Emails & Forms Archives

Email Metrics to Track Beyond Simple Opens and Unsubscribes

Email marketers swim in constant data. While analytics often inform decision making, the flip side of that coin means your competitors also use data to do the same. To truly ensure campaigns remain fully optimized for engagement, conversions, and ROI, you need to look beyond the simple email metrics everyone tracks.

Simple statistics such as open and unsubscribe rates definitely have their place, but a deeper dive into what’s impactful and what needs improvement gives you and your teams the understanding necessary to drive effective marketing campaigns.

In this post, we look at two other advanced analytics you can use to further refine content. Then, we’ll dive into two ultra-advanced analytics that may be harder to source but offer practical, personalized insights on an individual subscriber level.

Email Metric 1: Complaint Rate

Unsubscribes tend to indicate when recipients find messages irrelevant, but when contacts mark content as spam it indicates major antagonism against your content. Measuring the complaint rate, or the percentage of times recipients mark your outbound emails as spam, ensures your team has a grasp on when content has become dangerously misaligned from consumer expectations.

Nearly half of all emails sent get classified as spam, so to hit the inbox marketers need to know how to differentiate between content subscribers will find valuable or irrelevant.

What Makes Spam Indications Unique?

Spam designations happen for many reasons, but some of the most common stem from a disconnect between the marketer and contact.

The recipient cannot easily find a way to unsubscribe (e.g., the link is in small font or a similar color to the background)
There is no option to unsubscribe (e.g., emails from sales reps marked as spam will affect the entire company domain)
Marketers do not respect unsubscribe requests and continue to send unwanted communications
Oversaturated contacts opt to skip an unsubscribe attempt and directly mark a message as spam

While some of these may not necessarily result from marketing decisions, the unique danger of spam designations rather than regular unsubscribes affect every team’s future campaigns. High spam rates discredit a brand and more importantly cause future emails to go straight to spam folders.

Overcoming Poor Email Deliverability

Marketers must keep the complaint rate low to maintain a good sender reputation and to avoid email providers marking content as spam. Email marketers generally accept a complaint rate of less than 0.1 percent, while a rate above 0.5 percent often indicates issues with email content or list quality.

To avoid this, marketers can take several steps to reduce complaint rates and boost deliverability. Here are some best practices to consider.

Permission-based email lists: Only source subscribers who have given explicit permission to receive emails through a confirmed opt-in process. Avoid buying email lists, as these often contain contacts who haven’t opted in to receive emails from your organization.
Segmented email lists: Personalizing email lists based on subscriber behavior, demographics, or interests provides recipients with relevant content they are more likely to engage with, reducing the likelihood of spam designations while boosting conversion rates.
Engaging subject lines and content: A/B test and experiment with email subject lines that accurately describe the content of the email while ensuring the content doesn’t mislead or come off as overly promotional. Engaging content typically includes useful tips, exclusive discounts/promotions, or relevant industry insights.
Professional designs and mobile-optimized emails: Seeing as how the majority of emails are now opened on mobile devices and younger consumers prefer mobile shopping and user experiences, brands need to give the right first impression with clean-looking emails optimized for mobile as well as desktop engagements.
Include an easy-to-find unsubscribe link: Sometimes it’s better to cut your losses rather than risk long-term damage. Make it easy for contacts to opt out with a noticeable unsubscribe link in the footer of emails, otherwise you incentivize spam designations. The good news – if you follow the above steps, the risk of unsubscribes is low.

Be sure to consistently monitor campaigns after the fact for further insights. When you do encounter feedback such as spam complaints, unsubscribes, and email replies, respond in a timely and professional manner to not only build trust with subscribers but also spot any developing issues.

Email Metric 2: Event Lag

In a utopia, subscribers receive communications and immediately convert. Unfortunately, that rarely does happen, so marketers need to investigate whenever a delay between send time, open, and click happens. Event lag, which measures the time between these milestones, provides marketers with insights into content effectiveness.

You can easily measure event lag: just subtract the time at which a contact took the desired action (e.g., link click, website purchase) from when the email was sent. For campaigns across time zones, adjust expectations to account for the difference. You can also swap conversion time for open time(s). With this data, you can understand whether content prompts immediate action or leaves an email wasting away in subscriber inboxes.

According to a Campaign Monitor study, the median click-to-open rate, which tracks how many subscribers who opened an email went on to click a link, across all industries clocks in at around 10.5 percent. Campaigns that perform below this benchmark should make good candidates for further speculation into event lag and supplemental analysis.

Creating More Actionable Emails

Improving subscriber response times is crucial to optimal engagement, conversions, and customer satisfaction. Here are some tips to improve response times in your marketing emails.

Scrutinize your offers: Event lag times vary depending on the type of desired action. For example, consumers often take longer purchasing high-ticket products compared to low-cost items or requests. Therefore, if lengthy event lag times hold back your campaigns, switch up your calls-to-action to encourage easier conversions. For example, a B2B SaaS company can lower the stakes of their email CTA by switching from a demo request to a product page that lets recipients make decisions at their own pace.
Adjust timing: Sometimes event lag stems from an easily determined source — timing. If you find most emails to certain geographies have extended lag times, then since the content clearly gets clicks, adjusting to more palatable local send times could be the necessary fix.
Automated emails: Implementing automated follow-up email campaigns to welcome new subscribers, encourage action on abandoned carts, or send personalized behavior-based recommendations take advantage of recent positive engagements to foster immediate action.
Segmented email lists and content: Again, sending personalized emails based on subscriber behavior (for example, see above) or preferences creates more relevant experiences, improving response time.

Ultimately, the most important factor is to track and analyze your event lag data regularly, using that information to optimize your email campaigns over time to improve engagement and conversions.

Now that we’ve established advanced metrics to determine who is most/least engaged, let’s take a look at how to apply insights to your most radical subscribers.

Email Metric 3: Most-Engaged Subscribers

Every brand loves their MVPs, but are you doing enough to truly maximize the value they bring to your organization?

The Pareto Principle notes roughly 80 percent of sales come from just 20 percent of customers. Knowing this, maximizing loyalty and upsell opportunities among your most-engaged subscribers becomes crucial for marketers.

How to Recognize

To determine which subscribers have the highest brand loyalty, aggregate the following metrics.

Open Rates: The subscribers who consistently open your emails clearly find value in the content you send. Look at how often contacts open emails (and when they don’t) at an individual level to gain future segmentation insights.
Click-Through Rates: Use a similar approach for click-through statistics. Subscribers who consistently follow calls-to-action trust your brand.
Conversion Rates: Identify the subscribers who consistently take the desired actions of your emails. You can further segment contacts based on what actions they take post-click (e.g., those who purchase a certain product).

Create a scoring system out of these metrics that ranks subscribers based on their level of engagement. To do so, assign a score to each metric, add up the scores for each subscriber, then rank subscribers based on their total score. Going forward, target the most-engaged subscribers with personalized content or special offers to encourage continued engagement.

Priming for Further Action

Once you’ve determined your most-engaged subscribers, foster further conversions and long-term brand loyalty with the following strategies.

Personalized content: Segment your most engaged subscribers and personalize your content to cater to their specific desires. Effective segmentations pull data from past purchase history, browsing behavior, and engagement to create more relevant content that drives repeat conversions.
Exclusive offers and promotions: Reward your most-engaged subscribers with exclusive offers and promotions, including early access to sales, discounts, or freebies. These can even become personalized, such as promos for birthdays or anniversaries.
Ask for feedback: Use your most-engaged subscribers as a focus group to gather feedback on new products or services, website updates, or other business initiatives. This feedback from your best revenue stream identifies pain points and areas to improve, and fixing these shortcomings minimize the risk of churning your other subscribers.
Encourage social sharing: Take advantage of strong brand loyalty to encourage word-of-mouth sharing through social media or conversations with friends and family. These campaigns expand your reach and help attract new subscribers who are likely to engage in a similar manner.

Engagement is a two-way street, so ensure you continue to engage your brand’s most loyal followers with creative and personalized communications. In the long run, these customers become your organization’s foundation.

Email Metric 4: Least-Engaged Subscribers

Finding ways to elicit just an open from your least-engaged subscribers, on the other hand, fills marketers with migraines. These contacts have high event lag (or no engagement at all) and are at high risk to increase your complaint rate.

Knowing this, marketers must discern when to retarget low-engaged subscribers and when to remove them from lists altogether. With email deliverability and brand reputation at stake, list quality trumps quantity.

Improving relationships with your least engaged subscribers is a tall task, but several strategies can reset the relationship.

Segmented email lists: Notice a theme? Build audience segmentations based on engagement levels, and use this info to create campaigns that target your least-engaged subscribers. Use data such as their past purchase history or browsing behavior to create personalized messages tailored to these groups’ interests that resonate and drive conversions.
Re-opt-in campaigns: A re-opt-in campaign involves sending an email asking if identified subscribers still want to receive your emails and allowing them to confirm their subscription. This measure helps clean up email database and ensures you only target subscribers interested in hearing from you.
Evaluate email frequency: If you’re sending too many emails to your least engaged subscribers, they may tune out or unsubscribe. If you see high unsubscribe or complaint rates, evaluate how to reduce email frequency, reprioritize campaigns, or change the timing of email sends to see if engagement levels improve.
Prioritize: Multiple teams sending multiple email campaigns to the same contacts in theory increase the likelihood of conversion, but in practice it leads to marketing fatigue and high unsubscribe rates. Develop a system for campaign prioritization to ensure subscribers do not disengage due to an overwhelming amount of messages.
Incentives and promos: For true holdouts, consider offering incentives such as personalized discounts or freebies to rekindle interest in your brand and increase the chances of future engagement.
Different types of content: Try experimenting with different types of content, such as videos, interactive quizzes, or infographics, to see what resonates with your least-engaged subscribers. This keeps your content fresh and encourages continual engagement.

Overall, re-engaging with your least engaged subscribers in email marketing can take time and effort, but by focusing on personalized content, segmentation, and incentives, you can increase the chances of them engaging more with your brand over time.

Final Thoughts

As with all things email marketing, knowing how each subscriber interacts with your messages informs how to best continue each relationship. To really understand who is at risk for dis-engagement, monitor in-depth trends like complaint rate and event lag, so you have an accurate and fresh view of which campaigns resonate and which ones alienate.

It all starts with audience segmentation. If you feel your emails lack the personalization that drives action and conversions, learn how DESelect Segment empowers marketers of all technical abilities to create complex, personalized audiences in half the time.

Original article: Email Metrics to Track Beyond Simple Opens and Unsubscribes

The post Email Metrics to Track Beyond Simple Opens and Unsubscribes appeared first on The Spot.

By Joe Morris|2023-03-30T18:49:02+00:00March 30th, 2023|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Emails & Forms, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

The surest way to get a reaction from any Salesforce Admin is to mention multi-select picklists. They are notoriously hard to report on and can be challenging at times. However, there are times when more than one value is needed.

Multi-select picklists can also cause quite a few issues for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Admins. In this guide, we’ll discuss the proper way to create, sync, and update multi-select picklists in Account Engagement.

Field Types and Compatibility

Field types between Salesforce and Account Engagement don’t always behave the same way. Before we address how to work with multi-select picklists, we first need to understand field types and compatibility.

Account Engagement

Checkbox – Allows a prospect to select multiple options from a list of values.
Dropdown – Prospects can select a single value from a picklist.
Multi-Select – Prospects can select multiple values from a picklist.
Radio Button – Allows a prospect to select a single option from a list of values.

For more information, see the complete list of Account Engagement Prospect Field Types.

Salesforce

Checkbox – A single select field that is used to indicate true or false.
Picklist – Allows users to select a single value from a defined list.
Picklist (Multi-select) – Allows users to select multiple values from a defined list.

For more information, see the complete list of Salesforce Custom Field Types.

The first thing to note is that checkboxes are multi-select in Account Engagement, but not Salesforce. This can lead to issues when syncing to a checkbox field in Salesforce. To avoid issues, set your field type to radio button in Account Engagement when syncing to a Salesforce checkbox (for more information see – Mapping Pardot checkbox fields to Salesforce checkbox fields).

The next thing that you’ll notice is that Account Engagement has two fields that allow users to select multiple values – checkbox and multi-select. So what’s the difference and how should each be used? I’m glad you asked.

Checkbox – Select this option if you are creating a form in Account Engagement and you would like all values to be shown as individual boxes where prospects can check one or many.
Multi-Select – Select this option if you are creating a form in Account Engagement and would like the values displayed in a picklist where the user can select one or many options.

Salesforce and Account Engagement Field Compatibility

Account Engagement Custom Fields

Now that we are all on the same page related to fields and compatibility, it’s now time to create our custom fields in Account Engagement to hold the data. You have options when creating custom fields, so it’s important to consider the data in Salesforce and how you would like the information displayed on your Account Engagement forms before creating your field.

Option #1 – Checkbox

If the multi-select picklist in Salesforce has a small number of values (less than 5) and you would like all options visible to prospects when they view your form, checkbox is the field type for you.

Example Form with Checkbox Field Type

Option #2 – Multi-Select

If the multi-select picklist in Salesforce has a large number of values and displaying all on a form would not be practical, multi-select is the way to go.

Example Form with Multi-Select Field Type

Additional Field Options & Considerations

Regardless of the field type selected, there are a few options that I would highly encourage you to consider.

Options that Should Always be Selected

Keep this field’s type and possible values (for dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes) in sync with the CRM.
Use pre-defined values (for checkboxes, radio buttons, drop downs, and multi-selects).

Record and Display Multiple Responses

The “Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues)” box is not as clear cut as the other options mentioned above. Its use is really tied to how you are using the field and what data should be retained.

Selected
- Initial selections will be recorded in Account Engagement upon initial form completion and synced to Salesforce.
- If form is completed again and new values are selected, they will be added to the prospect record in Account Engagement (and will sync to Salesforce).
- Values that were deselected during the second submission will still be included in the prospect record in Account Engagement and would also be visible in Salesforce. Essentially, the original selections from the initial form submission will be retained – even if they are not selected during the second form submission.
Not Selected
- Initial selections will be recorded in Pardot.
- If form is completed again and new values are selected, they will be added to the prospect record in Account Engagement (and will sync to Salesforce).
- Values that were deselected during the second submission will be REMOVED from the prospect record in Account Engagement and would NOT be visible in Salesforce after the records sync.

Account Engagement Forms

We’re getting there! Now that we have decided how we want the multi-select picklist options to display on our form and we’ve created the custom field in Account Engagement, it’s time to build our form. For this exercise, I’m going to assume that you are familiar with creating a form. If you need a quick refresher, check out the Create a Form article from Salesforce.

Forms with Checkboxes

The process of adding a checkbox field to a form is pretty straightforward. Simply click the +Add New Field button once you reach the “Fields” tab and configure the field. Be sure to set the type to Checkbox and make sure to click the Load Default Data button.

Check the “required” box if you would like the field to be required. You can also select the “Always display even if previously completed” option on the “Advanced” tab, if you would like the field to always display.

After configuring, your form preview will look like the example below. Finish the form wizard for completing the additional tabs (Look and Feel, Completion Actions, Confirm & Save) and your form will be ready for use.

form fields preview multi-select picklist

Form with Multi-Select Picklists

The process for creating a form using a multi-select field is very similar to the process for creating one for a checkbox. The only real difference is the “Type” of field that you’ll select.

Very quickly, you’ll notice that there is not a multi-select option in the “Type” list. This can be confusing, but is not an issue. When configuring the form, set the checkbox type.

The magic will happen when you click the Load Default Data button. This will pull in the data from the multi-select field that you previously created and update the type selection to Multi-Select.

Importing Multi-Select Picklist Values

When importing data into a multi-select field in Account Engagement, you must first decide on the desired action. Do you want to overwrite the current selections or do you want to add new selections to the existing data? This is a big one as it will determine if you should select the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) option when creating your field.

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

After completing both forms, my initial selections were recorded in Account Engagement and synced to Salesforce.

The data below was then imported into Pardot. The “overwrite existing data” option was selected for the MAP field, but not not the Mascot field upon import.

The result is that the MAP field was updated to Marketing Cloud Engagement, but no changes were made to the Mascot field. This makes sense as we opted to overwrite the data in the MAP field when we imported. Since we did not overwrite the Mascot data, the initial values were retained.

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses Selected

In this scenario, the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) IS selected for both of my custom fields in Account Engagement.

After completing both forms, my initial selections were recorded in Account Engagement and synced to Salesforce.

The data below was then imported into Pardot. The “overwrite existing data” option was selected for the MAP field, but not not the Mascot field upon import.

The result is that the MAP field was updated to Marketing Cloud Engagement and that the additional values of Flo and Brandy were added into the Mascot field. This is exactly what we would expect. We told Account Engagement to overwrite the data in the MAP field so it did. Since we did not select “overwrite” for the Mascot field and the field was configured to record and display multiple responses, the new values were appended to the existing.

salesforce mascots - multi-select picklist values

Updating Multi-Select Picklist Values

When using automation rules to change data in multi-select picklist fields, you must first decide on the desired action – just like you did for list imports. Checking (or not checking) the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) option when creating the field will impact the results in Account Engagement and Salesforce.

Automation Rule – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

In this scenario, the Record and display multiple responses (useful for fields that are set to always be displayed like reporting issues) is not selected for either of my custom fields in Account Engagement. The values have also been reset to the values below as the starting point. We will now create automation rules to update the values.

Salesforce mascots multi-select picklist

For this exercise, I’m going to assume that you are familiar with creating automation rules. If you need a quick refresher, check out the Create an Automation Rule article from Salesforce. The automation rule below contains actions to update the MAP field to “Marketing Cloud Engagement” and the Mascot field to “Astro” and “Flo”. Let’s run and record our results.

The result is that both fields were updated based on the actions included in the automation rule. This is the expected behavior based on the field configuration. The automation rule told Account Engagement to change the field values and that’s exactly what it did.

Automation Rule – Record and Display Multiple Responses Selected

The values have also been reset to the default values below.

We’re now going to recreate the exact same automation rule as we did earlier. As a reminder, the rule contains actions to update the MAP field to “Marketing Cloud Engagement” and the Mascot field to “Astro” and “Flo”. What do you think will happen this time?

If you said that both MAP fields would be selected and that the Mascot field would contain all four of our fiends (Astro, Codey, Flo, and Max), you would be correct. Since our fields are now configured to record multiple responses, the new values were added and the original values were retained.

Parting Words

In this guide, we tested a lot of situations that can result when working with multi-select picklists in Account Engagement to help add clarity to how these fields work. The decisions that you make related to how data should display on forms and the data that you would like to retain are two critical questions that must be addressed at the beginning of your project. These decisions will determine how your fields are created in Account Engagement and the data that will ultimately end up in Salesforce.

Crossing Language Barriers

One of the most important considerations for an international marketing strategy is delivering high-quality, localized content that doesn’t provide any barriers to engagement through the local language.

Enable international users in a single Marketing Cloud Account Engagement instance

Administrators and individual users within Account Engagement can control the time zone, language and data formats in which the user interface (UI) is displayed.

Languages and locales currently support:

English
Japanese
German
Spanish
French

This can be configured by an Account Engagement admin upon creating a user record. Go to Account Engagement Setting > User Management Users.

Individual users can control their language and locale settings under Account Engagement Settings > Account Engagement > My Profile.

Marketing Asset Creation

While the user interface is limited to languages supported by Salesforce, all marketing assets in Account Engagement can be developed and customized in any language. For the most part, this just involves typing/inserting content in the language desired, but the following points detail areas where advanced customization is necessary to change the display language.

Form error message

The native form error message for lacking required fields in Account Engagement displays in English by default “Please correct the errors below.” This cannot be customized within the form creation wizard, but instead must be customized within the layout template.

To update, navigate to the layout template used by the form (Content > Layout Templates). Navigate to the form tab and replace the message after %%form-if-error%% with the desired text.

The structure may not exactly match the included screenshot if you are using a layout template that significantly differs from the default. Use this reference for Layout Template Form Code to determine what components may need to be updated.

Encoding special characters

You may encounter situations in which characters display incorrectly when importing data to Account Engagement. To ensure all characters display correctly, you have to use UTF-8 encoding.

Always confirm any exported data is edited and saved using UTF-8 encoding to ensure data is not improperly overwritten. To edit data with UTF-8 encoding in Excel, for example:

Export CSV data from Account Engagement
Navigate to Data > From Text (Get External Data) in Excel
Select the CSV export, and chose “Delimited” and File Origin > “Unicode (UTF-8),” then “Comma” to open the data with correct forming in Excel

Any custom layout templates developed for Account Engagement landing pages should also be sure to use UTF-8 encoding. Set the below meta tag in the <head> section of the layout template so any special characters render correctly.

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8”>

Unsubscribe and Email Preference Center Pages

Account Engagement only allows for one global unsubscribe page, which can limit the feasibility of supporting multiple languages or unique messaging on the page. However, the suggested way to allow recipients to manage communication preferences is the email preference center (EPC) feature, which enables recipients to choose specific segments they would like to be included or excluded from, in addition to universally unsubscribing.

Multiple EPCs can be set up under Account Engagement Email > Preferences Page, so customization to language and included distribution lists can be made per language.

To ensure the correct email preference center is included in different language emails, insert a link, choose “Email Preference Page,” and choose from the list of available pages.

Learn about other customizations that can be made to Pardot unsubscribe and email preference pages.

“Not you?”/Form Reset Link

In the form creation wizard, under 3. Look and Feel > Advanced, is a handy setting to enable a link that allows viewers to reset Account Engagement pre-population and dynamic form functions, in case it is pre-populated with the wrong information (which may be the case due to shared devices, etc.) However, similar to the form required field error message discussed above, this only renders in English by default, in the format “Not Name? Click here.”

To resolve, creating another form layout template update is required. Insert the following script between the opening and closing <head> tag in the “layout” tab of the desired layout template.

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery/jquery.min. js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">

//Replace the Not... string

$(document).ready(function(){ var span = $('span.description');

span.html(span.html().replace("Not","Desired Replacement for Not")); span.html(span.html().replace("Click Here","Desired Replacement for Click Here"));

});

</script>

International Privacy and Data Management

With growing international business, also comes managing compliance with the various data protection and privacy laws in place across your target markets. It’s important to consult with your company’s legal counsel to ensure understanding of the regulations across various jurisdictions. Fortunately, Account Engagement includes a variety of features to enable and enforce compliant data collection and protection.

Tracking Cookies

Account Engagement uses a combination of third and first party cookies to track visitor web behavior and build a profile of data on prospects in your database. To customize how cookies behave and allow visitors to opt-out of tracking, you can:

Enable first-party cookies and disable third-party cookies under Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
Honor “Do Not Track (DNT)” headers under by enabling under Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
Customize Account Engagement cookie duration via Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
Display a banner requesting tracking opt-in in some or all countries via Account Engagement Settings > Domain Management > Edit Tracking Opt-in Preferences
Utilize the Tracking and Consent API to integrate with other systems and create custom solutions

Communication Preferences

Many regulations require that explicit and informed consent be collected before a recipient can be emailed marketing materials, as well allow recipients to revoke that consent at any time. Some industries also require detailed records of communications sent. Account Engagement enables this via:

A strict, platform-wide Permission-Based Marketing Policy that requires permission collected before email communications are sent
Enable BCC function on all outbound emails for regulatory archival purposes
Customizable, dynamic forms that allow addition of opt-in and privacy policy acknowledgement fields
Automation to enable confirmed/double opt-in processes.

Additional permission-based marketing resources:

Data Security

Data stored in Account Engagement is kept securely to meet international data processing regulations, along with strict user login requirements.

Here is documentation from Salesforce on these practices:

Other Resources from The Spot on Managing Global Compliance

What’s Next

Need help finding the right mix of Account Engagement solutions to meet your localization and compliance requirements? Reach out to the team at Sercante to get help customizing features and content in your org and enable your global team. And leave us a comment below to let us know any tips or tricks you’ve picked up for managing international teams with Account Engagement!

Original article: Using Account Engagement (Pardot) in a Global Market

The post Using Account Engagement (Pardot) in a Global Market appeared first on The Spot.

By Julian Janssen|2023-03-22T17:02:18+00:00March 22nd, 2023|Categories: Emails & Forms, Privacy & Compliance, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

With the holidays coming up, I can bet all of our inboxes are overflowing with marketing emails letting us know about can’t-miss deals, the best gifts, order before X date to get your gifts in time or you will disappoint your entire family (ok maybe not that aggressive, but you get it).

I can also bet that you’ve received so many emails from one company in such a short time that you have just opted out or blocked them entirely. This is called marketing fatigue, and it is a great way to lose your subscribers. But with the help of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Recency and Frequency dynamic lists, we can target prospects that have reached their email maximum for a time period and suppress them from future sends.

Building a Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic List

In Pardot:

Navigate to Automations, then Segmentation Lists
Select + Add List
Name your list and select the Dynamic List checkbox

Note: You have to select the Dynamic List checkbox when your list is created. If you create a static list, you cannot later go back and make the list dynamic.

Select Set Rules
Select Prospect has been emailed
Next you can specify the number of times the prospect has been emailed (frequency) and the window of time (recency).

You can combine the “Prospect has been emailed” rule with “Prospect Time” to apply different rules to different prospects. For example, if I want to limit never active prospects to 2 emails in 10 days, and current active prospects to 4 emails in 10 days, I could use the rules below:

Once created, I can use this list as a Suppression List on any of my email sends in order to exclude prospects who have been emailed too much in one time frame.

Can I use this in my Email Preference Center?

Yes! You can absolutely use this in your email preference center (EPC) to give Prospects the option to only receive, say, 1 email a week. First, you’ll want to create a new public list that prospects can opt into.

Here are the steps to create a new public list:

Navigate to Automations > Segmentation Lists
Select + Add List
Name your list (this name is internal facing only) and make sure you select the public checkbox
When the public checkbox is selected, the Label and Description fields will appear. These fields are external facing and should describe what the prospect is opting into.

Select Create List
- Make sure you add this new public list to any EPCs where you want it to appear. It will be added to the default EPC as soon as it is created.

Note: Since prospects who subscribe to this list can only receive one email per week, you’ll want to prioritize your email sends so these prospects only get the most important email in the 7 day window. To prevent these prospects from receiving less important emails, use the above list as a suppression list on those email sends.

Next, you’ll need to create a dynamic list that looks for prospects on the list above who have already been emailed 1 time in the past 7 days.

Navigate to Automations > Segmentation Lists
Select + Add List
Name your list and select the dynamic list checkbox
Select Set Rules
Set up your first rule to look for prospects who have subscribed to the list we create above
Use the recency and frequency option to set up your second rule and see who has already been emailed 1 time in the past 7 days

Select Run Rules

Use this new dynamic list as a suppression list on all email sends going forward. You can also add it to your Primary Suppression List to make sure this list is not left out!

Which Email Sends Count?

The “Prospect has been emailed” dynamic list rule counts list emails and emails sent via Engagement Studio Programs. It does not count one-to-one emails, emails sent via Salesforce Engage, emails sent with an email plug-in, or emails sent by automation rules or completion actions (i.e. Autoresponders).

What other ways are you planning on using recency and frequency dynamic lists in your org? Tell us in the comments!

Original article: Fight Email Marketing Fatigue: Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic Lists

The post Fight Email Marketing Fatigue: Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic Lists appeared first on The Spot.

By Erin Duncan|2022-11-30T22:20:00+00:00November 30th, 2022|Categories: Emails & Forms, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

This blog delves into the value that Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio provides to marketers (B2B and B2C). We’ll discuss Interaction Studio and its key capabilities with a focus on identity stitching and machine-learning-based recommendations.

In addition, we’ll talk about the integration capabilities with Salesforce products including the three Marketing Cloud tools that could benefit marketers, which are Open-time email, Journey Builder, and Automation Studio.

Interaction Studio Use Case Example

An example of a use case with Interaction Studio is when customers view a product in-store, browse through the web, download a mobile app to use a voucher, make a purchase, and talk to a sales representative after a few days, multiple touchpoints and delivering a consistent experience is needed.

That’s where Interaction Studio comes in, unifying the customer experience with its features.

Web

Based on the user’s interaction with the website (e.g. what content they read, or what products view, how much time they are on a particular page), a personalized banner based on on-site behavior and backend preference is enabled.

Instead of a static banner on the homepage, Interaction Studio activates a dynamic banner in conjunction with the user’s behavior and data.

Email

A personalized email is uniquely catered based not only on aspects such as name, or city but with micro nuances such as user behavior.

Omni-channel

Interaction with a user happens on a specific channel, but reaching out happens on another channel. What we’re looking at here is adding a user on a journey or a nurture campaign when they sign up from a form on the website.

Common Thread between Interaction Studio use cases

Each of the three use cases is unique in its own features but a common thread to all of them is personalization.

Interaction Studio puts web tracking cookies on your website to listen for all the data that comes.

Top 3 Features of Interaction Studio

Today, in this world where we have interactions happening across multiple channels, it’s really important that all your sales, service, and marketing departments talk in the same language. That can be a huge challenge at times.

Interaction Studio is related back to contextual data such as a product catalog or a content catalog. It can bridge the two resulting in a unified view of a customer. From the data of the customer, you can make a centralized decision leading to an orchestrated delivery across all touchpoints.

Open-Time Email

Delivers personalized content and product recommendations at the time an email is opened by the recipient, which is rendered in true real-time, utilizing the most current information of every user in your subscriber list.

The solution is designed to work with any email or marketing provider.

Journey Builder

Based on API. Interaction Studio listens through web, mobile, API, and data feeds, constantly gathering data about visitors, then updates existing segments in real-time. Use these segments to add customers to Journey Builder within moments of data changing.

Automation Studio

Import or export segments between IS and SFMC. Export segments from IS to SFMC/Pardot using IS SFTP — one time or nightly.

Use Automation Studio to import data into SFMC DE. Import data into IS — Marketing Cloud data extensions are extracted using Interaction Studio SFTP as a destination in Automation Studio.

Ultimate goal

As we learned, Interaction Studio unifies multiple touchpoints of user behavior from viewing a product through a website all the way to talking to a sales representative after a purchase. From these features, it all comes down to a better understanding of the customer’s needs, making it the best experience for them as possible.

Learn more from the original content of Deboleena Bhattacharyya here. Or, check out more MarDreamin videos here.

Original article: Three Interaction Studio Features Marketers Should Look Out For

The post Three Interaction Studio Features Marketers Should Look Out For appeared first on The Spot.

By Joshua Armonio|2022-07-24T01:40:00+00:00July 24th, 2022|Categories: Emails & Forms, Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive|

For many Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) customers, using Pardot provides them with the tools necessary to communicate with their distinctive audience(s) in a personalized way.

One common way to do this is to create dynamic customer-centric journeys that send emails on behalf of individual sales reps and help to promote new products or to educate audiences on a specific topic. After all, this is one of the main reasons organizations buy Pardot — to drive the sales pipeline.

But what happens when you need to send emails from different teams in your organization?

Follow along with this blog and learn a few tricks to create new experiences for your Prospects for sales, service, and other parts of your business by leveraging the CRM user lookup feature in Pardot.

Use CRM user lookups to send Pardot emails on behalf of other departments at your company or organization

One of the advantages of Pardot automation for email is the ability to leverage relationships in Salesforce between your sales reps, account owners, and other key service players with your Pardot leads and contacts.

Here are some examples below:

SDR (Lead Owner) to Prospect (Lead)

Account Executive (Account Owner) to Prospect (Contact)

In fact, here are the standard out-of-the-box relationships you can leverage from Salesforce in Pardot.

Account Owner – Send the email from the prospect’s account owner in Salesforce.
Assigned User – Send the email from the user who owns the prospect record. If the prospect is synced to Salesforce. this is the Lead or Contact Owner.
Specific User – Select from a list of your Pardot users to use as the email’s sender.
General User – Set a general address (like [email protected]) or a non-Pardot user to be the sender of the Email.

You can usually cover 97% of all your use cases using one of these options while drafting your Pardot list emails or engagement studio programs.

While most organizations don’t have a need for custom relationships, yours may be different. And that’s okay.

What if you need a different/custom user connection?

In your Pardot emails, you can always edit the Sender to say General User. This sends the email on behalf of that person as long as they have the same email domain you have validated in Pardot (@company.com).

However, that’s not always the best outcome. Sometimes we need more dynamic solutions.

In that case, we may want a relationship outside of Sales/Marketing for specific customer service-centric journeys like the one below:

Service Manager (Custom CRM Relationship) to Prospect (Lead or Contact)

In the scenario above, the User/record relationships were built in Salesforce and shared with Pardot in order to build out a service team to prospect customer journeys — think CSAT, follow-up surveys, etc.

Did you know you know you can create custom relationships AND send emails on their behalf?

Watch the demo below to set up your own custom CRM relationships between Users and your Prospects:

You can also follow along with these steps.

After you set this up, you can take advantage of this field right away with CRM user lookup.

This is what it looks like:

A quick note: Sometimes fields need a few minutes to sync. Be patient, go grab coffee and come back to this. In our experience, it is never more than a few minutes.

What are other examples of custom CRM user lookups?

Honestly, the possibilities are endless. Here are some options:

Regional sales manager
Customer service representative
Technical support specialist

Don’t forget to check out our other cool ideas like A/B testing for you to leverage these different sender options within your organization in the most effective ways.

Where can I use these relationships?

These CRM user lookups are built into Salesforce, so you can use them in both Pardot and Salesforce. Within Pardot you can leverage them in the following ways:

Email templates
List emails
Rules on automation rules, dynamic lists, and segmentation rules
Potentially on the new conditional completion action criteria rules

This field cannot be used to send email notifications to the User linked to this Prospect.

Additionally, we did not see them in Engagement Studio Programs as rule options. But remember, you can build a list to act as your criteria instead of using the field directly.

Can I have more than one custom relationship?

Absolutely. This is out-of-the-box functionality in Salesforce, which can now be repurposed for Pardot-specific processes.

Most organizations we have worked with have less than (3) custom User lookups. The only caveat is to make sure you name them correctly so there is no confusion while using them.

As you see above, you can pick from a picklist (CRM User lookup fields) under the Prospect CRM User Custom option, and choose which one you want to leverage on that particular email.

How do you test to make sure everything is working fine?

The best way to test this information is up to date in Pardot is to go through the following checklist:

Review User mappings
- If the User is deactivated or not in Pardot, this will fail.
Create a list of Prospects using the new field created and make sure the values are being reflected in Pardot.
- Watch the video earlier in the blog for a few troubleshooting steps.
Run a preview test in your email test tab.
- Enter a few email addresses you know to have this field updated and see how it works out.
- You can create fake prospects to sync for this testing or build in Sandbox if you have access to one.

CRM user lookups make life easier for Pardot admins

Thank you for following along! Check out part two of this blog where we cover how to avoid email personalization missteps.

If you have any questions about this feature or how to use it in Pardot (MCAE) please give us a shout here.

Original article: Email Sender Options: Leverage CRM User Lookup in MCAE (Pardot)

The post Email Sender Options: Leverage CRM User Lookup in MCAE (Pardot) appeared first on The Spot.

By Marcos Duran|2022-06-03T15:12:00+00:00June 3rd, 2022|Categories: Emails & Forms, Pro Tips, revive|

Have you ever finished working on an email template in the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Email Builder with all of its convenient features like:

Removable sections
Repeatable sections
The ability to move sections up and down within the template

…only to start editing a landing page, and you become extremely frustrated with the fact that you can’t do the same things in the Pardot Landing Page Builder?

In this post we’re going to cover a way that we can basically replicate all of these features for the Pardot Landing Page Builder!

Watch a demo video to learn these hacks

Before we dive in, here’s a video to walk you through the three Pardot Landing Page Builder hacks from this blog post.

Pardot Landing Page Builder hacks — an overview of the approach

To achieve these features in the Pardot Landing Page editor, we’re going to add a little snippet of code at the end of our layout template. It goes between the closing </body> tag and the closing </html> tag.

The code snippet styles the different sections, or individual elements, of the page that we want to be able to alter from within the editor.

<code pardot-region="hide_elements">
    <style>
        #sectionName {
            /* styling goes in here */
        }
    </style>
</code>

From there, we can add the different styles to each element based on the different features we are wanting the element to have.

An important note

The first time you open this WYSIWYG editable code block for a Landing Page, it is going to include a <![CDATA]]> tag in the code. You will have to remove the tag before any of the changes you make in that code block will take effect.

Landing Page Builder Hack #1: Removable Sections

To make “Removable” sections for the Pardot landing page editor, we need to add the display property into the styling for the element we want to be able to remove. This will give us the ability to edit the display property from within the WYSIWYG editor.

Then, we will basically toggle the display property from display: flex (or display: block if that’s the normal styling for the element) to display: none. This will “remove” the section, or element, we want to hide!

<code pardot-region=”hide_elements”>
    <style>
        /* Change display:flex to display:none to hide an element */
        #visibleSection {
            display: flex !important;
        }
        #removedSection {
            display: none !important;
        }
    </style>
</code>

Landing Page Builder Hack #2: Repeatable Sections

To create “Repeatable” sections, we’re going to use a very similar approach to the “Removable” sections. We’re going to leverage the display property again.

The key here is to include extra copies of the section you might want to repeat in your layout template from the start, and then use the display property to hide the ones you don’t need in that Landing Page. Or alternatively, have the sections start as hidden and come back in and change the styling to show the sections if you need them.

<code pardot-region="hide_elements">
    <style>
        /* This will show the section 2 of the 3 possible times */
        #Section1a {
            display: flex !important;
        }
        #Section1b {
            display: flex !important;
        }
        #Section1c {
            display: none !important;
        }
    </style>
</code>

Considerations for “Repeatable” Sections

While this does effectively create a “repeatable” section for the landing page, it is important to note that we are not actually duplicating the sections from within the landing page editor. This means that the number of times you can “repeat” a section will be limited by the number of times you include that section in the original layout template.
Keep in mind that your editable regions in a layout template are marked by pardot-regions and these must all have a unique name. When we copy a section of our landing page to make it “repeatable” we will need to go in and update the pardot-region names as well. For example, Section1-Image might become Section1a-Image and Section1b-Image and so on. If you don’t update these names when you copy a section, you will receive an error message when trying to save the layout template.

Landing Page Builder Hack #3: The Ability to Move Sections Up and Down on the page

If we have sections included in our Layout Template that we want to rearrange based on the Landing Page, we can add another property into our code block. This is called the order property. This works as a sort of ranking system where the section with the lower values will appear first on the page.

By default, we will assign each section a value to give them their original placement on the page. But by including the order property in our styling, we can adjust that order later on from within the WYSIWYG landing page editor.

Considerations for “Movable” Sections

This will only work for sections, dividers, etc. that are children of a flex container in the html code. That’s because the order property only applies to flex elements. If your code isn’t set up with the main sections in a flex container, then unfortunately this approach isn’t going to work for you. The good news is that you can probably restructure your code (or we can help!) so you can make use of this “feature” for your landing pages.
The default value for the order property is 0. This means if you have Section A defined as order: 1, and then you add Section B but don’t define an order value for it, it will appear before Section A on the page.

<code pardot-region="hide_elements">
    <style>
        /* Use order to adjust which elements appear first on the page, with 1 being the first */
        #Section1 {
            order: 1;
        }
        #Section2 {
            order: 2;
        }
        #Section3 {
            order: 3;
        }
    </style>
</code>

More like workarounds than features

It is important to keep in mind — these are not features of the Pardot Landing Page editor. Instead, these are more of a creative approach to achieve some of the functionality we all often find ourselves wanting.

If you run into issues with any of the approaches in this post, please reach out to us and we can help you obtain your desired experience with the Landing Page editor. Or, tell us how you did in the comments!

Original article: Build Faster with These 3 MCAE (Pardot) Landing Page Builder Hacks

The post Build Faster with These 3 MCAE (Pardot) Landing Page Builder Hacks appeared first on The Spot.

By Brooks Wilde|2022-06-02T11:00:29+00:00June 2nd, 2022|Categories: Emails & Forms, Pro Tips, revive|

If you’ve ever experienced email bounces in Pardot (and chances are you have), you’ll know that reporting on and exporting them has been a labor-intensive task.

That all changes now.

As part of the Summer ‘22 Release, marketers have been blessed with a new tool for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) called Email Bounce Report.

It’s a feature that shows who, when and why prospects bounced. And it also allows you to export all that insightful data.

That’s right, our prayers have been answered. We no longer need to manually pull this data from each and every email report.

What is an email bounce rate?

First, let’s understand what a bounce rate is.

Your org’s bounce rate is the number of hard bounces plus soft bounces, divided by the number of emails sent, multiplied by 100.

In B2B marketing, anything below 10% is considered a good bounce rate.

It’s good practice to monitor your bounce rate. And this report helps you do just that!

Who can get the Pardot Email Bounce Report?

This report is available on all Pardot editions, and it includes bounced email addresses from both Pardot Classic and Lightning.

Not upgraded to Pardot Lightning App? Here’s your nudge to do so.

What do you get in the report?

The report is pretty comprehensive and shows bounce data for ALL Pardot prospects. We’ll go into some of the use cases in another blog post.

From total number of email bounces (filtered by date) to bounce reasons, this report has it all. And yes, all of the bounce rate report data is exportable.

Found under marketing reports, you are greeted with a chart illustrating,

All emails sent over the last year – one year from todays date – so if its the 12 May 2022, you can go back to 12 May 2021. Personally, I’d hope this is amended in future updates as it would be useful to see further than the last year in some cases.
Total emails sent
Total bounced & delivered
Bounce by type – Soft vs. Hard

Scroll down, and you get to the good stuff… the bounce details, including bounce reason.

It’s no good seeing the number of bounces you’ve received if you can’t do anything about it. Filtered by bounce type and date, the Email Bounce details table tells you:

Prospects who have bounced
Email addresses and company names
Email subject
Bounce type
Bounce reason
Bounce date
Email name – linked
Email send type and template name

Why is the Pardot email bounce report so useful?

Understand why your emails are bouncing

From full inboxes, invaild email address and none responsive servers, there are a number of reasons why your emails may bounce. This report helps you understand those reasons and potentially act on them.

Types of bounces

Soft bounce – Occurs when an email is recognized by the recipient’s mail server but is returned to the sender because the recipient’s mailbox is full or the mail server is temporarily unavailable.
These prospects may be able to receive emails at a later time. However, after an email soft-bounces five times, Pardot will mark the prospect as undeliverable and suppresses them from receiving emails from you.
Hard bounce – Occurs when the prospect’s email address is invalid, the domain name does not exist, or the sender is suspected as spam and/or has been blocked. Prospects with a hard bounce are no longer mailable.
Bounce reasons – If you’re able to resolve the email bounce issue, you can reset the bounce count on the prospect record and start mailing them again.

2. Spot trends and take action

Use the report and export feature to filter and identify trends that may be contributing to you bounce rate, such as:

Particular templates that continuously bounce
Subject lines that cause bounces – Spammy subject lines?
Dates of email sends – Think back to the Google outage way back December 2020. Are there any significant dates when bounces were high?
Certain companies/ email domains – Contact the recipient and ask them if they’ve configured an email rule that forwards incoming email messages from you to another destination. Their rule could have tried to send a copy of your message to a bad email address. Or, have you simply misspelled the address/email domain?

3. See the bigger picture

Ever sent an email and thought “wow, that bounce rate was high!” You may have wondered if this was an isolated incident or if bounces were in fact an issue in your org?

Often marketers see a few emails with high bounce rate and assume they are destined for failure when it comes to getting their message into the inbox of prospects. Using this report, you can see the bigger picture. Then, you can understand how many bounces you have IN TOTAL out of all the emails sent in the last year.

4. Keep your Pardot data clean

Bounces often relate to the quality of your data and a low bounce rate overall indicates a healthy and clean org. Knowing how big of a problem bounces may (or may not) be can help with keeping your org clean and relevant.

Using the “Reset” feature found on individual prospect records you can reset bounces (hard and soft) and give yourself a second chance.

Still no luck? Consider removing these prospects, particularly if the bounce reason is permanent.

5. Avoid Salesforce account suspension

Salesforce is super serious about permission-based marketing. And its reputation as an email service provider, as well as your reputation as an email sender, is why they monitor accounts with bounce rates over 10% (as well as high spam complaint rates).

If Salesforce notices an issue with either of these numbers, they can suspend email sending from your account.

What can you do to lower your email bounce rate?

No email service provider can ever guarantee your deliverability rates — that’s down to your email practices and behavior.

Here are some things you can do to help with your email sending reputation and lower those bounce rates.

As above, understand why your emails are bouncing and take action.
Set up email authentication.
Build email sending lists using a confirmed opt-in process
Don’t purchase data without getting permission to send emails to the list.
Clean your database regularly & check that email addresses are spelled correctly.
Make sure your emails aren’t spammy.

Understanding email bounces is a big win for marketers

Armed with the data behind the bounces, this report is a win for marketers serious about their email sending reputation.
However, if you’re left feeling confused, worried or overwhelmed by the numbers, reach out to the Sercante team to see how we can help.

Original article: Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release: Review Email Bounce Data in One Report

The post Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release: Review Email Bounce Data in One Report appeared first on The Spot.

By Laura Curtis|2022-05-26T21:10:46+00:00May 26th, 2022|Categories: Data Management, Emails & Forms, New Features|

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|

Balancing all the emails your teams want to send to Prospects versus how many emails the Prospects want to receive is difficult.

Email your Prospects too often and they may opt out. Email them too little and they may miss the important updates they subscribed for.

Also, determining when to email your Prospects is always a struggle. Should you split your sends by time zones? Is there a sweet spot that covers most time zones? Does anyone actually read emails on Mondays?!

Up until now, the best way to tackle these decisions is Dynamic Frequency and Recency lists coupled with the numerous studies concerning which days and times are the best to send emails. However, with Pardot and Einstein, you can let machine learning do this analysis for you and have one less thing to think about.

Note: The 2 Einstein Solutions below are only available to Advanced and Premium Editions of Pardot.

Optimize your email send times

Einstein Send Time Optimization analyzes the timestamp of sends, opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and spam complaints to determine the optimal time to send a Prospect an email.

Keep in mind, Einstein Send Time Optimization includes List emails, Engagement Studio Program emails, and Salesforce Engage sends in its analysis. It does not include Operational emails or Autoresponders.

How Send Time Optimization works in the abstract is a little confusing, but this example from Salesforce’s help doc is great:

Send Time Optimization is only available in emails sent from the new MCAE (Pardot) Lightning Email Builder.

When sending a list email from the Lightning Builder, three Send Time options appear:

Einstein Optimized (choose this option)
Send Now
Send Later

For “Start Date” enter the earliest day you want the emails to go out.
For “Time,” it takes about an hour for Einstein to analyze the prospects, so set this one hour before the earliest time your email should go out (i.e. If I want the emails to start sending at 9AM, I’ll select 8AM).
Then set your “Send Emails Within” value (up to 168 hours which is 7 days). The gray box at the bottom of the Send Time section will show the latest time your email can go out and will update as you change your “Send Emails Within” value.

Once your email starts sending, you can monitor how many emails have gone out anytime during the Send Time window by going to Pardot Email > Scheduled > All Scheduled Emails.

What data do you need?

Each Prospect needs to have engaged with an email in the last 90 days. If a Prospect is new or has not engaged within this window, Einstein will recommend an aggregate of your email engagement data.

Enabling Einstein Send Time Optimization

You’ll enable Einstein Send Time Optimization by going to Setup > Einstein Pardot > Send Time Optimization.

Once enabled, it will take up to 72 hours to analyze your data and create your custom model.

Use Einstein Send Time Optimization to customize email frequency

Einstein Engagement Frequency (EEF) analyzes Prospect’s email engagement over the last 90 days plus their overall engagement data in the past 28 days to determine if the Prospect is Undersaturated, On Target, or Saturated.

Similar to Einstein Send Time Optimization, EEF analyses List emails, Engagement Studio Program emails, and Salesforce Engage sends. It does not include Operational emails or Autoresponders.

So, say for example you have a list of 100 Prospects who all received an email two days ago. You need to send all 100 another email, but you are worried about over emailing them. With EEF, you can run a dynamic list looking at your Recipient list from your first email and see which Prospects are Undersaturated or On Target and could be emailed again.

Or, even better, you could set up an Engagement Studio Program for the second email, and any future communications, to wait for the Prospect’s EEF status to change from Saturated.

What data do you need?

Each Prospect needs to have engaged in at least the last 28 days, but 90 days is recommended. EEF also requires 5+ variations of emails be sent to at least 10 Prospects within the last 28 days.

Enabling EEF

You’ll enable Einstein Send Time Optimization by going to Setup > Einstein Pardot > Einstein Engagement Frequency.

Once enabled, it will take up to 72 hours to analyze your data and create your custom model, a new Prospect default field, Einstein Engagement Frequency, will also be created.

Lean on the machines with Einstein Send Time Optimization

With Einstein Send Time Optimization and Einstein Email Frequency, we can begin leaning on machine learning to make some of the email sending decisions for us.

If you’ve already started using these two Einstein tools with Pardot, please share your tips, tricks, and findings in the comments!

Original article: Einstein Send Time Optimization: A How-To Guide

The post Einstein Send Time Optimization: A How-To Guide appeared first on The Spot.

By Erin Duncan|2022-05-06T16:00:00+00:00May 6th, 2022|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Emails & Forms, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

12 Next

Email Metric 1: Complaint Rate

What Makes Spam Indications Unique?

Overcoming Poor Email Deliverability

Email Metric 2: Event Lag

Creating More Actionable Emails

Email Metric 3: Most-Engaged Subscribers

How to Recognize

Priming for Further Action

Email Metric 4: Least-Engaged Subscribers

Final Thoughts

Field Types and Compatibility

Account Engagement Custom Fields

Option #1 – Checkbox

Example Form with Checkbox Field Type

Option #2 – Multi-Select

Example Form with Multi-Select Field Type

Additional Field Options & Considerations

Options that Should Always be Selected

Record and Display Multiple Responses

Account Engagement Forms

Forms with Checkboxes

Form with Multi-Select Picklists

Importing Multi-Select Picklist Values

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

Import – Record and Display Multiple Responses Selected

Updating Multi-Select Picklist Values

Automation Rule – Record and Display Multiple Responses NOT Selected

Parting Words

Further Reading

Crossing Language Barriers

Enable international users in a single Marketing Cloud Account Engagement instance

Marketing Asset Creation

Form error message

Encoding special characters

Unsubscribe and Email Preference Center Pages

“Not you?”/Form Reset Link

International Privacy and Data Management

Tracking Cookies

Communication Preferences

Data Security

Other Resources from The Spot on Managing Global Compliance

What’s Next

Building a Pardot Recency and Frequency Dynamic List

Can I use this in my Email Preference Center?

Which Email Sends Count?

Interaction Studio Use Case Example

Web

Email

Omni-channel

Common Thread between Interaction Studio use cases

Top 3 Features of Interaction Studio

Open-Time Email

Journey Builder

Automation Studio

Ultimate goal

Use CRM user lookups to send Pardot emails on behalf of other departments at your company or organization

What if you need a different/custom user connection?

Did you know you know you can create custom relationships AND send emails on their behalf?

What are other examples of custom CRM user lookups?

Where can I use these relationships?

Can I have more than one custom relationship?

How do you test to make sure everything is working fine?

CRM user lookups make life easier for Pardot admins

Watch a demo video to learn these hacks

Pardot Landing Page Builder hacks — an overview of the approach

An important note

Landing Page Builder Hack #1: Removable Sections

Landing Page Builder Hack #2: Repeatable Sections

Considerations for “Repeatable” Sections

Landing Page Builder Hack #3: The Ability to Move Sections Up and Down on the page

Considerations for “Movable” Sections

More like workarounds than features

What is an email bounce rate?

Who can get the Pardot Email Bounce Report?

What do you get in the report?

Why is the Pardot email bounce report so useful?

Types of bounces

2. Spot trends and take action

What can you do to lower your email bounce rate?

Understanding email bounces is a big win for marketers