Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): Implementation Methods

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio) is a fantastic platform to add to your marketing toolset. But starting a Marketing Cloud implementation can be daunting, especially when it is as complex as Personalization. 

The following sections of this article will detail the implementation approaches available, provide indicative timelines and outline example use cases. However, if  you’re wanting to understand a little more about what the tool can offer, you can check out my last article – Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide

SFMC Personalization Implementation Methods

With any platform like SFMC Personalization, which promises Real-Time Personalization and AI Recommendations, it’s easy to get carried away with what it can offer. However, the key takeaway from this article is that you should focus on what you and your company can achieve, which is particularly important given the tricky interdependencies you’ll face when implementing Personalization.

In a nutshell, the approaches vary from minimal viable product (MVP), where the goal is to implement a baseline as quickly as possible and then build upon it in future iterations, all the way to future-state implementation (FSI), where you depend on use cases to drive large-scale transformation. There is also a halfway house approach of implementing an As-Is, for those who may sit between the two methods above. 

Marketing Cloud Personalization Discovery Questions

Thankfully, understanding which method may suit your needs can be easily identified by answering a few simple discovery questions — as laid out by Salesforce in their Implementation of Marketing Cloud Personalization Trailhead

These helpful questions allow you to ascertain which method will best suit your needs, including: 

  • How often does your company change its website? 
  • Do you have easy access to developer resources? 
  • Are you migrating from an existing tool? 
  • Do other platforms need to be integrated? 

What you’ll find is: 

  1. MVP is great for companies making constant changes to their website, have easy access to developers, and are not migrating from an existing personalization platform. In other words, it’s a viable method for those who are perhaps new to real-time personalization. 
  2. As-Is is great for companies that don’t have immediate access to developers, are looking to migrate from one tool to another and have a few live personalization campaigns ready to migrate. 
  3. FSI is the preferred option for companies that less frequently change their website, have limited access to developers, are looking to integrate Personalization with multiple clouds (Marketing, Sales or Service), and have external data sources that need to be integrated. 

Marketing Cloud Personalization Implementation Roadmap

Obviously, the implementation roadmap will vary depending on the scope of your project and the implementation approach you’ve decided to use. However, there are some key milestones that will occur in all implementations, as shown in the diagram below, which is based on a typical net-new Personalization implementation with 2-3 use cases. 

Roadmap Diagram

From the diagram above, the two key milestones I’d pay the most attention to are the Use Case Discovery and the Blueprint Development

Regardless of the implementation method, defining a handful of clear and precise use cases before beginning the build is key to ensuring success. As mentioned, it’s easy to get caught up with the wide range of functionality Personalization offers. That’s why understanding the desired outcome is the most effective way of running a successful implementation and ensuring your company gets the most out of the platform. I’ll go on to share a few examples of good use cases later on. 

The blueprint document goes hand-in-hand with the sitemap — which is debatably the most crucial part of Personalization. The blueprint helps define which page categories exist, which triggers exist on those pages, what data can be scraped and where it can be scraped from (i.e. DOM vs Data-Layer) for each visit. 

Thankfully, to aid with your implementation, the Salesforce Partner Portal can provide a useful template that helps capture all of the information necessary to create your sitemap, and for implementing Personalization. The template covers everything from page types and content zones to events and attributes, and most importantly, where they can be found on your website to make it easier for the developers building the sitemap.  

Use Cases

Without sounding like a broken record, use cases can make or break a Personalization implementation. During my first implementation of Personalization, the goal I was given was to deliver Real-Time Web Personalization aka Personalization. 

There were no clear KPIs, the website was static and there was nothing to encourage returning visitors, and it made any experiences based on previous visits practically void. The end result was that our very expensive personalization engine sat on the shelf until we revisited the drawing board. 

Defining Your Use Cases

In order to avoid making my mistake, don’t be afraid to get granular with your use cases. Once established, it’s easier to build on top of existing use cases with future iterations. So really think about the following aspects when defining your use cases:

  1. Objective – What is it you’re trying to achieve with your personalization? Is it to increase the value per order? Or perhaps to encourage more users to download your app?
  2. KPIs – How are you going to measure the success of your personalization? Is it based on the number of successful completions? What percentage increase in order value would be considered successful? 
  3. Approach – Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you then need to consider the approach. Is it based on visitors from a particular source (Rule-Based) or is it based on trending products (Recipe-based)?
  4. Measurement Approach – There’s no point in creating a personalized experience if there is no control to measure success. Consider what an adequate sample might look like and how long the campaign might last. 
  5. Channels – Is this going to be a web- or mobile-led campaign? 

There’s no right or wrong answer for use cases and it completely depends on your company’s objectives. But for a typical net-new implementation, 2-3 concise use cases similar to the ones below is a good starting point. 

Use Case Definition Example

Use Case  Approach Channels KPI Measurement Approach
Encourage users to complete the onboarding application Rules Based Web, Email No. clicks on CTA, no. applications started, no. applications completed 50% personalized, 50% control
Encourage mobile app downloads Rules Based Web, Mobile App, Email No. clicks on CTA, no. app downloads 50% personalized, 50% control

Once you’ve defined your use cases, keep referring back to them throughout the implementation and when developing your blueprint. The use cases will help keep your implementation focused on the end goal, and help your developers build a sitemap that will be fit for purpose. 

Planning is Key to a Successful SFMC Personalization Implementation

As you’ve probably gathered by now, successfully implementing Personalization is closely linked with planning. Defining clear and concise use cases as well as developing an accurate and detailed blueprint, both of which are milestones during the Discovery Phase, are imperative for a smooth implementation. This is true regardless of your chosen implementation method.  

As final food for thought, don’t forget to consider your implementation team. Being the tool that it is, Personalization implementations often begin in the marketing department as it’s the marketers who want real-time personalization capabilities. However, even large marketing teams with wide-ranging skill sets will not be able to deliver Personalization alone. 

The Personalization Sitemap will require JavaScript developers. Building ETLs will require support from data architects. CRM integration will require CRM administrators. And creating experiences, although there are ready-made templates, may also require HTML and CSS experts. So, consider including wider teams early on in the implementation. 

Not only will this help to ensure that those resources are available to support and understand the ask, but it may also help to define use cases that are more relevant and that are also technically viable.

Need help filling the gaps on your team through your Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization implementation? Reach out to team Sercante to get their experts on the case.

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): Implementation Methods

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): Implementation Methods appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-03-24T15:24:22+00:00March 24th, 2023|Categories: Automations, Marketing Cloud, Pro Tips, revive, Setup & Admin|

The Essential Guide to B2BMA Dashboards (with Screenshots)

Looking for a way to view your Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) data within Salesforce? Not fully satisfied with data you’re able to view in the Account Engagement Reports? Well, you’re not alone. This is a comprehensive guide to B2B Marketing Analytics — what it is, what you’ll get out-of-the-box, and how you use the B2BMA dashboards.

What is B2B Marketing Analytics?

B2B Marketing Analytics (B2BMA) is a CRM Analytics App designed specially for B2B Marketers. It uses your Salesforce-Account Engagement connector to package up and display your Account Engagement data and enables several datasets to help you assess your sales and marketing performance. B2BMA comes out-of-the-box with default dashboards intended for various stakeholders on your team.

If you’re trying to view Account Engagement data within Salesforce, B2BMA should be your primary tool. It offers a wide range of data that can significantly improve your visibility into the ROI of your marketing campaigns, combining both marketing and sales pipeline data.

Key terminology within B2BMA

Dataset

Datasets are simply sets of source data (like an Excel table). These datasets are formatted and optimized for interactive exploration. 

Note: With B2BMA Plus (a feature available with an upgrade) you can actually control how frequently the data syncs between Account Engagement and Salesforce.

One example of a dataset may be your Account Engagement Prospects (see screenshot below).

Lens

A particular view into a dataset’s data (like a query). Use a lens to visualize your data and perform exploratory analysis. 

You’ll get these four lenses out-of-the-box:

  • Pipeline Deals
  • Campaigns (Pardot Campaigns)
  • Lead Sources
  • Lifecycle Snapshot

Navigation: CRM Analytics App  > All Items > Lenses

Example: Revenue by Campaign Type (see screenshot below)

Filter

Filters are used to narrow down results. Standard filters vary by dashboard. Keep in mind, you can add filters to a dashboard, but they may not filter all lenses within the dashboard. Some filters may also require customization.

Example: See all email engagement in a fiscal year

Dashboard

A Dashboard in B2BMA is a curated set of charts, metrics, and tables based on the filtered data from one or more lenses. These are typically designed to be used by a specific audience (e.g. Marketing & Sales Leadership). You’ll get these five dashboards out-of-the-box:

Navigation: CRM Analytics App  > All Items > Dashboards

Pipeline Dashboard

Offers you a view of your sales funnel from Visitor to Prospect to Opportunity (Won/Lost). You’ll see the following metrics:

  • Visitors
  • Prospects
  • Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
  • Opportunities (Open and Closed)
  • Velocity metrics

Engagement Dashboard

Offers a comprehensive view of your Account Engagement assets (think: forms, landing pages, emails, etc.) and how they’re performing and influencing your pipeline. You’ll see engagement metrics (opens, clicks, CTR, submissions, submission rate, etc.)

Marketing Manager

This is a combination of the previous two dashboards (Pipeline + Engagement) allowing you to see the overall performance and influence of your campaigns. You’ll see the following metrics:

  • Marketing Asset Engagement
  • Pipeline Deals
  • Revenue per Campaign

Account-Based Marketing

You’ve likely heard of ABM before — but did you know there was a B2BMA dashboard built specifically for that purpose? 

This dashboard monitors your ABM campaign performance and helps you take a deeper look at how Contacts and Opportunities from a specific Account are engaging with your marketing assets. You’ll see the following metrics:

  • Account details
  • Pipeline by Account
  • Revenue win percentage
  • Stage value by Account

Multi-Touch Attribution Dashboard

This dashboard shows you how influential each of your marketing campaigns are during each stage of the sales lifecycle. It offers you three different attribution models to choose from: First Touch, Last Touch, and Even Distribution.

Within this dashboard, you’ll see these metrics:

  • Revenue
  • Total Value
  • Cost
  • ROI
  • Top Campaigns
  • Revenue by Channel

Example: Multi-Touch Attribution Dashboard with Even Distribution (see screenshot below)

App

A CRM Analytics (B2BMA) App contains dashboards, lenses, and datasets in any combination that makes sense for sharing your data analysis with colleagues. Apps are like folders — they let you organize your data projects and control sharing across your team.

The included apps depend on your specific licenses. 

Navigation: CRM Analytics App > All Items > Apps

Template

A Template is a framework for analytics apps that comes preset with KPIs and data visualizations. 

Navigation: CRM Analytics > “Create” > “App”

Functional terminology

Faceting

When Faceting within a dashboard, you can select part of a graphic, and the rest of the metrics on the dashboard filter by that selection.

Example: In “Revenue Share by Campaign Type”, click on “Web Marketing”

The dashboard will update to show to “Web Marketing” Salesforce Campaigns

Data Flow

A Data Flow is a process that combines and summarizes several objects into datasets.

Examples: 

  • Connecting your Opportunities to your Accounts
  • Modifying or creating datasets requires customization

Navigation: CRM Analytics > Data Manager > Data Flows & Recipes > Data Flows

Metric

A Metric is a quantitative value, such as revenue or exchange rate. You can “do math” on measures.

Example: Calculating total revenue

Dimension

A Dimension is a qualitative value that’s useful for grouping and filtering your data.

Example: Region, product name, model number, or Opportunity Status

Group

A Group is a collection of data based on a specific dimension.

Example: Product name or account.

Access and navigation within B2BMA

How do I get a license?

Access to B2B Marketing Analytics is dictated by the number of licenses you have. To check your licenses, go to Setup > “Company Information” via the Quick Find box > Scroll down to “Permission Set Licenses” and look for “B2B Marketing Analytics”.

Where do I find it?

Access the Analytics Studio App by clicking the App Launcher and typing in “Analytics Studio.” Select “All Items” in the sidebar under “Browse,” then click “B2BMA Analytics” under “Apps.” Open the default dashboards and start exploring them

How to navigate B2BMA

Considerations for default B2BMA dashboards

The default dashboards are designed for a general audience, so they may need to be customized to suit your organization 

We don’t recommend editing or saving over the default dashboards. Instead, make a copy of the dashboard by clicking the “Clone in New Tab” option. Salesforce makes regular updates to the default dashboards, which will overwrite any changes you have made (only when you choose to “reconfigure” the app).

Reach out to Sercante with any questions regarding B2BMA customization capabilities.

Exploring and sharing B2BMA dashboards and datasets

Within B2BMA, you can dive deep into the data using “Explore” functionality, viewing different lenses and reviewing the datasets, fields and filters. You can also share dashboards, giving access to critical team members, post the dashboards to feeds, export them or download them.

Exploring

Want to know more about the data behind the chart? Click “Explore” to open a copy of the lens and review the datasets, fields, and filters. You can switch the visualization to a table view

Note: Not all filters will be shown here – click the “query mode” button to see all details

Sharing

Clicking the “Share” button at the dashboard level gives you:

  • Give access – Showing who has access to the dashboard
  • Post to a Chatter feed
  • Export to quip
  • Get URL – only users with access to the dashboard can view the link
  • Download – download an image of the full dashboard

Clicking the “Share” button at the lens level gives you:

  • Post to a Chatter feed
  • Export to quip
  • Download – download an image of the full dashboard or a CSV/Excel file

Adding to Lightning Pages:

  • You can embed your B2BMA dashboards in Lightning Record Pages in SFDC
    • Use the “Tableau CRM Dashboard” component
  • Only users with the B2B Marketing Analytics permission set assigned will be able to view the embedded dashboard

Ok – I understand everything else. Now how do I make updates to B2BMA?

B2BMA updates become available on the regular SFDC release schedule.

How do I know if there’s an update?

  • If an update is available, you’ll see the “Reconfigure app” option when you open the B2B Marketing Analytics app
    • Click “Reconfigure app” and go through the steps to update
  • The updates aren’t required – you don’t have to do them if you don’t want to
    • Click the info icon to see what new features are available so you can determine if it’s worth upgrading

Engagement History Dashboards

Engagement History Dashboards looks at your various marketing assets (forms, landing pages, emails, etc.) and how they are performing. They also look at how they contribute to your opportunity and sales pipeline.  

Engagement History Dashboards are powered by CRM Analytics. 

They allow you to:

  • Visualize engagement data on a variety of records
  • Show slightly different data based on the object (e.g. Opportunities, etc.)
  • Filter to show data relevant to the specific record that’s being viewed

What does this look like on the Account object?

On a given Account, click the “Engagement” tab to see the most active Contacts and the Campaigns they’re engaging with. Use the filters to apply a date range, choose an asset type, etc.

Engagement History Dashboards on Page Layouts

At this point, you’ve probably added Engagement History Dashboards to these Page Layouts:

  • Campaigns
  • Accounts
  • Contacts
  • Opportunities

Only users that have been assigned the “Analytics View Only Embedded App” permission set can see these dashboards. Your Account Engagement edition determines how many licenses are available.

Considerations for Engagement History Dashboards

Here are a few things you should keep in mind about these dashboards:

  • The “Analytics View Only Embedded App” gives users access to Engagement History Dashboards, but not Analytics Studio/B2B Marketing Analytics
    • We recommend assigning this permission set to your Sales & Marketing leads
  • Engagement History Dashboards aren’t supported in Internet Explorer 11
  • Dashboards embedded on Leads, Contacts, or Person Accounts can only show data for one Business Unit at a time (delete if your client doesn’t have multiple MCAE BUs)
  • The Opportunity dashboard relies on Opportunity Contact Roles and dates
    • If data is missing from the Opportunity dashboard, it’s usually because no Opportunity Contact Roles are assigned
  • For emails sent through Engagement Studio, the Account Engagement Engagement History dataset includes send data only for programs that were created after December 14, 2018

Learn more about B2B Marketing Analytics

B2BMA is an incredibly valuable CRM analytics tool to help improve your visibility into your marketing and sales data, including many out-of-the-box dashboards built for a variety of stakeholders in your business.

Here at Sercante, we’re a huge fan of the Salesforce Trailblazer community. We highly recommend bookmarking the B2B Marketing Analytics Implementation Guide – a comprehensive resource that includes dataset information, field definitions, etc.

You should also check out these blog posts to learn more about B2BMA and what it can do for you:

Have any B2BMA roadblocks you’re looking to solve? Reach out to the team at Sercante or tell us about it in the comments.

Original article: The Essential Guide to B2BMA Dashboards (with Screenshots)

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post The Essential Guide to B2BMA Dashboards (with Screenshots) appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-21T14:00:36+00:00February 21st, 2023|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly

Like the title says — if you’re a Salesforce user, then you should be deleting your marketing contacts on a regular basis.

Okay, hear me out.

Of course I don’t mean all your contacts. And I don’t even necessarily mean delete delete (in some cases). Let me explain.

As marketers, we hoard and protect our contacts like dragons guarding our treasure. Our instinct is to grow — and keep — our contacts database as large as possible. After all, more contacts mean more people for the ever-demanding funnel.

But I’m here to tell you: stop it.

Why? Because as with many things in life, quality over quantity is what should matter here, even within the gaping maw that is the top of the funnel. 

And for more reasons than you think. Here are the three main ones.

Reason #1: Salesforce Puts a Cap on Contacts

Let’s start with the purely technical and perhaps thoroughly obvious: Salesforce gives you a finite number of contacts to keep. The number you can have varies depending on the plan you’re on and the optional number contact block add-ons you purchase.

No matter how adequate that number may seem at the time, it will start being not enough very shortly if you don’t have any safeguards in place.

Furthermore, the criteria for what counts towards this limit differs between Marketing Cloud Engagement (or MCE, formerly Marketing Cloud) and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE, formerly Pardot… I know one day we’ll get used to the rebrand).

In Marketing Cloud Engagement:

MCE Edition Pro Corporate Enterprise
Base Contact Count 15k 45k 500k

Any Contact record (aka, any record on a sendable data extension with a unique ContactKey) on the All Contacts list counts towards MCE’s Contact Count limit. This includes:

  • Mobile contacts
  • Email subscribers
  • Any contacts from synchronized data sources (e.g., Salesforce objects). 

This is also why it is best practice to use a single ContactKey across Mobile, Email, and Synced Data Sources to prevent duplicates from unnecessarily eating up your Contact Count. 

You can monitor your Contact Count using the All Contacts list in Contact Builder.

Fun gotcha moment: If you’re syncing Salesforce Leads and Contacts and a Lead converts into a Contact, MCE will still count that synced Lead record and the new synced Contact record as two Contacts because they will still have two separate ContactKeys.
Fun gotcha moment #2: Even if you reduce the number of records on your synced sendable data extension, your All Contacts list count may not change. 

You will need to do some additional manual work here to enable contacts deletion from MCE if you haven’t done so already. Go to Contact Builder > Contacts Configuration and then choose the contacts you want to delete. 

If you want to mass delete a large number of contacts, you will either need to:
a) import a list of contacts back into MCE (counter-intuitive, I know) and then configure MCE to delete your contacts based off of that list 
– or –
b) create a REST API call to mass delete your contacts.

In Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot):

MCAE Edition Growth Plus Advanced Premium
Contact Blocks 10k (additional 10k blocks are $100/month 10k (additional 10k blocks are $150/month) 10k (additional 10k blocks are $300/month) 75k (additional 10k blocks are $400/month)

Fortunately, this is more straightforward. Any prospect record with a mailable status counts towards your mailable database limit. 

That’s it. You can keep an eye on your mailable database limit from the Pardot Settings tab.

Reason #2: Privacy Features Aren’t Going Away

In September 2021 as part of the iOS 15 updates, Apple rolled out Mail Privacy functionality that allowed its users to easily create throwaway email addresses for form fills (a common practice that many were already doing, Apple just automated it). 

Eight years prior to that, Google had broken up its Gmail inbox into tabbed categories in a better effort to keep “less important” emails — like marketing emails — from clogging up your immediate inbox. This year, Google will officially sunset its use of third-party cookies for tracking.

Suffice to say: more privacy features are coming into play and more consumers are concerned with how their data is being collected, stored, and used.

This is all great for consumer privacy, but less so for our marketing efforts.

Without intervention, we could face the possibility of having a database where a sizable portion of our contacts are, at best, completely unengaged, or, at worst, aren’t actually legitimate contacts in the first place.

Reason #3: You’re Skewing Your Metrics

Now take the nightmare scenario in Reason #2 and think about what this does to our precious email metrics. If we consistently send to a database of unengaged or non-legitimate contacts, leading to artificially low open rates and potentially high bounce rates, we’re skewing our own engagement rates from the start.

And if we’re relying on our engagement rates to determine campaign KPIs and attribution, we’ll have already introduced flawed data into our analysis.

How to Keep Your Marketing Contact Database as Clean as Possible

Okay, you’ve made some good points, I hopefully assume you’re thinking. So what can I do?

Well I’m glad you asked, because I have some tips for both Marketing Cloud Engagement and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement users.

Implement a Cold Leads Strategy

This is where I’m asking you to look deep inside yourself and fight against the marketer’s urge to hold onto all your contacts (or leads or prospects or whatever terminology you want to use here) for as long as possible under the hope that they’ll re-engage if you happen to send the right message at the right time.

Sure, you can always purchase additional space for more contacts, but why keep throwing more money after bad? Showing a little less mercy now will improve your marketing efforts later. As an additional consideration for MCE users, you also have to contend with a cap on how many communications you can send per subscription term. So why waste them?

Use Automations to Keep Your Database Clean

To start with, you can automate this process through features like: Automation Rules and Engagement Studio Programs (for MCAE) or Automation Studio and Journey Builder journeys (for MCE)

But the rough idea is to do the following:

Step 1: Put a quantifiable limit on how long you’ll consider someone who hasn’t engaged with any of your communications as “active.” This can be an actual time limit or after a certain number of consecutively unopened emails.

Step 2: Move these cold contacts somewhere else. Take them out of your regular communications, whether it’s through tags, a separate list segment, or a separate data extension. It’s time to put these contacts on a separate slower, low-frequency campaign.

Step 3: Send them an email again in a few weeks, maybe even months. Maybe send them another one later if you’re still full of hope. Give them a few more last chances to show engagement. The goal here is to check for a pulse, not necessarily to market anything at this point. This may also be the place where you can A/B test a few subject lines with pretty low stakes.

Step 4: If they re-engage: great! You can return them to the fold (or better still, use this opportunity to find out what their content preferences are by pointing them to an email preference center and letting them self-select their interests). If they don’t engage, get rid of them. 

  • Put them in the recycle bin if you’re a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement user (bonus: if you keep these prospects in the recycle bin, MCAE will automatically restore the prospect if they show signs of activity later on). 
  • Or, delete their record and unsync them in Marketing Cloud Engagement (we’ll talk about how to do this in a moment). 
  • You may even want to consider deleting the corresponding Salesforce record, because Salesforce has a data storage limit too.

If the idea of permanent deletion is too daunting, you can always export them to a spreadsheet and archive them elsewhere. You’ll still have the contact information, but it won’t be taking up space within your database.

Clean Out Your Hard Bounces

Make it routine to regularly clean out (or update) your contacts who have a hard bounce status. 

  • In addition to viewing your engagement metrics for each email send, MCAE also offers a helpful overall Email Bounce report on your prospects (you can find this under Pardot Reports > Marketing Assets > Emails > Email Bounces). 
  • With MCE, you can automate a query of the Bounce Data view and Subscriber statuses in Automation Studio.

Yes, both MCE and MCAE will (eventually) stop emailing any address with a hard bounce status. Yes, MCAE will automatically render a prospect with a hard bounce status as unmailable, meaning that the prospect won’t count towards your contact limit.

But in MCE, even if you can’t send emails to a Contact with a Bounced status, the contact will still count towards your Contact Count. And whether you’re using MCE or MCAE, if the contact has a corresponding Salesforce record, that record will also contribute to Salesforce’s overall data storage limit.

Furthermore, discrepancies between your segmentation lists or data extension numbers and what your email deliverability numbers actually are could cause some initial confusion among any users who aren’t aware of the automated mechanisms MCAE and MCE use to keep you from sending to unmailable addresses.

Be Selective about Salesforce Syncing

Being selective about who in your Salesforce database gets synced to MCE or MCAE will not only ensure that you aren’t sending marketing emails to contacts who shouldn’t be getting them (e.g. contacts who have not explicitly opted in, partners, vendors, and other operational contacts), but will also help you manage your contacts cap. 

In both cases, you will need to have automations in place that will determine the criteria for your sync trigger.

Now with MCE, let’s talk about the vexing problem of Leads and Contacts and the potential for duplicates. As mentioned earlier, even if your synced Salesforce Lead converts into a now synced Contact, your now defunct Lead record will still count towards your Contact Count. 

How to manage this? Build criteria into the automation that updates your MCE boolean syncing field to unsync the Lead when it converts. 

The Leads object has a number of different Lead Conversion-related fields you can use for your criteria — I like using the IsConverted boolean field, for example.

Use a Double Opt-in Signup Process

Using a double opt-in signup process for when a new contact is created is good practice to comply with various global data privacy laws and confirm a contact’s genuine interest in receiving your marketing emails. It also has the helpful benefit of verifying whether or not the email address on record is real. 

While this isn’t a 100% foolproof guarantee that a contact still isn’t using a throwaway email address, it will cut down on the number of outright junk emails entering your database.

Pay Attention to Auto-Replies

The deluge of autoresponders and out-of-office replies that result when you send an email to a large list can be a painful constant in a marketer’s life depending on a) whether you’re using MCE or MCAE (MCE has pretty robust Reply Mail Management functionality) and b) what processes you or your organization have set up to manage auto-replies. 

But there’s a silver lining to all this: what is being said in these auto-replies can be telling, especially in cases where the auto-reply lets you know that the contact is no longer going to be using the email address you have on record for them (usually in cases where the contact used an educational or organizational email address).

Creating a filter for key phrases often found in auto-replies where a contact is moving on from their organization (“moving on,” “leaving,” “no longer affiliated,” etc.) can give you a heads-up on removing that contact from your own database instead of waiting for the pending hard bounce when that email account is deactivated (which can range from very soon to months to never, depending on the organization’s offboarding process, or lack thereof). 

Save yourself from another auto-reply in your inbox, the contact taking up space in your database, and sending who-knows-how-many emails to an abandoned address.

Keeping Your Database Clean is an Ongoing Thing

Contact caps in your marketing database can feel like imaginary numbers to contacts-hungry marketers until their Salesforce Account Executive sends that dreaded over-limits notification. While it’s tempting to simply pay more to keep expanding your database cap, the cost does add up and it doesn’t address the root issues that could be impacting your database.

Without a little routine maintenance and ruthlessness to weed out your unengaged contacts and outright bad email addresses, your database can very easily become a hot mess, and any cleanup efforts thereafter will only become more challenging the longer it is allowed to go on. 

But a smart strategy (with help from a little automation) to filter and clean up your marketing database will not only be more cost-effective, but will maintain the integrity of your data.

Have any hot tips to share for keeping your contact list clean? Tell us in the comments.

Original article: Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Why You Should Delete Marketing Contacts Regularly appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-08T15:54:25+00:00February 8th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Real Talk, revive, Setup & Admin, Strategy|

6 Resources to Keep Your Salesforce Admins Moving Forward

In the Myth of Sisyphus, an essay by French philosopher Albert Camus, Sisyphus is sentenced to a punishment where for eternity, he must roll a boulder up a mountain. When he reaches the top, the boulder rolls back down the mountain and he must go back and start over.

Sound familiar? Some days our Salesforce platform administrators feel like they take one step forward and five steps back. 

Salesforce admins might get a bunch of requests that are handled swiftly, which just leads to more questions and requests. And then what about the latest Salesforce release that just went live? When will they have time to review much less implement all of the new sales efficiency features that the company is paying for? Oh, and they heard about some new Pardot features that could help the marketing team streamline their efforts, but…when will they be able to test, implement, and train them? 

Even the best admins really can feel like they are rolling the boulder of Salesforce up the hill to the top only to have it roll back down to the bottom. But your admins ​​don’t have to feel like Sisyphus!

Those Poor Sisyphus Admins

Luckily, we’re in the best ecosystem in the world. Not only are there many other admins in the Ohana to commiserate with, but there are more resources for support than you can shake a stick at. 

What can be done to help with the Salesforce boulder?

There are lots of options out there. So, I’m starting with the top 6 types of Salesforce resources that your admins can call on when the boulder has them feeling defeated.

Resource #1: The Trailblazer Community

There are thousands of people all over the world online at any hour of the day who are ready and willing to answer questions. This is great for difficult puzzles and you don’t know where to turn. It is also a place to research solutions and maybe even answer some questions. The Trailblazer community questions and answers are invaluable for Salesforce and Pardot administrators. I am also a huge fan of groups that push out information regularly which will be helpful for learning too! I recommend setting up your email preferences to get a weekly digest to stay on top of updates.
Top picks:

Resource #2: Salesforce Slack Communities

There are quite a few slack communities that have sprung up over the years that offer a way to have conversations with other people that can help you work through issues or puzzles in real-time. These are great not only for getting questions answered but they’re also great for community building. 

  • Ohana Slack – A Slack workspace for all the Salesforce clouds and products. This space could be a lifeline for puzzled admins.
  • Pardashian – very active Slack workspace that is all about Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka Pardot). All the major stars in the Pardot world are there – Lara Black, Jenna Molby, Jen Kazin to name just a few. If your tech stack touches Pardot, you will find great resources here.
  • How to SFMC – a Slack dedicated to Salesforce Marketing Cloud community of users. Expect lively conversations! If your tech stack touches Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you will find great resources here.

Resource #3: Salesforce YouTube Channels

Sometimes text and reading can only go so far in helping me. I often go to YouTube to find more members of the community and Salesforce themselves posting short-form videos that give insight into the actual clicks needed to do the thing you need to do.

  • Salesforce Support – Salesforce Support produces many short form “:how to videos” that can be just what you need to learn how to solve a problem.
  • Salesforce Admins – Salesforce Admins is another channel from Salesforce. They product videos targeted specifically towards admins – there could be interviews.
  • Salesforce Ben – This long running blog also has a top-notch channel with great explainer videos.

Resource #4: Salesforce Influencers on LinkedIn

There are some great people in the community on LinkedIn posting articles and newsletters about Salesforce, Pardot, and Marketing Cloud. What’s great about this is you can ask questions directly to the author and get answers. Because LinkedIn is such an important part of people’s digital footprint and tied so closely to their career, I’m seeing a lot of experts sharing great insights there. 

  • Apex Hours – This Community led LinkedIn newsletter leans to the technical but anyone interested in gaining skills with declarative development (i.e Flow), will find a hime
  • Jordan Nelson – self-taught Salesforce wizard who shares actionable tips every single day!
  • Pei Mun Lim – writes about Salesforce through a project management and business analysis lens. Plus great cartoons!
  • Jodi Hrbek – A functional Salesforce expert who shares great content focussed on empowering admins

Resource #5: Local Trailblazer User Groups

Getting out there and meeting Salesforce users is super helpful for experienced and new administrators alike. At these free meet-ups, there are sessions about new tools, creative solutions and of course socializing with other Salesforce professionals. There are hundreds of groups around the world that are organized around roles (i.e. Developers, Admins), or interests (i.e. Women in Tech, Non Profits).

Resource #6: Bring on a Managed Services partner

What is great about this Is you get the benefit of an embedded resource without the cost associated with adding additional headcount to your team. With Salesforce Partners, like Sercante, when you sign on to the Managed Services Program you’ll not only have a dedicated engagement manager, but you’ll also have the whole Sercante team of experts behind that person providing input, guidance, and ideas. 

It’s really the best of both worlds. The right managed services partner has your back when it comes to new features and what to look out for in upcoming releases. They’ll work with you to build a roadmap based on your priorities and a backlog of items that may be under your radar.

Salesforce Community Resources are Your Admins’ Best Friends

It is true that your Salesforce platform administrators may often feel overwhelmed and like they are constantly struggling to keep up with the demands of their job. 

They may feel like they are taking one step forward and five steps back, and like they are unable to keep up with the constant stream of requests and new features. This can lead to feelings of frustration and exhaustion. 

Burnout among Salesforce admins is real. But it does not have to be that way.

With these resources, administrator support can be self-served. Or, you can reach out to Sercante today to talk about our managed services offerings!

Original article: 6 Resources to Keep Your Salesforce Admins Moving Forward

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 6 Resources to Keep Your Salesforce Admins Moving Forward appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-02-03T20:22:27+00:00February 3rd, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin, Strategy|

5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions

A form on a landing page or your website is often the final step in a nurturing process and represents the crucial point of conversion. According to Manifest, 81% of people will abandon a form after beginning to fill it out. And of that 81%, more than half (67%) will not return to complete the form. 

So how do we, as marketers, improve our game and increase conversions while decreasing form abandonment? By using five native tools at your disposal within the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) forms tool.

Five Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions and Decrease Form Abandonment

When marketers first start using forms within Pardot, they’re probably inclined to keep things simple and have a primary focus on collecting information they see as required or important to their sales process. However, you can leverage a few things within Pardot to decrease form abandonment and up your marketing game. 

  1. Use Dependent Fields

Keep the form simple and limit the number of fields using dependent fields. When you are seeking relatable information based on specific field values, dependent fields are the best way to capture that additional insight.

For example, if you are a global company, you can ask for the user’s country. And if they respond with the United States, then you can ask for their state. Or if they respond with Canada, you can ask which province they are from. Whereas, if they respond with the United Kingdom, no additional information is required. 

Dependent fields eliminate unnecessary questions, shorten the form, and personalize the experience for each Prospect.

  1. Set Up Progressive Profiling

Another great way to help shorten your forms, but still collect the required information is through progressive profiling. This tool enables you to ask new questions based on each return to a form, eliminating previously completed questions from prior form fills. 

For example, if you already know their company, the next time they return to the form, you can now ask for a job title to dig in further. This is one of the best tools at your disposal as a marketer because it ensures a positive user experience for the Prospect and helps keep the sales team happy by collecting details for lead assignment, segmentation, and increased nurturing via targeted Engagement Studio Programs.

  1. Have Clear Calls to Action

Calls to action are the short persuasive text used on the form button to close the deal. You want to be straightforward while keeping it short and simple. I would recommend starting with a verb and following up with an adverb or subject thereafter. 

For example, a clear call to action could say:  “Download Your e-book Now” or “Subscribe Today.”

Ultimately, use language that promises them the delivery of something your reader wants. 

Form submission thank you page example
  1. Use Autoresponders

Creating an experience for Prospects is crucial in seeing them return to want more. This can be accomplished by ensuring that you follow through on your delivery when a form is completed through autoresponders and/or thank you pages. 

Take advantage of the redirect and follow-up by creating a personalized experience by offering them a thank you message, a downloaded asset, and/or highlighting similar content they may be interested in. 

By directing them to additional content, you can use your Progressive Profiling and they can gain additional insight into your organization and how you can help solve their issues.

  1. Enable Completion Actions

Completion Actions are similar to your Autoresponders, as they are unseen heroes of the form experience but play a critical role in delivering what was promised. A Completion Action is an action that Pardot will automatically make on your behalf as soon as the form is completed. 

Actions could include:

  • Delivering gated content
  • Adding to subscription lists
  • Notifying users
  • Adding prospects to nurture programs
  • Creating a task to follow up with the prospect

It’s the final touch to the entire experience and will keep your prospects returning for more.

Create Better Pardot Forms to Get More Conversions

With these out-of-the-box Pardot tools at your disposal, you can easily decrease form abandonment and increase Prospect engagement, growing your pipeline and improving your nurture game. 
Interested in learning more about how to get started or how to expand your Pardot form game? Contact us today!

Original article: 5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 5 Easy Ways to Increase Pardot Form Submissions appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-23T21:06:51+00:00January 23rd, 2023|Categories: Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide

I’m sure by now you’ve heard of Interaction Studio — or Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (SFMCP) as it is now called. But if you’re similar to me, none of the buzzwords that are thrown around help to paint the picture of what SFMCP actually does.  

In this blog, I’ll be demystifying this intriguing product and detailing the features and functionality, and where possible I’ll be calling out any “gotchas” that have personally caught me out, so you can avoid them. 

What is SFMC Personalization (Interaction Studio)? 

So, let me start with the easy part… What is it? Simply put, SFMCP is a real-time personalization engine. By integrating it with your website(s) and mobile app(s), you can track visitors as they interact with your digital content. 

Every page, article and product they view, click on, rate or add to cart is providing SFMCP with the data it requires to build a unique customer profile for every visitor — whether they are known or unknown. 

In other words, it allows you to dig deeper and truly understand what keeps bringing each visitor back, and when coupled with data provided by a CRM or data warehouse it is capable of delivering a hyper-personalized experience at scale and in real-time.

What does SFMCP do? 

Although accessed via Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), that’s where the similarities between SFMC and SFMCP come to an end. Having been procured rather than built by Salesforce, it has a very different look and feel. 

SFMCP is broken down into the following:

  • Reports
  • Channels & Campaigns
  • Audiences
  • Catalog
  • Machine Learning
  • Gears
  • Settings

Reports

By default, all users land on the Dashboard (as shown below) which provides a high-level view of revenue, visits, orders, average order value per visit and conversion rate. It also provides details on how your campaigns are performing through metrics such as impressions, new vs. returning visitors and item actions (purchased, viewed, added to cart, etc.), all of which are filterable by date ranges. 

However, to dig a little deeper, SFMCP also provides a range of Activity, Results and Visit reports that can help understand how your personalization efforts drive success.

Activity Reports

  • Recent Visits: Stream view of all the visits occurring over the defined period
  • Event Stream: Stream view of all the events occurring over the defined period
  • Cohorts: Groupings of users by predefined criteria such as first time visiting, first time performing an action or specific statuses 
  • Actions: Linear graph showing key Sitemap actions specified that can be filtered by segments or keywords 
  • Modules: Volume of visitor actions, views/clicks that have been grouped together as Modules 
  • Paths: A page-by-page view of the paths visitors take when interacting with your site  
  • Funnels: Using Modules, create an optimal funnel for your visitors and monitor the completion of the desired sequential actions
  • Day / Time: View visits, visit length, revenue, revenue per visit and bounces by day of the week and time of day 

Results Reports

  • Revenue: User, order and revenue statistics in a grid matrix and filterable by platform, engagement, visit status, and more
  • Purchase Funnel: Using segments, compare how your audiences perform against all visitors when viewing products, adding to a cart and purchasing
  • Goal Completions: Side-by-side comparison of your configured goals and filterable by device type, browser type, user state and more
  • Goal Comparisons: A view of the goal completions and completion rate over time for created goals  

Visitor Reports

  • Behavior: Shows visits, engagement, logins and purchases over a given time frame
  • Technology: Includes information such as browser, device, and operating system commonly used by visitors
  • Referring Sources: Useful report to show how visitors access your site as well as the referring sources driving the most revenue

Channels & Campaigns

In short, it’s the marketer’s space to build campaigns and whilst it is often the most talked about, web is not the only channel SFMCP can support, it also offers mobile and email, as well as triggered and JS server-side campaigns. 

Using web campaigns, SFMCP users can create real-time personalization experiences aimed at targeting visitors who meet certain criteria. Server-side campaigns give users the ability to get more creative but will require a greater skill set. 

Triggered campaigns and email campaigns tie into the wider SFMC platform if you’re lucky enough to have it, by triggering Journeys or by providing Open-Time Content to include in your SFMC sends. 

Through mobile campaigns, SFMCP can incorporate mobile as an additional channel by including a personalised experience on both Android and iOS. 

And finally, a Third-Party section allows SFMCP to bring in data from systems such as Marketo, Act-On, LinkedIn Ads, etc. and even create custom products when and where required. 

Audiences

As it sounds, Audiences are where users create visitor segments. Segments are a large part of SFMCP and go beyond simple segmentation. In SFMCP, segments can be used to display AI recommendations to a selection of visitors based on your pre-defined criteria.  But they can also be used to create goals by setting the actions you wish visitors to perform (i.e., order a minimum of $xxx). 

The number of visitors who meet the criteria directly relates to your goal’s success. Furthermore, any segment created can also be added as a filter to ensure certain visitors are excluded from recommendations and personalised content (i.e., exclude visitors from the US for UK-specific campaigns). 

The audience section is also where you can see all users in your SFMCP account, whether imported via feeds or tracked through the SFMCP Sitemap. However, it is important to note, that visitors captured via the sitemap will be anonymous (created using a randomly generated profile ID) until they perform an action (i.e., create account, checkout, etc.) that provides SFMCP with a chosen identifier such as an email address or username. 

Catalog 

The Catalog section is where you begin to add business context and it will require plenty of planning. SFMCP offers standard catalog objects such as Products, Categories, Blogs and Articles but also provides the opportunity to create custom objects to support your particular business needs. The objects can then, where required, be related to each other with varying cardinalities that will provide SFMCP with the information needed to understand visitor interactions.  

For example, when a visitor clicks on a specific pair of trainers it will increase that visitor’s affinity towards that particular product, but it will also create an affinity to the categories of running and shoes. In turn, products in the same categories can then be suggested through recommendations and promotions.

Note: An important callout here is to distinguish which method will be used for consuming data: ETL or Sitemap. Passing the same attributes, such as stock, through both methods can cause issues in SFMCP. I’d recommend leveraging the ETLs where possible and using SFMCP’s Sitemap for passing IDs and activity types to avoid data discrepancy issues. 

Machine Learning

If you’re like me, this is where the fun begins. The machine learning section is all about recipes and decisions. The Machine Learning piece can be broken down into two main capabilities, Recipes and Decisions,

Recipes 

As the name suggests, by mixing ingredients SFMCP can create unique content or product recommendations for each customer. 

Ingredients make up the basis of Einstein’s machine learning-powered algorithms. Elements such as co-browse, trending or smart bundle (to name a few)  will show recommendations based on what other visitors have browsed, what’s currently trending or what products other visitors have bought together respectively. It’s important to note that these recipes can even include offline activity that is imported via ETL feeds. 

Decisions

Rather than manually creating and testing the recipes yourself, why not let AI do the hard work for you? This is where decisions come into play. Decisions use visitor data to predict and display the right promotion based on the chance of completion and the highest business value. 

Einstein automates the process of deciding who should see what content by evaluating each promotion viewed, whether or not the session is a returning visitor, device type and much more.

Gears and Feeds

Gears are extensions for the platform that can be added based on your specific needs, although most will be enabled by default. The most important gear, in my opinion, is the Flicker Defender which, when implemented correctly, stops SFMCP sitemap from flickering on page load. 

Feeds, on the other hand, are SFMCP’s Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). SFMCP has a specific feed and format for each standard object, custom object and related catalog object which you can use to ingest data to support your catalog setup. Sharing data with SFMCP provides the information it needs to turn anonymous clicks into insightful data that can be used to make informed decisions that ultimately impact the bottom line and revenue. 

Further Considerations Before Jumping Into SFMC Personalization

Before jumping straight in and procuring SFMCP, it’s worth evaluating the following considerations: 

  1. Tech Gap & Skillset – Make no mistake, this is a complex tool and deserves respect. Whilst a lot of features can be handled via point and click, to get the most out of the tool it can require the support of Web Developers and Data Scientists. It’s also worth pointing out that the Sitemap, which is a large proportion of the tool, is all JavaScript and may require ongoing support. 
  1. Personalization Requirements – As its name suggests, SFMCP is well suited to real-time personalization. But if your requirements are undemanding and single channel, it might be worth considering alternatives such as SFMC Web and Email Recommendations. However, if your requirements are omnichannel in nature and supported by a complex catalogue of data, SFMCP might be the right tool for you. 

Once you’ve made the decision to procure SFMCP, the final consideration you should take into account is the implementation approach itself — you should begin reviewing your short-term gains vs long-term strategic objectives. 

Keep it Going

If you’d like to learn more about Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio), check out this blog post. Or reach out to the team at Sercante if you need help.

Original article: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio): A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-19T21:20:45+00:00January 19th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Marketing Cloud, revive, Setup & Admin|

Boost Conversions: Best Practices for Landing Pages

With Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), you have the power to drive conversions through Landing Pages. This is a crucial tool in your marketing toolbox to help drive sales goals, but it needs to be used effectively in order to be successful. Providing a great first impression to win over your customer begins with you ensuring specific qualities are in place to drive expected performance and engagement.

What is a landing page?

Landing pages are targeted web pages built by marketing teams to drive traffic from campaigns, including email links, social media posts, or digital ads. The key difference between a landing page and a standard website is that a landing page focuses on a single action with the end goal of generating new leads through targeted confersions. 

Website vs. Landing Page

Key differences, in addition to the call-to-action, between a website page and a landing page include:

  • Single CTA – Websites have multiple points of navigation and include several points of conversion, whereas a landing page often has no navigation and focuses on one singular point of action.
  • Focused message to convert – Websites tend to be content heavy and filled with information from a multitude of channels, including company details, business offerings, careers, etc. A landing page uses a single persuasive message to convert a specific subset of your target audience to do something.
  • Keep visitors on the page – Websites link to additional pages, social sites, or sign ups for email communications. Landing pages typically don’t have standout links that would potentially drive traffic off its page.

Why use a landing page?

A landing page is used to convert new leads in exchange for them receiving something they find valuable. Such valuable items could include:

  • Offer Codes or Discounts
  • White Papers or Articles
  • Newsletter Registration
  • Webinar or Event Attendance
  • Free eBooks, Blogs, or Infographics
  • Free Software Trials
  • Online Course Enrollment
  • Pre-Orders or Interest Levels

Best Practices

Now that we have a better understanding of what a landing page is and how it can be used to drive conversions, let’s review a few best practices when it comes to building a landing page.

Focus on One Point of Conversion

A landing page should have one singular focus or goal for the visitor to take action on. When you have more than one item to focus on, the chances of hitting a conversion drops. That’s why we recommend:

  • Limited, if any navigation on your landing page
  • Social icons should be reserved for the footer rather than called out in copy
  • Your conversion point, whether that be a button or a form, should be located at the top of the page to draw the visitor’s attention to it from their initial landing.

Use Consistent Language

When driving traffic from an outside source to your landing page, you want to keep mirroring that language in both locations. 

What you promise with your ad, should be delivered on the landing page. Without consistency and not keeping your “promise,” you may lose trust and a potential customer. 

Use Inspiring Calls to Action

Ensure that your CTA button is obvious to your visitors by putting it in a well-placed position, using contrasting colors to make it stand out, and by using action words. Remember, visitors are seeking a solution to their problem and the CTA should be that solution! 

Not only should the words be clear and concise, but you should ensure the CTA is above the fold of the page. Here’s a blog post that dives deeper into CTA best practices.

Consider Interactive Elements

Entice your visitors and drive them to a central point of action using interactive elements, which include:

  • Videos
  • Illustrations
  • Gif images
  • Bright colors
  • Quizzes
  • Polls
  • Calculators

These offer engaging content, eye-catching art, and allows you to collect additional insights about your audience, all while showing off your organization’s unique personality.

Design for All User Experiences

As of November 2022, studies have shown that 59.5% of all web traffic is coming from mobile devices. Despite this, several organizations are still not building their websites and landing pages to be responsive. This results in a very poor user experience. 

Instead, take the time to build responsive landing pages that adapt automatically to each user. If not, you will lose valuable leads.

Pardot user? Use these templates to build your landing pages.

Be Considerate of Forms

Let’s say you get traffic to your landing page and the page looks great, but the form has 6+ required fields with invasive questions. This will drive that traffic OFF of your page. 

Instead, you should aim to have your form have no more than 5 fields and target more basic details, such as first, last name, company, and email.

From there, enable Progressive Profiling, to continuously ask more questions of your customers. In addition, whenever asking an open-ended question, try to do so using drop-down menus, radio buttons, or checkboxes, rather than open text to create a better experience.

Thank You Content is a Must

Redirecting your landing page traffic to a thank you page not only wraps up the present and puts a bow on the experience, it also allows you, as the marketer, to retarget them and drive additional traffic to like-minded content. For example, you can drive them to additional product pages, resources, engage on social media, or drive them to contact a sales team member immediately.

Need additional help? Contact Sercante today for help with templates or strategy!

Original article: Boost Conversions: Best Practices for Landing Pages

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Boost Conversions: Best Practices for Landing Pages appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-18T21:48:43+00:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin|

Pardot WYSIWYG Editor Icon Glossary

The Pardot WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor Icon Glossary saved me SO much time and energy when I was first learning how to build email in Pardot. Recently, I noticed this page had been archived and no good replacement could be found, so I thought I’d recreate this asset so new and experienced users can still reference it as much as needed. 

The Icon Glossary

These buttons and icons are universal across Pardot, wherever you may add content (classic email builder, forms, landing pages, etc.). These buttons and icons are available to help you style your copy.

Icon Function
Bold text.
Italicize text.
Underline text.
Strikethrough text.
Additional formatting options such as font size and line height.
Remove existing formatting.
Insert a link.
Remove a link. This icon is grayed out unless an existing link is selected. 
Insert an Anchor. This is a hyperlink that will take you to another section of the email.
View the source code. This button is helpful when manually entering or editing HTML. 
Insert an image.
Insert a merge field to personalize the content for the recipient.
Set your text color.
Set your background color. 
Insert a numbered list.
Insert a bulleted list.
Left align content.
Center align content.
Right align content.
Justify content. 
Paste as plain text. This strips all formatting from the text.
Paste from Word. This retains some formatting from Microsoft Word, but strips out superfluous code. See Copying Content from Word for more info.
Insert an HTML table.
Insert a horizontal line. 
Insert a special character.
Insert AddThis to allow recipients to share your email.
Insert Dynamic Content to personalize the content for the recipient.
Insert emojis.
Change or set your font name.
Change or set your font size.

I hope this makes building emails go a little more smoothly for you! If I missed any icons or if you have any questions, let us know in the comments!

Original article: Pardot WYSIWYG Editor Icon Glossary

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Pardot WYSIWYG Editor Icon Glossary appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-13T20:09:09+00:00January 13th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) and Salesforce integration can be used to pass data back and forth between Pardot and Salesforce. In this article, learn everything about the Salesforce connector including what objects are synced, what happens if the prospect already exists in Pardot and how Pardot, and how to map Salesforce users to Pardot users.

Two different sync methods

Objects that sync from Salesforce to Pardot

  • Leads
  • Contacts
  • Accounts
  • Opportunities
  • Campaigns
  • Custom Objects (Available in: Pardot Advanced Edition and Available for an additional cost in: Pardot Plus Edition)

Synced but requires mapping in Pardot

  • Users
  • Custom Fields

Syncing prospects from Pardot to Salesforce

A prospect is synced to Salesforce when the record has been assigned to a user. A user can be assigned using a completion action or by using an automation rule.

Since Pardot uses email address as its unique identifier**, Pardot will check to see if there’s a contact in Salesforce with the same email address and then check if there’s a lead with the same email address. If there’s no email address that matches the prospect in Salesforce, Pardot will create a new lead in Salesforce. This can be illustrated with this flow chart.

You can also navigate to the connector settings and run a full sync.  Learn more about what causes a prospect to sync from Pardot to Salesforce here.

** If your Pardot account allows for multiple prospects with the same email address, there are some requirements for the record to sync to Salesforce

Syncing Prospects from Salesforce to Pardot

By default new leads and contacts within Salesforce will not sync over to Pardot automatically. There are 3 ways to sync new leads and contacts from Salesforce to Pardot:

  • By clicking the send to Pardot button on the lead or the contact record in Salesforce.
  • By manually uploading the lead or contact’s email address into Pardot.
  • Enable the option in the Salesforce connector to ‘automatically create prospects if they are created as a lead or contact in Salesforce.com’. This feature is not retroactive so you will need to upload a CSV into Pardot that includes the CRM ID and email address to trigger Salesforce records to sync. 
  • Run a full sync (Pardot Settings > Connectors > Gear Icon > Sync All Prospects)

Once the Pardot prospect and the Salesforce lead/contact are connected, Pardot will check for changes in Salesforce every 2-4 minutes. 

Hot Tip: Learn more about Salesforce and Pardot sync behavior in this blog post.

Connected Campaigns: Salesforce Campaigns and Pardot Campaigns 

The launch of Connected Campaigns in 2019 streamlined how Salesforce and Pardot campaigns are used, allowing management of campaigns to be managed within Salesforce. Plus, if you enable Campaign Member Sync your prospects will be added to campaigns as campaign members. 

Prospects can be added to a Salesforce campaign using the following methods:

When you set up a rule using one of these methods you will be able to see the action criteria to add to Salesforce campaign.

Mapping Fields Salesforce Fields to Pardot Fields

When you verify your Salesforce connector with Pardot, the default fields for leads/contacts and accounts are set up automatically. Any custom fields will need to be created in Pardot and mapped to the corresponding Salesforce field.

Mapping Salesforce Users to Pardot Users

Each Salesforce user will need to be created in Pardot as well, so you can assign Pardot prospects to a sales rep. You can create users in 4 ways:

  • Manage User Sync In Pardot (Pardot Settings > Connectors > User Sync) by mapping Salesforce Profiles to Pardot Roles
  • Manage User Sync In Salesforce 
  • Create directly in Pardot (Pardot Settings > User Management > Users)

Troubleshooting

I changed a contact’s email address in Salesforce, but the change isn’t syncing to Pardot.

This is the expected behavior of the Salesforce connector unless you have the setting Automatically change email addresses in Pardot to reflect changes in Salesforce.com enabled under the Salesforce connector settings.

My Prospects aren’t syncing to Salesforce.

First, check to see that there wasn’t an error while syncing the prospects to Salesforce. You can view sync errors by navigating to Pardot Settings > Connectors > Sync Errors

Fix any errors and try syncing the record with Salesforce again.

If you have no errors, make sure the record is assigned to a user. You can check this by clicking into the prospect in Pardot and looking for an assigned user under the Insight table.

Have other questions about the Pardot and Salesforce Integration? Ask in the comments!

Original article: Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-06T16:03:03+00:00January 6th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) and Salesforce integration can be used to pass data back and forth between Pardot and Salesforce. In this article, learn everything about the Salesforce connector including what objects are synced, what happens if the prospect already exists in Pardot and how Pardot, and how to map Salesforce users to Pardot users.

Two different sync methods

Objects that sync from Salesforce to Pardot

  • Leads
  • Contacts
  • Accounts
  • Opportunities
  • Campaigns
  • Custom Objects (Available in: Pardot Advanced Edition and Available for an additional cost in: Pardot Plus Edition)

Synced but requires mapping in Pardot

  • Users
  • Custom Fields

Syncing prospects from Pardot to Salesforce

A prospect is synced to Salesforce when the record has been assigned to a user. A user can be assigned using a completion action or by using an automation rule.

Since Pardot uses email address as its unique identifier**, Pardot will check to see if there’s a contact in Salesforce with the same email address and then check if there’s a lead with the same email address. If there’s no email address that matches the prospect in Salesforce, Pardot will create a new lead in Salesforce. This can be illustrated with this flow chart.

You can also navigate to the connector settings and run a full sync.  Learn more about what causes a prospect to sync from Pardot to Salesforce here.

** If your Pardot account allows for multiple prospects with the same email address, there are some requirements for the record to sync to Salesforce

Syncing Prospects from Salesforce to Pardot

By default new leads and contacts within Salesforce will not sync over to Pardot automatically. There are 3 ways to sync new leads and contacts from Salesforce to Pardot:

  • By clicking the send to Pardot button on the lead or the contact record in Salesforce.
  • By manually uploading the lead or contact’s email address into Pardot.
  • Enable the option in the Salesforce connector to ‘automatically create prospects if they are created as a lead or contact in Salesforce.com’. This feature is not retroactive so you will need to upload a CSV into Pardot that includes the CRM ID and email address to trigger Salesforce records to sync. 
  • Run a full sync (Pardot Settings > Connectors > Gear Icon > Sync All Prospects)

Once the Pardot prospect and the Salesforce lead/contact are connected, Pardot will check for changes in Salesforce every 2-4 minutes. 

Hot Tip: Learn more about Salesforce and Pardot sync behavior in this blog post.

Connected Campaigns: Salesforce Campaigns and Pardot Campaigns 

The launch of Connected Campaigns in 2019 streamlined how Salesforce and Pardot campaigns are used, allowing management of campaigns to be managed within Salesforce. Plus, if you enable Campaign Member Sync your prospects will be added to campaigns as campaign members. 

Prospects can be added to a Salesforce campaign using the following methods:

When you set up a rule using one of these methods you will be able to see the action criteria to add to Salesforce campaign.

Mapping Fields Salesforce Fields to Pardot Fields

When you verify your Salesforce connector with Pardot, the default fields for leads/contacts and accounts are set up automatically. Any custom fields will need to be created in Pardot and mapped to the corresponding Salesforce field.

Mapping Salesforce Users to Pardot Users

Each Salesforce user will need to be created in Pardot as well, so you can assign Pardot prospects to a sales rep. You can create users in 4 ways:

  • Manage User Sync In Pardot (Pardot Settings > Connectors > User Sync) by mapping Salesforce Profiles to Pardot Roles
  • Manage User Sync In Salesforce 
  • Create directly in Pardot (Pardot Settings > User Management > Users)

Troubleshooting

I changed a contact’s email address in Salesforce, but the change isn’t syncing to Pardot.

This is the expected behavior of the Salesforce connector unless you have the setting Automatically change email addresses in Pardot to reflect changes in Salesforce.com enabled under the Salesforce connector settings.

My Prospects aren’t syncing to Salesforce.

First, check to see that there wasn’t an error while syncing the prospects to Salesforce. You can view sync errors by navigating to Pardot Settings > Connectors > Sync Errors

Fix any errors and try syncing the record with Salesforce again.

If you have no errors, make sure the record is assigned to a user. You can check this by clicking into the prospect in Pardot and looking for an assigned user under the Insight table.

Have other questions about the Pardot and Salesforce Integration? Ask in the comments!

Original article: Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

©2023 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration appeared first on The Spot.

By |2023-01-06T16:03:03+00:00January 6th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|