Things You Should Know Before Starting Out With Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud or SFMC is a tool in the field of marketing automation as well as customer engagement. SFMC is a SaaS platform created of four base versions having multiple functionality levels and several additional at-cost components. The Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation provides you the capability to support several marketing facets, including dynamic customer journeys, execution of the multi-channel campaign, post and pre-campaign analytics, etc. SFMC does all these using components like Builders and Studios.

Builders in SFMC are used for managing data, customer journeys, and content. They are sometimes used by the Studios. In SFMC, Studios are utilized for management and engagement with communication channels. The Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform includes Social Studio, Email Studio, and Mobile Studio. As all businesses have a unique entity, not all Marketing Cloud projects are the same. There are certainly some blueprints that one can follow for raising the chances of a successful outcome. So, the best advice for any Salesforce Marketing Cloud newbie is to get a mentor that can guide you throughout the first implementation.

Here you will get to know certain things that are essential before you begin with SFMC implementation and also know the benefits of using SFMC. Whether you are the internal Salesforce Admin or you are trying to become a Salesforce Marketing Cloud consultant, knowing all these things is going to help you in saving your time when you feel like getting stuck.

       1. Data Management

In SFMC, data management is done through data extensions that are linked to create a relational database. It provides the ability to keep several data types and make your own specific data model. This is a major benefit compared to other competitive platforms, which support the limited data models restricted by data that they can manage and import. It allows more complex segmentation and audience building within SFMC.

       2. Third-Party Applications

Salesforce Marketing Cloud contains a wide range of third-party applications, including the ones from Salesforce AppExchange. This elevates its capabilities and allows customization as per your business goals. Beyond AppExchange, several third-party products are there from the Salesforce partners. It helps in integrating with SFMC for increasing its values and functionalities.

       3. Integration capabilities

You can get data from several sources with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration capabilities. Along with the expected connection to Service Cloud and Sales Cloud of Salesforce, SFMC also contains many APIs, including SOAP API and REST API. Certain common APIs use cases include augmentation of the existing contact information, starting triggered sends, and importing content.

       4. Artificial Intelligence Application

The artificial intelligence of Salesforce has some amazing features including send time optimization that helps in knowing the best time to send messages to each individual. It also includes engagement frequency for understanding the number of messages one has to send to each individual. It also helps in engagement scoring for predicting who is going to interact with messaging.

SFMC goes beyond just being an automation tool for marketing departments; it offers a suite of products tailored specifically for specific marketing needs. 

Pardot: This program is often utilized in B2B marketing environments and specializes in email marketing, landing page creation, form creation, and lead scoring.

Journey Builder: This tool assists B2C teams in building marketing journeys for customers that offer them a personalized experience. 

Email Studio: Marketers can use this tool to quickly produce email content using scripted language for real-time editing of personalized email campaigns.

Mobile Studio: Like Email Studio, Mobile Studio helps create content tailored specifically for mobile devices allowing teams to send MMS, SMS, and push notifications via their devices. 

Advertising Studio: Expanding beyond email and mobile, this tool extends your reach onto advertising platforms like Google AdWords, LinkedIn Advertisings and YouTube Ads.

Social Studio: With this tool, you can publish, engage with, and analyze content across all social media channels from one convenient platform.

Loyalty Management: This new solution lets you reward loyal customers with tiered reward programs.

Also Read: How To Optimize Social Studio With Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

       1. Setting up a Progressive Profiling

In the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Progressive Profiling allows you to collect a lot of data about subscribers over time. You do not have to overwhelm data collection ways that may let them leave entirely. Progressive Profiling of SFMC is a great Pardot feature. Therefore, you should achieve it with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

       2. Shift Your Data Model

Data extensions and Data Designers can be a bit overwhelming, so you should avoid them. You can also turn the Salesforce Marketing Cloud into an improved user-friendly experience by taking maximum advantage of its drag and drop capabilities. It will ensure a better Salesforce Marketing Cloud adoption.

       3. Activate Journey Builder

You can power up the Journey Builder along with Salesforce Data and Cloud Connect. The Marketing Cloud is enough for working amazingly. But when you utilize Marketing Cloud Connect along with Service Cloud or Sales Cloud, you open up a whole new automation options range. You will have to submit one case with Salesforce Support for the actions to appear in the Journey Builder. Journeys can be a wonderful way to create automated and responsive campaigns across various channels. Through journey Builder, engagement with customers increases during their different experience stages with the brand.

       4. Features of Content Builder

Content Builder is something that you must use as it has several features that the marketing team needs to optimize and analyze the email campaign sent via Marketing Cloud. Using Email Template in Content Builder helps in creating emails. The template contains several areas in which you can easily drag and drop content blocks, images, or other content types. Here you can save your time and can remain assured of the email messages’ consistency.

       5. Testing of Email Templates

When you go for testing Email Templates that you have created or any HTML that you have, you may get stuck with several errors. Through current field variables and unsubscribe option inclusion, you can test emails. You will be required to submit a Disable CAN and SPAM case with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud service. Otherwise, you will be unable to send or test any emails from the Salesforce Marketing Cloud as there will be many errors.

       6. Build Application Portal

With Cloud Pages and Marketing Cloud, you can create an application portal. Application portals help in reviewing application processes and log-in pages. An internal portal will help the team in reviewing, accepting, and rejecting applications. Through this portal, applications can also be automatically rejected if they fall under particular criteria.

       7. Automate Segmentation

The built-in data filters of the SFMC will work for organizations that are just start-ups. Using SQL, you get a wider range of utilization for the data, but some technical expertise that is needed can sometimes perplex marketers.

A modern American furniture and home furnishings retailer faced a challenge familiar to many businesses — maintaining a personal touch while scaling up. With a customer base that was rapidly growing, they needed to automate their marketing while preserving the high-quality, personalized communication their customers had come to expect.

They automated personalized email campaigns using Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder and Email Studio based on various customer behaviors and attributes, such as recent purchases or browsing history. This shift to targeted, personalized marketing resulted in an impressive 290% return on investment for their triggered emails, reinforcing the importance of personalization in digital marketing.

A Global sportswear giant aimed to provide customers with a seamless and unique experience across multiple channels. However, with such a diverse and vast customer base, this was no small task.
They turned to Salesforce Marketing Cloud to integrate data from all customer touchpoints, including in-store visits, online browsing and purchasing history, mobile app interactions, and more. Using Salesforce’s AI capabilities, They could segment this data to create personalized messages and offers for each customer segment.

The results were staggering; they saw a 300% increase in marketing efficiency and a 25% increase in conversion rates. This case highlights Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s ability to harmonize data across platforms and utilize artificial intelligence for powerful customer segmentation.

A large financial services company was looking to improve its customer retention rates. They decided to leverage Salesforce Marketing Cloud to better understand customer behavior and engage customers more effectively.
Using Journey Builder, they initiated ‘life cycle journeys’ based on different customer life cycle stages. They employed personalized content and timely interventions to engage customers, for instance, celebrating customer “anniversaries” with the company, offering referral incentives, or providing personalized advice based on their financial needs.
As a result, they observed a 25% increase in customer retention rates and a 35% improvement in open email rates. This instance showcases Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s capacity to significantly improve customer engagement and retention.

These case studies underline the versatility and power of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. They demonstrate that this platform can offer insightful, data-driven solutions to meet and exceed marketing objectives regardless of the industry or the specific challenge.

Also Read: Guide To Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Benefits And Products You May Integrate It Now

Whether you just started email marketing or want to improve web personalization with a new sophistication level, Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you with all these.

As you embark on your Salesforce Marketing Cloud journey, consider seeking assistance from a trusted Salesforce silver consulting partner like GetOnCRM to maximize your potential and ensure a smooth and successful implementation of this robust marketing solution.