Starting with Marketing Cloud?

You may have just purchased Marketing Cloud for your company or possibly looking to help implement Marketing Cloud for a client. In both of these scenarios it is important to have a plan as you begin the journey down the path of Marketing Cloud.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Abraham Lincoln

Know your Marketing Goals

Answer the magic question.

One of my favorite questions to ask on a discovery call with a client looking to implement a Salesforce product is. “What are your trying to achieve”. You can add onto this question with the product. “What are you trying to achieve with Marketing Cloud?

As I mentioned on a previous post the answer to this questions will drive the focus of how a company configures Marketing Cloud for success.

Below are some examples of possible answers to this magic questions.

• We are looking to grow our brand awareness

• We are wanting to take more ownership of the Marketing efforts away from our Marketing Agency

• Our goal is to automate customer segmentation for our campaigns

• We are planning to re-engage past customers or reach new customers to increase revenue

Whatever your goal is it is important to think about it and document as you start the setup of Marketing Cloud. There are many companies today that are moving from a list based marketing platform onto Marketing Cloud. With the change to a full marketing automation platform there also comes a vast array of features.

Marketing Cloud itself has 4 version levels with various product features. Customizing these all to meet your goals will be a a large part of the implementation.

There are many Companies that may have no real marketing strategy and for these they start a Marketing Cloud implementation without a true set of goals. Many consulting partners will be able to provide recommended marketing approaches based on past client strategies and also common Marketing Cloud setup. It is important to come prepared to answer the question what is your overall marketing strategy.

---

---

Know your Data

Know what is in your Data Toolbox

As you embark on the journey with Marketing Cloud another question that you should be prepared to answer is “what are your data points?” In order to send timely, accurate, and impactful emails you will need to know the data to support it. Without knowing the data sources to get you to your marketing strategy you will be stuck in the mud.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

Sherlock Holmes

Below are some key questions to ask yourself before you start to bring in your data sources into Marketing Cloud.

• What is your current Marketing Tool?

• How do you get data into the current tool?

• Do you have any integration setup today to your current marketing platform?

• Do you have website forms that send data such as new subscribers?

• Do you have a manual process to load in ERP data such as Order history?

• Do you have website data that you would like to import in the future?

• How many subscribers do you have?

• Do you send transactional emails such as order confirmation emails? If so how do you get the data today to support it?

Any Data Gaps?

Now that you have listed out your data questions do you see any gaps with what you have vs want to do with the Marketing Cloud Implementation? Below are some example gaps that occur when starting out a Marketing Cloud implementation. These are items that you want to achieve but can not without problem solving

Would like to send emails to visitors on website:

• Gap: no way to get website data into current marketing tool
• Marketing Cloud Solution: create a custom data extension in Marketing Cloud and sync your website data into the Data Table via API or Automation Studio

Ability to send personalized emails with heavy merge field logic

• Gap: current data only has email address and subscriber status
• Marketing Cloud Solution: create leads, contacts, and accounts in Salesforce and sync to Marketing cloud for additional attributes.

Would like to send order confirmation emails once customer purchases

• Gap: no order information is available today to link to subscribers
• Marketing Cloud Solution: sync order data into Salesforce or custom data extension that is tied to contacts via unique external Id.

---

---

A Salesforce Partner should work with you during the initial planning and discovery period of the Marketing Implementation to help identify these gaps. It always helps the process if you prepare with your own analysis of how your data is working for you or making your marketing life harder.

Know your Brand

Describe your Brand or Brands

Branding is a huge part of marketing and companies spend money and time ensuring that their brand is tailored a certain way. This is no different when setting up a Marketing Cloud instance. It is important to understand how your company runs your brand or brands.

When you setup Marketing Cloud there are certain general decisions that will be made based off how your marketing team is aligned to support your brand(s). Below are key questions that you will need to prepare for.

• How many Brands does your company utilize?

• If multiple brands are in place do you have a marketing team per brand or does the team work across the brands?

• Do you have a parent brand and a child brand?

• Do you work with out side companies to support brand creative ( email content)?

• Do you have email templates or a branding guide?

• What sending domains do you want your emails to come from?

---

---

Marketing Cloud Brand Setup

Based on how you answered the branding questions there are a couple of different ways Marketing cloud can be configured to support. Let’s take some time to review these possible setup options.

Single Brand + All in house creative team

• 1 SAP (Sender Authentication Package) private domain usually

• No need for an additional Business Unit as all data and content for the brand can be housed in the main Marketing cloud unit

• Multiple sending domains only needed if want to create multiple profiles within same brand

Single Brand + Creative Outsourced

• 1 SAP (Sender Authentication Package) private domain usually

• No need for an additional Business unit as all data and content for the brand can be housed in the main Marketing cloud unit

• Multiple sending domains only needed if want to create multiple profiles within same brand

• Additional content builder folders and users created so outside agency can access your Marketing Cloud account.

Multiple Brand + Single Marketing Team

• 1 SAP (Sender Authentication Package) private domain usually

• Additional Private Domains for the other brands

• No need for additional business units if the brands are controlled across the marketing team

• Multiple sending domains will be needed

• Additional content builder folders to separate content per brand

Multiple Brand + Multiple Marketing Teams

• 1 SAP (Sender Authentication Package) private domain usually

• Additional Private Domains for the other brands

• Additional business units are recommended since brands are controlled across different marketing teams

• Multiple sending domains will be needed

• Additional thought needs to be put into if data sources are the same for each brand

---

---

Phased Approach

Generally speaking using a phased approach is usually a solid choice with any new technology implementation. With Marketing Cloud it is very easy to bite off so much due to the vast amount of capabilities that the platform provides. A phased approach not only allows you to get your footing as you learn the new tools but it also sets you up for success.

Below we will discuss the benefits of issuing a phased approach with a Marketing Cloud Implementation.

Setting a strong foundation

Marketing cloud can have a steep learning curve especially if your transitioning from a list based marketing tools with no automation features. A recommendation would be to plan out a Marketing Cloud implementation road map. This roadmap can help temper expectations so that you can focus on learning and executing the current phase. Just like building a house on a solid foundation you want to ensure you have a strong setup of Marketing Cloud.

Below is an example of items for a solid Marketing Cloud Foundation.

• Sender Authentican Package (SAP) provisioned and IP Warming plan outlined

• Sending Profiles setup

• Content Builder folders outlined by brand

• Brand with email templates created

• Data Extensions created or synced with sendable contacts

• Users setup for marketing team

• Complete the following training :
  • How to send emails via email studio
  • How to create content specifically emails and email templates
  • How to filter Data Extension

• Understand / setup email reporting

• Outlined phase 2 approach for automations or advanced journey versions

Walk with Automation Studio and Journey Builder

One of the biggest tools with Marketing Cloud is Journey Builder. Journey Builder paired with Automation Studio is a powerful duo. It is tempting to start building complex journey right away as the drag and drop canvas is very user friendly but starting simple and building new versions of journeys is a solid approach. Let’s explore some examples of how you can add complexity to journeys over time.

---

---

Welcome Journey

Version 1 :

Send newly created leads down the journey to send them a welcome email based on the lead source field

Version 2:

Send newly created leads down the journey to send them a welcome email based on the lead source field

Check to see if the lead opens your first email send 5 days later with an Engagement Split. If they did not open send them a different email content style to try to reengage.

Version 3:

Send newly created leads down the journey to send them a welcome email based on the lead source field

Check to see if the lead opens your first email send 5 days later with an Engagement split. If they did not open send them a different email content style to try to reengage.

If the lead did open the first email add a Salesforce Create Activity action on the journey path. Create a task in Salesforce to assign to a task queue. Sales reps will review the task queue to call on leads who recently opened the welcome email.

---

---

Final Thoughts

With any implementation there will be must haves to replace current functionality and also brand new processes to build out. As you prepare for the Marketing Cloud Implementation it is vital to prepare a list of considerations so that you start off the initial setup with your best foot forward. Marketing cloud is an amazing platform and it is capable of giving a marketing team abilities to reach customers in a variety of channels but non of it will help if you do not have a plan on how to reach your marketing goals.

Helpful Resources

Marketing Cloud Setup Trailhead

Marketing Cloud Setup Documentation

SalesforceBen: Maximize Salesforce Data with Automation Studio