to be a summer of NO love for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement. But, thankfully we were wrong!

Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release notes were quietly published late last week. We’ll highlight what Salesforce deems its Top Feature/Release Highlights. And we’ll also throw in a few gems not to be overlooked!

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Summer ‘22 Release Highlights

Before we jump into it, we wanted to point out the key theme we are continuing to see: enhancements that allow for greater cross-collaboration use cases. The lines between studio, platform, and cloud are blurring more than ever. Now on with the show…

Einstein: Engagement Frequency ‘What-If’ Analyzer

Users will now be able to clearly see how saturated contacts are within a business unit based on engagement data. It’s no longer a guessing game or trying to compare yourself against industry benchmarks and best practices.

The goal of Einstein Engagement Frequency ‘What If’ Analyzer is to help you better plan for your upcoming campaigns and more specifically, can help you decide how many message activities to add to each of the paths and Einstein Frequency Split Activity within Journey Builder.

Key Benefits Include

Greater visibility into frequency performance: grouped by on-target, over-saturated and undersaturated, you can now segment and target based upon these groupings. Pull back on recipients who may be experiencing email fatigue, ramp up on those who are not getting enough communications, and stay the course with those who are on target. The end goal should be to have the majority of your contacts in the on-target grouping.
Visually test multiple message frequency scenarios: instead of testing scenarios in the wild and coming to learn potential negative outcomes that are too late to be course-corrected, you can view possible outcomes on how additional messages will affect your engagement over time through the power of AI. It’s like a crystal ball into the future!

Availability: customers who have access to Einstein Engagement Frequency (paid add on to pro, included with corp editions and above)

Personalization: Triggered Campaign Messages

Combining Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio) with the outbound communication engine of Journey Builder, users are now able to easily deliver personalized, relevant messages across numerous channels based on deep, contextual customer behavior — all in real-time.

You can use nine configurable, real-time, behavioral triggers to start Marketing Cloud Journeys. That includes cart or browse abandonment, product price reduction, and product back-in-stock.

You also can send user information and recommendations from Interaction Studio to Journey Builder Entry Events, and then use that data for personalization and decision splits. You can run A/B tests and analyze the performance of your triggered campaigns with built-in reports and dashboards.

Availability: Included in both Growth and Premium editions of Marketing Cloud Personalization.

Engagement: Data Extensions Query Support for Intelligence Reports Advanced

Before we dive right in, as a reminder, Intelligence Reports Advanced (formerly known as Datorama Reports Advanced) is a premium upgrade for Marketing Cloud Engagement (SFMC). It’s an included analytics tool for analyzing and optimizing email, mobile and Journey Builder messaging.

With Intelligence Reports Advanced, you can create your own dashboards, dimensions, and measurements, query high volume and granular data with a Codeless Query Builder, and start your cross-channel analytics journey. You have access to ready-made apps for connecting email to the web, advertising studio first-party audiences to performance data and more.

Now to the latest enhancements. In a nutshell, users who have Intelligence Reports Advanced will be able to add Data Extensions and query them with Engagement Data (Opens, clicks, bounce, unsubs, etc).

Key benefits include:

Enrich Engagement Data with Data Extensions: by easily querying your data extensions alongside email and mobile push engagement you’re able to add additional context and optimize messages based on performance by audience attributes from your data extensions
Optimize future messaging based on performance by audience attributes: Perform codeless queries to uncover optimization opportunities per any audience attribute stored in a Data Extension.
- Use Case: You have a data extension of subscriber IDs and an audience attribute indicating that they’re part of your brand’s loyalty program. Now, you can join this data and then run queries to compare performance for subscribers in that loyalty program, versus customers not in that loyalty program. Once your data connections are connected, querying them is easy.
Query Data Extensions to validate and explore their data: Understand the structure and rows of your Data Extensions with standalone querying.

Availability: Requires Intelligence Reports Advanced for Engagement.

Intelligence: Database Exports

Users can now easily export clean and harmonized marketing data into your enterprise database, specifically for Snowflake and Postgres, and in turn unlock more value in your enterprise data strategy while creating an audit-proof system of data for managing exports.

To break this down a bit more, your marketing data no longer needs to live in a silo. It can be made available to your Business Intelligence group to make insights accessible across the org in a manner that addresses concerns such as data integrity and auditing.

Highlights include:

Automation of the export of cleansed and harmonized marketing data into your orgs database
Marketing Data is available to other parts of your org for analysis and deeper insights
Marketing data is backed up in your preferred database, creating an audit-proof system for all your enterprise data.

Availability: Included in all Intelligence (Datorama) editions

Customer Data Platform (CDP): Activation Enhancements

Users can now send additional customer profile information from CDP to marketing platforms like Marketing Cloud Engagement (SFMC). This feature allows marketers to enhance personalization communication and leverage mobile push as an activation contact point, which until now was not possible. And as a result, you can more easily reach customers with the right message on their preferred channels.

Benefits include:

Greater personalization options for messaging and journeys by changing the volume and variety of data types that can be shared with Marketing Cloud Engagement, for example.
Ability to connect data from across the enterprise: blend marketing (loyalty data) and non-marketing (transactional) systems simultaneously during activation across clouds.
Meet customers on preferred channels: increase marketing reach and flexibility, specifically driving personalization mobile messages.

Availability: Included in all CDP editions

Some other gems we wanted to call out…

Marketing Cloud Einstein and Analytics

GA Integration with Journey Builder: You can now see how your SMS, mobile, and email activity throughout a journey impact conversion events on a website or mobile app (err… about time )
Einstein & Mail Privacy Protection: Einstein models have been updated to address the expanding list of MPP initiatives, allowing more accurate predictions
Subject Line Performance: Uncover which language factor is impacting your subject line. For each factor, you get a score and guidance on how best to update to get the highest impact
Einstein Weather Content Selection: Use local weather conditions including forecasts (temperature and precipitation) and alarm events (thunderstorms) to personalize and promote your content.

Marketing Cloud Journeys and Mobile App

From activating audiences in CDP (as previously mentioned) and retargeting contacts when they open a push notification or engage with an in-app message to directly linking between your mobile app and Journey builder, which allows for marketers to listen for corresponding in-app message engagement as a wait step in a journey, this release is finally expanding on the potential of mobile push and in-app interaction points.

See full Salesforce Marketing Cloud Summer ‘22 Release details here.

Summer of Love

As you can tell, the Marketing Cloud Engagement product teams have been quite busy and super focused on cross-cloud capabilities. This release is chock full of terrific enhancements that will allow marketers to continue to push the limits and advance their digital marketing initiatives forward. Thanks for the love, Salesforce!

To learn more about this release, register to attend Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Summer ‘22 New Feature Overview Webinar on June 23, 2022, or contact us for assistance on how to unlock some of the exciting new enhancements for your org. We are ready to take your program to the next level!

Resources:

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Summer ‘22 Release Highlights

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Summer ‘22 Release Highlights appeared first on The Spot.

By Kirsten Schlau|2022-05-23T14:23:01+00:00May 23rd, 2022|Categories: New Features, Release Notes|

Personalization is a common buzzword one can hear throughout the digital marketing landscape. And as a result, it can mean so many things depending upon who you ask.

However, at the end of the day, personalization is what marketers are aiming to deliver — user experiences that are personal and customized based on contact preferences and previous engagement.

We’ll focus on several key features and functionalities available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement to offer personalized content.

Personalization can mean many things in Marketing Cloud

Personalization is a powerful tactic for marketers to leverage. However, the term is used so often and can mean many different things — especially when it comes to the what and the how. It can leave everyone a bit confused as to what one really means when they use this term.

There are several ways you can deliver personalized content in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement that range from simple to complex.

Marketing Cloud Personalization Strings

The most basic and common form of personalization in your digital marketing efforts can be referred to as personalization strings. A personalization string lets you insert subscriber attributes, such as subscriber name, into your emails.

Personalization strings can appear in the subject line, preheader, or in the content of the email in Email Studio.

You may hear personalization strings referred to as merge fields or substitution strings. This type of personalization has been in usage for quite some time and while commonplace, it is very effective.

In addition to the subscriber attributes, you can insert system data and modify the content using AMPscript expressions. You can type personalization strings into the HTML of your email body if you’re creating an HTML paste email, or you can type them into the text editor when you create or modify text content.

Tips for using Marketing Cloud Personalization Strings

Below are some tips to consider when using personalization strings:

All personalization strings are case-insensitive.
Include the two sets of double percent symbols.
If you’re inserting a personalization string into a line with other data, include a space before and after the personalization string.
If you insert a personalization string, and the subscriber attribute isn’t populated, the string will appear blank in the email. Be sure to define a default value for every attribute you intend to use with a personalization string. For example, use this string to include default attributes for First_Name: %%[IF Empty(First_Name) == “False” THEN SET @FN = First_Name ELSE SET @FN = “Customer” ENDIF]%%Hi %%=v(@FN)=%%
Do not include personally identifiable information, such as email address, in email links.
Testing is critical; two testing tools available for personalization strings are Content Detective and Validation.
Leverage code snippets for your AMPscript for non-technical users.

Learn more about using personalization strings here.

Marketing Cloud Dynamic Content

Dynamic content is another way to offer relevant and personalized content to your audience in Email Studio.

Like its counterpart in Account Engagement (Pardot), Dynamic content in Marketing Cloud Engagement is content that displays in a content area according to the rules that you define based on the subscriber’s attributes or the targeted data extension column values. It’s a great way for non-technical marketers to deliver personalized content using the rules-based interface.

You can also use dynamic content in your preheader and subject line instead of using AMPscript expressions.

The two testing tools available for dynamic content are:

Subscriber preview
Test send

Marketing Cloud Enhanced Dynamic Content

If you are designing emails that extend beyond a couple of rules for swapping dynamic content, the Enhanced Dynamic Content tool lets you import a delimited file containing text and image URLs to create content.

Instead of using AMPscript and data extensions to manually create complex dynamic content and the rules for each variation, the system creates the content from the data in your import file. The columns in the import file contain the names of the enhanced dynamic content assets, and the rows contain the content variations for each asset.

Content Builder saves the assets as Enhanced Dynamic Content Maps in the content library. Then you can use them as blocks in emails and templates. You can link your enhanced dynamic content to an audience during the import or while adding the blocks to an email or template.

Einstein Content Selection

You can also add an Einstein Content Selection content block to your messages. At open, Einstein then can select an image for your messages by analyzing the assets that are engaging your customers. The content block selects an asset that’s personalized for each subscriber from a pool of assets that you upload and then adds the asset to the message.

Things to consider:

Einstein Content Selection must be enabled in Marketing Cloud Setup.
You should add an asset catalog file before dragging the Einstein Content Selection block into your message so that Einstein can select the image assets to show.
The subscriber list can’t contain a field called memberid. If it does, the block doesn’t function properly.
Assets are selected based on how they perform with your subscribers.

Einstein Recommendations via Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio)

Last but not least, Marketing Cloud Personalization*, powered by Einstein recommendations, delivers the next best product, content, or offer to every individual through product and content recommendations for email and web.

Every customer interaction is an insight. With every click, download, view, and purchase, customers are giving data about their preferences. Marketing Cloud Personalization combines user behavior with algorithms and your unique business rules to build a user profile of affinities. And in turn, use that profile to determine the most relevant content and products for each customer in real-time.

Marketing Cloud Personalization gives marketers the ability to:

Understand Customer Behavior – through JavaScript collection and Item Attribution to understand Customer Affinity
Predict & Automate Decisions – including 1:1 recommendations and behavioral triggers
Personalize Each Customer Journey – through audience segmentation and conversion reporting

*Marketing Cloud Personalization must be purchased and provisioned before use; it is not included as part of the Marketing Cloud Engagement product.

Personalization can take many forms

In summary, the ways you can deliver personalized content in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement range far and wide, from simple to complex.

Regardless of what you choose, see below for some reminders and tips to get started:

Personalization always depends on your data and what is available.
A template is a shell for an email that can be used and a great place to standardize personalized or dynamic content.
Content blocks can also be reused. Design personalization based on the attributes you are collecting and enable every email to be personalized.
Personalization strings can be used inline in a Text block and in the Subject and preheaders for individualized content.
Testing is critical. Leverage Preview to view individualized content for a subscriber; Test sends allow you to send specific email versions or multiple versions to ensure personalization and business logic is set up correctly.
Crawl, walk, and run into email personalization.

Tell us how you’re using Marketing Cloud personalization features in the comments below. Or reach out to the Sercante team for help figuring out how to leverage the tools.

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Content Personalization Features: An Introductory Guide

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Content Personalization Features: An Introductory Guide appeared first on The Spot.

By Kirsten Schlau|2022-05-17T20:53:00+00:00May 17th, 2022|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin|

Have you ever wondered why sales and marketing teams combine Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement and Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), with Sales Cloud to reach their goals?

Thinking about how these platforms can work together likely makes your head spin like a twister in Kansas.

But, fear not! In this edition, we’ll provide more clarity than confusion.

We’ll go through a high-level overview of how Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) and Marketing Cloud Engagement compare. But, this isn’t a versus and when to choose which (c’mon we’re all family!).

We’ll devote the majority of this blog highlighting three use cases that unlock success using both Salesforce marketing automation platforms integrated with Sales Cloud.

How do Marketing Cloud Engagement and Account Engagement compare?

If you’re familiar with these platforms, then you know they’ve traditionally been focused on industry (B2B vs B2C) and platform-specific features. While a lot of the unique needs of these industries remain true, the lines and approaches of how to communicate digital across these audiences (which are sometimes shared across a business) continue to blur.

Below is a tried-and-true Venn diagram that shows the overlap as well as their differences.

Features that are unique to each, such as scoring & grading from Account Engagement (Pardot) and mobile messaging in Engagement are the key differentiators.

Why do marketing teams use both MCAE and MCE?

B2B marketers are now looking to execute more complex multi-channel messaging once a prospect converts to a customer, for example, and therefore justifies the need for both solutions.

There are also more and more instances of B2C or D2C driven organizations that serve two very unique personas and different contacts — tne that focuses on the traditional multi-channel messaging approach and one that would benefit from lead scoring, nurturing, and more 1:1 guided selling. In this case, also, the argument for both platforms can make sense.

And lastly, there’s the more complex instance where an organization serves two very unique personas, yet the personas apply to a single, shared contact.

Today, we’ll focus on the following:

A traditional B2B org looking to execute more complex multi-channel messaging post-conversion
A multi-business model organization with two unique personas
A multi-business model organization with two unique personas that share a contact

Use Case #1: A traditional B2B org looking to execute more complex multi-channel messaging post-conversion

As described above, we’ve got a traditional B2B tech organization focused on a single persona that typically only applies to one contact record type. They’re looking to adopt more complex multi-channel messaging once their prospects become a customer.

The ability to acquire leads, score and nurture until an MQL threshold is reached and sales can step in is still critical and at the heart of this organization’s business model. However, the ability to retain and engage with their customers in a competitive marketplace is of ever-growing importance.

In this scenario, the prospect will be acquired via an Account Engagement form.

They’ll be nurtured through email, forms, and landing pages powered by Pardot until their MQL threshold is reached.
Upon reaching, the MQL will be assigned to a Sales user and created as a new lead in Sales Cloud.
The Rep will work the lead until SQL status and from there will convert the lead and create an opportunity thereby also triggering the contact creation process.
Once the opportunity is closed won, the contact is now eligible for customer marketing in Journey Builder via the Marketing Cloud Connector.

Use Case # 2: A multi-business model organization with two unique personas

A hospital technology organization has two business models that support two separate personas that do not overlap. In this scenario, because of the way the organization is structured a single persona and contact is messaged only from Engagement or Account Engagement (Pardot). There is no sharing of contact and messaging between these solutions, and it’s therefore more straightforward.

The emphasis for this use case is on how you can use both platforms to support the unique needs of your personas and overall business.

For Persona 1

A buyer makes a purchase and becomes a customer; a salesperson isn’t involved in this transaction.
As a new customer, a contact is created as a person account record in Sales Cloud.
Now the person account is available in Engagement via Marketing Cloud Connect and customer marketing can begin in Journey Builder.

For the Persona 2

The prospect will be acquired via an Account Engagement (Pardot) form.
They’ll be nurtured through email, forms and landing pages powered by Pardot until their MQL threshold is reached
Upon reaching, the MQL will be assigned to a Sales user and created as a new lead in Sales Cloud.
The Rep will work the lead until SQL status and from there will convert the lead and create an opportunity thereby also triggering the contact creation process and the contact is created with a specific record type: B2B Contact.
- Marketing Data Sharing rules in Pardot are configured to ensure that only those contacts with the B2B record type sync with Pardot.
The prospect in Pardot has a bidirectional syncing relationship with the contact in Sales Cloud.
And when the existing customer, still syncing to Pardot, expresses interest in another product or service, the B2B marketing team continues marketing to this customer using features in Pardot like email nurturing, scoring, grading, and sales team alignment.
As it progresses from MQL to SQL, another opportunity can be created on the existing contact record.

Use Case #3: A multi-business model organization with two unique personas that share a contact

Now this scenario is a bit tricky and is really where all the magic needs to happen – we’re tackling not only different personas that leverage both platforms but also share the contact.

Take a financial institution, for example, that has 2 lines of business: Personal Checking/Savings and Wealth Management. The Personal LOB (line of business) is very much a self-service model, while the Wealth Management LOB is exactly the opposite of self-service, yet they both have a common, shared customer/prospect.

You may ask yourself, ‘do they really have the same target audience/segment?’ While your first gut reaction may say, ‘No, ’ which is true, it’s also partly true that these different buyer personas can have crossover and can in all actuality apply to the same single individual.

Furthermore, the ability to convert and increase the CLV (customer lifetime value) by taking a Personal Checking/Savings customer and upselling your institution’s Wealth Management services is a very strategic and much-desired result in the banking world. The key to successfully achieving this is all in your approach.

Let’s think through this from a basic customer journey perspective.

In this case above, the potential customer gains initial awareness and exposure of the Personal Checking/Savings product through lookalike audience modeling fueled by Marketing Cloud Engagement & Advertising.
They then visit the website to apply for an account, receive approval, and have now converted to a Personal Checking/Savings customer.
Upon conversion, they become a contact (and Person Account record type) in Sales Cloud which is bi-directionally synced to Marketing Cloud Engagement via MC Connector. They are now eligible to be enrolled in various customer journeys — the first obvious one being a Welcome Onboarding Journey.
Throughout their relationship based on their activity and inactivity, they will qualify for other journeys such as Upsell and Cross-sell. For argument’s sake, let’s say as part of one of these journeys they click on a cross-sell content piece focused on wealth management.
They visit the website and fill out a wealth management form. They are then also marked as a B2B Contact Record type, and they’ll be nurtured by Pardot until their MQL threshold is reached
- Marketing Data Sharing rules in Pardot are configured to ensure that only those contacts with the B2B record type sync with Pardot.
Upon reaching the MQL, they will be assigned to a Sales user for 1:1 outreach. As it progresses from MQL to SQL, another opportunity can be created on the existing contact record.
Once the Sales user converts this prospect and opportunity to Closed Won, they will now become part of the wealth management customer segment in Marketing Cloud Engagement and will likely enroll in one more many customer relationship journeys across the tenure of their relationship.

In summary, the banking institution is leveraging Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement for full lifecycle management including awareness of its self-service line of business. For its more considered purchase model line of business, Account Engagement (Pardot) is used. However, once these prospects convert to customers, the ongoing customer relationship communications, like SMS messaging, will occur through Marketing Cloud Engagement.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see, the potential use cases can range from simple to complex. Therefore it’s important to understand the long-term plan of what you’re trying to achieve to ensure what you’re building today can scale and grow for the future.

A partner who has breadth and depth of experience in both platforms as well as the know-how to be future-proof, especially for organizations that have more than one business model, is an ideal next step.

What other use cases can you think of for these platforms? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: Marketing Cloud Engagement, Account Engagement & Sales Cloud: 3 Use Cases for Combining All 3

The post Marketing Cloud Engagement, Account Engagement & Sales Cloud: 3 Use Cases for Combining All 3 appeared first on The Spot.

By Kirsten Schlau|2022-05-16T10:51:42+00:00May 16th, 2022|Categories: Emails & Forms, Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

Your organization recently purchased Marketing Cloud Corporate or Enterprise Edition, which includes one free SMS code that needs to be provisioned. But, you have no clue where to start.

You understand the value of using SMS in your digital marketing strategy. The only thing holding you back are considerations like code procurement, resources, and timelines.

Let’s change that by showing you what it takes to get SMS up and running for your org using Marketing Cloud Mobile Studio.

Marketing Cloud Engagement SMS Overview

First thing’s first: SMS stands for short message service and are text-only messages with a maximum character length of 160. Whereas, MMS (multimedia messaging service) messages include images, video, and text.

Both types of messages require a number or SMS code to send messages to a mobile subscriber.

The SMS channel in Marketing Cloud is most successful when marketers use it to deliver relevant messaging like alerts and event messaging.

Marketing Cloud Text SMS Messaging Codes

Let’s review the types of SMS messaging codes available.

Code Type	Description	Considerations
Short Code	A short code (typically 5 to 6 digits long) is used in one country or market.	Vanity or personalized codes are available in the US.Two-way support: The marketer can send messages to a customer, and the customer can text information back.
Long Code	A long code (typically 11 to 13 digits long) is used in multiple countries and includes a country code prefix.	International reach.One-way support (in most markets): The marketer can send messages to a customer, but the customer can’t text information back.Two-way support (in specific markets): The marketer can send messages to a customer, and the customer can text information back.
Private or Dedicated Code	A code assigned to your company for a specific purpose.	Unlimited number of keywords.Required for US SMS/MMS programs.
Shared Code	A code that is shared across multiple clients from different verticals.	Restricted keywords based on availability. Also limited to five keywords.Not available in the US.

Tips:

Every Corporate and Enterprise Marketing Cloud license includes one free SMS code that needs to be provisioned. Implementation and regulations vary by country, so be sure to consult your account executive to clarify all requirements and charges. Professional services are required to obtain United States (US) and Canadian private short codes.
Salesforce pays for the first year of the lease on your code and waives activation fees. Discuss future fees with your account executive.
MMS is only available in the United States. Be sure to let your account executive know if you are interested in MMS activation.
MobileConnect can manage multiple short and long codes in the same account.

How Marketing Cloud SMS Works

There are 4 steps to sending a SMS message:

Marketing creates a personalized text message in Marketing Cloud Mobile Studio
Aggregator ( Salesforce partners that connect our messaging platform with carrier networks around the world) preps message for delivery to appropriate carrier (Mobile providers across the globe. )
Carrier receives messages and delivers to the final audience
Customer receives personalized text message

Pre-implementation tasks

Now that you have a good level set of what SMS marketing is and how it works, let’s focus on preparing for implementation.

Below is a checklist of information to gather so you can identify steps for implementing SMS in your Marketing Cloud org.

Audience
- Who is your audience? Internal or external?
- What are your plans to grow your subscriber list?
- Do your subscribers overlap with other Marketing Cloud channels?
SMS Codes
- Which countries do you support? Do you have plans for future expansion?
- Do you have multiple brands that a customer subscribes to?
Campaigns

Are your messages transactional or commercial (also known as marketing)?
What types of campaigns are you sending? Contests, promotions, or regular marketing alerts for sales?
What keywords are needed for these campaigns?

Frequency
- Are you sending one-time messages or subscriptions?
- How often are they sent? Weekly? Monthly?
Opt-In Type
- Will you have a double-opt in campaign or single opt-in?
- Does your program require age validation?

Tips

A mobile subscriber opts out of a single code (not a keyword). If you have multiple brands, it may be best to have a code per brand or per business unit, as subscription is managed at the code and business unit level.
CTIA best practices state that SMS subscriptions originating from a web form or mobile app must use the double opt-in.

Marketing Cloud SMS implementation process (US/Canada)

Here are the steps to take when you’re ready to implement Marketing Cloud SMS messaging in your org.

Step 1: Purchase the license to a US or CA Private Code

Salesforce pays for the first year of the lease on your code and activation fees are waived.

Step 2: Purchase Required Services

Professional services (Services Partner) are required to acquire and apply for activation with the carriers.

Step 3: Procure your US or CA Private code

Work with your Services Partner to acquire and activate your code with the local country’s carriers. Your implementation partner will provide guidance on your program specifics based upon the answers to your checklist.

Your implementation partner will also ask you for the following information:

Company info (tax ID, years in business, company mailing address, and website)
Campaign title, type, and description (name of your SMS campaign and explanation of the campaign)
Opt-in type and keyword (web opt-in via API? Single or double opt-in? What keyword?)
Opt-in message (what customers receive when they opt-in to your campaign)
Message frequency (1 msg/week, 3 msg/week, 5 msg/month)
HELP (customer support) and STOP (opt-out) message copy
Toll-free phone helpline and a customer support email
Mobile-enabled terms and conditions webpage (with an active URL)
Mobile-enabled privacy policy webpage (with an active URL)
Business Unit/MID information

Your service partner then takes this info and works with aggregators to obtain the code(s) on your behalf. Keep in mind, if something is incorrect or incomplete, the aggregator may ask for fixes, which can delay implementation.

Once the aggregator approves your code request, they work with carriers to complete the activation process. When that’s done, your services partner confirms that your setup is accurate in Marketing Cloud and you’re ready to start sending SMS in typically 8-12 weeks.

It may seem like a long time for SMS. However, it’s a multistep process involving campaign submission forms, code provisioning, and aggregator approvals, as well as carrier testing.

Step 4: Migration/Rebuild of existing SMS campaigns on newly activated Short Code (optional)

With your newly activated code, you can ask professional services to re-build your campaigns or self implement.

Now armed with what SMS is, how to prepare and the overall process you can work with your various internal stakeholders to set expectations related to timing, requirements and where your organization may need additional consultation and support.

Pay attention to your timelines and regulations in your area

The terms and conditions pages tend to be a common hangup in the process. Be sure to start working on this in advance and confirm the requirements with your Services Partner before submitting to the aggregator. Also, be sure to consult a lawyer to develop an SMS regulatory framework for your company and to ensure you adhere to relevant laws in all the markets (states, countries, or territories) in which you are operating.

Have any gotchas to add to the process? Tell us in the comments section below.

Resource: Salesforce SMS Checklist Preparation Guide to acquire US and CA Codes 2/21/2020

Original article: How to Use SMS Messaging in Marketing Cloud Mobile Studio

The post How to Use SMS Messaging in Marketing Cloud Mobile Studio appeared first on The Spot.

By Kirsten Schlau|2022-05-07T17:51:00+00:00May 7th, 2022|Categories: Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin|