Your brand now has Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) – congratulations! SFMC is a leader in the email marketing industry and extremely powerful for marketing communications. To ensure your brand is maximizing all capabilities is a full-time job, and leveraging the following can help.
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Maximize the available data
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- This includes integrating your CRM data and utilizing it for personalized content within SFMC.
- Utilize this data for special Journeys that can be important to subscribers (birthdates, cart abandonment, transactional, rewards, etc.).
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Automate Journeys with personalized messages
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- We have seen time and time again that personalized messaging outperforms generic messaging.
- According to Campaign Monitor, personalized emails can increase conversions by 6x.
- Within your Journeys, utilize the SFMC Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO). This will assist in automatically determining what time is best to send to each subscriber. The STO tool bases this information on 90 days of previous email engagement to estimate when your subscriber is most likely to engage with the content they receive over the next 24 hours.
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Content should be well thought out and tested
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- The average subscriber receives well over 100 email messages per day, so in order to stand out, your brand must push relevant and useful content. This starts with the subject line, but continues with the email content, messaging, and CTAs. If this is done successfully, you will likely see higher conversion rates.
- A/B tests can be powerful and the insights can be extremely helpful. From subject lines to content, it can prove beneficial to test frequently to see what your subscribers are engaging with.
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Keep up with release notes
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- Each release can contain exciting new features and things that could be extremely helpful and beneficial to your brand. Typically, there are three releases per year (spring, summer, and fall).
- For Summer ’23, one feature I am excited about is the ‘Optimize SQL Query Activities with Improved Validation’. Previously when validating a query, SFMC would simply tell you a syntax was invalid but provide no further details. Moving forward, SFMC will warn of possible code issues that could potentially cause long query run times and provide tips on how to improve the query.
- Each release can contain exciting new features and things that could be extremely helpful and beneficial to your brand. Typically, there are three releases per year (spring, summer, and fall).
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Utilize the available studios within SFMC
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- Advertising Studio will assist in ensuring all advertisements are aligned with the overall goals for your brand.
- Mobile Studio will allow for SMS messages to be integrated with your Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account and have an additional approach available to target your subscribers with relevant information.
- Email Studio has a variety of templates available from which to build ongoing brand templates.
- Automation Studio can assist in automating any imports, segmentation, or exports that are needed on a regular ongoing basis.
- Personalization (formally Interaction Studio) allows you to track subscriber or customer actions across multiple touchpoints, including your brand’s website and emails. After all the data is collected, it can be utilized as a unified subscriber profile. This can be utilized within various appropriate Journeys for your subscribers.
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Ensure your team is certified and takes advantage of all training
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- Whether it is Salesforce Trailhead or the Salesforce Partner Portal, there are endless amounts of training available for teams. Certifications can be great for your team members’ careers and personal Salesforce Journeys.
For more SFMC tips, read our recent post on “10 Things to Consider When Starting With Salesforce Marketing Cloud.”
Perficient’s Marketing Cloud Expertise
Whether you’re looking for enterprise-level mail, marketing automation, digital advertising, data management, or analytics, Marketing Cloud is the answer. As a Salesforce Summit Partner with over 15 years of experience delivering Marketing Cloud solutions for our customers, Perficient is the partner of choice for your marketing needs. Our team of experts have over 100 Marketing Cloud certifications and have successfully delivered marketing solutions across all industries.
