Let’s be honest – if you’ve ever thought that Quarterly Business Reviews (or QBRs) were a huge headache, you’re not alone! A QBR is an alignment meeting that’s held every three months between a company like Perficient and its clients.

When my director first introduced us to the idea, the team was skeptical. It seemed like just another box to check, and my first few QBRs felt more like a chore than an opportunity. No surprise when they didn’t lead to much account growth! Over time, though, I realized what a gift they are, and everything changed. Let me tell you why QBRs matter and how to make them work for you! 

There are three parts to a productive QBR – showcasing successes, offering recommendations, and reviewing goals. Let’s dig into each part individually. 

Part 1 – Showcasing Past Successes

The first step in any QBR is what earns that “quarterly review” name. This is where you get to show off the Perficient team’s accomplishments over the previous quarter. What were our big wins? What cool new features launched? Sometimes we have quieter quarters than others, but there is always something you can display as an achievement. Get creative and be sure to lean on other team members for suggestions!

When you’re showing off the team’s wins, make sure you keep in mind that not everyone on the call has the same role. One fantastic benefit of QBRs is getting to present to VPs and other executive leadership who may not be involved in the day-to-day engagement. However, they may not really understand the impact of a statement like, “We successfully implemented a multi-instance deployment strategy leveraging Sitecore’s xDB architecture, optimizing the content delivery network integration for enhanced latency performance.” 

There’s a reason that KISS is such a popular principle– keep it simple! Use non-technical language as much as possible and remember to tie your achievements back to how the client benefits. We all know Perficient teams deliver maximum results, but how does that really impact your client’s bottom line? Explain exactly how this past quarter helped contribute to their success, through wins like boosted site security or reduced costs.

Part 2 – Offering Thoughtful Recommendations for Improvement

Now we head into everyone’s favorite part – offering recommendations and driving new business! This is where you start looking ahead to the upcoming quarter and thinking about The Next Big Thing. Sure, it might be tempting to think this is your chance to push all those shiny upgrades and premium options that will help pad your pockets (kidding!). But in reality, that’s not at all what a good QBR is about.

What really drives success is understanding your client’s story. A sales leader I admire once said that you can’t be truly successful at selling unless and until you deeply understand someone’s story. What motivates them? What do they look back on at the end of the year and feel proud of? When you understand these things about your client, you open the door to making thoughtful recommendations that actually offer value.

It’s not about making the sale – it’s about taking care of your clients. It’s about understanding their business, their needs, what their frustrations are, and what will really drive their growth. Pushing that flashy new tool may net you a bigger commission check, but when you get to next quarter’s QBR, are you going to be able to show that it helped your client meet their long-term strategic goals? Or is it going to be something you sheepishly leave out of the QBR, because your client spent a bunch of money and had nothing to show for it? 

Part 3 – Aligning with the Client’s Business Goals 

By the time you get to this stage of most QBRs, you’ve been presenting for about 45 minutes straight. Now it’s your client’s turn to shine! You want to ensure that you’re aligned with their business strategy, so kick this part off by asking them what the future looks like. Some good example questions are –

• What specific outcomes do you hope to achieve in your business over the next quarter, the next six months, the next year?

• Are there any challenges you’re currently facing that you believe could impact your goals? 

• What does success look like for your business a year from now? 

What may surprise you is that if you’ve done your homework and put in the time to understanding your client’s story, this part of the conversation should be a close mirror of Part 2. If they bring up challenges, you should ideally already know about most (if not all) of them. When they talk about new initiatives, hopefully you’ve already considered those and included them in your earlier recommendations. 

What you don’t want is for the client to surprise you with goals or challenges that you’ve never heard before. This can potentially mean a misalignment in your understanding of their “big picture”. But don’t panic if this happens! Think of it as an opportunity to realign and dig deeper into their evolution. This is your chance to recalibrate and ensure your team’s work stays focused on what truly matters to your client. Sometimes, these surprises can open the door to even better growth and collaboration. 

Why QBRs Matter for Long-Term Success 

Here’s the crux of the matter – when you’re deeply aligned with your client’s story, sales don’t need to be forced.

They happen naturally. 

Once your clients see that you genuinely understand their business and aren’t just trying to make a quick sale, they start to ask for more on their own. Since adjusting my own frame of mind, I’ve had clients come to me directly asking for additional services, because they trust my recommendations and know I have their best interests at heart. Nurturing this kind of credibility comes from consistently delivering value and keeping the focus on what matters most to the client, rather than pushing unnecessary upgrades.

QBRs aren’t just a quarterly obligation. They’re a critical part of building lasting relationships with your clients. When done right, they help you showcase Perficient’s value, offer strategic recommendations, and ensure that both you and your client are in sync on the path forward. 

By shifting your mindset and treating QBRs as a tool for building trust, you’ll find that sales and client loyalty come naturally. And trust me, once you’ve experienced that shift, you’ll never look at QBRs as a headache again!

Customer experience remains a top priority for organizations worldwide to gain and retain business. Even one unsatisfactory experience can cause customers to turn to a competitor, causing estimated losses of up $1.6 trillion in the United States annually. On the other hand, good omnichannel experiences turn connections into lasting experiences, brands into trusted partners, and customers into life-long advocates.

IDC Market Glance: Customer Experience Services, 3Q24

Perficient is excited to announce that we have been included in the IDC Market Glance: Customer Experience Services, 3Q24, doc # US51521224, August 2024 report. According to IDC, “IT Services Providers supply services around technology advice, implementation and integration, management and support.”

Our strategists employ customer experience approaches including Journey Science, a part of our strategic formulation approach called the Envision Framework to help clients quickly identify opportunities, define a customer-focused vision, and develop a prioritized roadmap to transform their business. We believe our inclusion in this report recognition reaffirms our expertise leveraging digital capabilities to build seamless, personalized, and satisfying customer journeys.

Operationalize Your Digital Customer Experience Strategy

The future of customer experience is customer obsession. Our experts help you deliver ongoing and extraordinary value to your customers and reinforce and operationalize that experience through digital marketing. We help you understand your customers and their journeys and pair it with data to make your strategy more informed, measurable and action-oriented.

To learn more about how Perficient can help optimize your customer experience strategy and execution, visit Customer Experience + Digital Marketing Services / Perficient

Welcome to the world of Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), where digital transformation becomes a reality. If you’ve landed here, you’re already on your way to making significant strides in your organization or your career.

In a digital era where data reigns supreme, and the Customer Data Platform (CDP) landscape is ever-evolving, businesses strive to maximize their investments to thrive in a fiercely competitive market.

Whether you’re a marketer or an aspiring AEP developer, this blog is your go-to resource. Together, we’ll lay the foundation for building schemas and crafting strategies from scratch. Using a real-life example, I’ll break down the requirements and demonstrate how to translate them into a technical blueprint for your schemas.

Now, let’s dive into the core components: Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), XDM (Experience Data Model), Schemas, and Field Groups.

XDM: The Universal Language

Imagine XDM as the universal language for digital experiences. It’s like a rulebook crafted by Adobe to decipher customer experience data. When you work with AEP, ensuring your data speaks this XDM language is crucial. It streamlines data management, much like ensuring all puzzle pieces share the same shape for a perfect fit.

Schemas: The Blueprints

AEP relies on schemas, which act as templates, to maintain consistent and organized data. Schemas describe how your data looks and where it should reside within the platform, providing a structured framework to keep everything working in an orderly fashion.

Field Groups: The Organizers

Now, enter Field Groups – the unsung heroes within AEP. They resemble categorized drawers in your data cabinet, ensuring data consistency and organization within your schemas. Each Field Group is like a labelled drawer, helping you effectively organize your data points.

In practical terms, XDM is the language spoken by all the toys in your store. Schemas provide blueprints for your toy displays, and Field Groups are the labelled drawers that keep your toys organized. Together, they ensure your toy store runs smoothly, helping you offer personalized toy recommendations, like finding the perfect toy for each child in your store.

Now that we’ve grasped the fundamentals let’s apply them to a real-life scenario:

Real-Life Use Case: Lead Generation Example

Imagine you’re on a mission to enhance your data collection and personalization use cases using AEP.  Your goal is to send data to both Adobe Analytics [to keep your power users engaged while they level up their skills in Customer Journey Analytics] and Customer Journey Analytics [being future-ready for omnichannel journey analysis] simultaneously, ensuring a seamless analysis process. To achieve this, you need to configure data collection on your website and send specific data points.

Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty. You’re running a lead generation site, and you want to track several data points:

• You aim to monitor all traffic data related to web page details.
• You’re keen on tracking interactions with Call-to-Action (CTA) links.
• You want to capture custom form tracking information, including the form name and the specific form event.
• Additionally, you have your eyes on tracking videos, complete with their names and the events associated with them.
• To top it off, once users authenticate, you intend to pass User ID information. More importantly, this ID will serve as a Person ID to stitch users across channels in future.
• And, of course, capturing valuable web page information such as the web page template, web page modification date, and the corresponding business unit.

Now that we’ve listed our requirements, the next step is translating them into an XDM schema. This schema will serve as the blueprint to encompass all these data points neatly and effectively.

Breaking Down the Requirements

Navigating the AEP Technical Landscape

To effectively implement data collection on our website using the AEP Web SDK, we’ll start by integrating the ‘AEP Web SDK ExperienceEvent’ predefined field group into our schema. This step ensures that our schema includes field definitions for data automatically collected by the AEP Web SDK (Alloy) library.

Additionally, considering that we’re dealing with website data, which involves time-series records (each with an associated timestamp), we’ll require an ‘Xperience event’ [class] type of schema. This schema is tailored to accommodate this specific data structure, ensuring seamless handling of our web-related records.

Let’s talk about Field Groups:

• Business Requirement: Select AEP Web SDK Experience Event Template in the schema to send data to AEP.
  • Field Group Type: Adobe’s Predefined Field Groups
  • Field GroupName/Path: Adobe Web SDK Experience Event Template.
    • This is a mandatory field group if you are capturing onsite data using web SDK.

• Business Requirement: Send data to Adobe Analytics from web SDK (traditional eVars,props,events).
  • Field Group Type: Adobe’s Predefined Field Groups
  • Field GroupName/Path: Adobe Analytics ExperienceEvent Template
    • This will take care of all your existing / new Adobe Analytics implementation needs.
    • Using this will eliminate the need to create a processing rule in the Adobe Analytics console if you map directly to evars/prop/events within this field group in schema via Adobe Launch setup.

• Business Requirement: Monitoring all traffic data related to web page details.
  • Field Group Type: Adobe’s Predefined Field Groups
  • Field GroupName/Path: Web Details
    • Path: web.webPageDetails

• Business Requirement: Tracking interactions with Call-to-Action (CTA) links.
  • Field Group Type: Adobe’s Predefined Field Groups
  • Field GroupName/Path: Web Details
    • Path: web.webInteraction

• Business Requirement: Capturing custom form tracking details, including form names and events.
  • Field Group Type: Hybrid: Adobe’s Predefined Field Groups + Custom Field Group.
  • Field GroupName/Path: Web Details
    • Path: web.webInteraction._democompany.form

    • web.webInteraction._democompany.form={
      formName:<form name>,
      formEvent:<form event such as start/complete/error>
      }

      

• Business Requirement: Keeping an eye on video interactions, including video names and associated events.
  • Field Group Type: Hybrid: Adobe’s Predefined Field Groups + Custom Field Group.
  • Field GroupName/Path: Web Details
    • Path: web.webInteraction._democompany.video

    • web.webInteraction._democompany.video={
      videoName:<video name>,
      videoEvent:<video event such as start,stop,milestones etc>
      }

      

• Business Requirement: Business specific custom web page information
  • Field Group Type: Hybrid: Adobe’s Predefined Field Groups + Custom Field Group.
  • Field GroupName/Path: Web Details
    • Path: web.webInteraction._democompany

    • web.webPageDetails._democompany={
      webPageTemplate:<custom web page template>,
      businessUnit:<business unit>
      }

• Business Requirement: Lastly, once users authenticate, pass user ID information.
  • Field Group Type: Custom Field group
  • Field GroupName/Path:_democompany.identity.userID. This is set at the root level
    • Assign this as an Identity, but not as primary [You may wonder why?  see below ].

*_democompany= _perficientincpartnersandbox for us as the tenant ID assigned to our account is perficientincpartnersandbox.

Key Points

Here are the key points and recommendations, explained in simpler terms:

• Understanding Field Groups: Field Groups are like organized drawers for your data. Each field within them is connected to a specific space known as a namespace. Predefined Field Groups come with predefined namespaces, while custom Field Groups are linked to your unique namespace, usually marked by an underscore (_) followed by your company’s name.
• Flexibility to Customize: You can modify predefined field groups, like Web Details, to match your needs. You can do this either through the user interface or using APIs. This flexible approach is what we call a “HYBRID field group.” It lets you adjust according to your requirements. As a result, your custom namespace (usually something like _<your tenant ID/company ID>) takes priority, and all customizations fall under this category. (You can check the final schema below for reference.)
  • Why Use HYBRID Field Groups: If you’re an architect or strategist, creating solutions that are reusable, efficient, and scalable is second nature. That’s why I highly recommend using HYBRID field groups whenever possible. These field groups offer the best of both worlds. They leverage the power of predefined field groups while allowing you to add your custom touch, all within a field group type. It’s like tailoring a ready-made suit to fit you perfectly, saving time and effort while ensuring the best results.
• Choosing a Primary ID: For website data, when it comes to identifying a user, we won’t set this user ID as the primary ID. You might wonder, “What should be the primary ID for on-site data, especially when you might need to connect it with offline data later?” You’re partially correct. While you can use this user ID as an identity to link with offline data, it doesn’t have to be the primary one.

• • Pro-tip: Use the Identity map to include all your possible custom identities by configuring this in the Identify map data element in Adobe Launch. By default, the ECID will be used as the primary identifier for stitching.
  • Using an XDM identityMap field, you can identify a device/user using multiple identities, set their authentication state, and decide which identifier is considered the primary one. If no identifier has been set as primary, the primary defaults to be the ECID

Important Note: Remember that if you specify a primary ID in the schema and it’s missing in a data entry (for example, on pages where users aren’t authenticated and don’t have a user ID), keep in mind that AEP will exclude those data entries because they lack the primary ID we’ve specified. This helps maintain data accuracy and integrity.

We’re making excellent headway! Our requirements have evolved into a detailed technical blueprint. Our XDM schema’s foundation is strong and ready to roll. Just remember, for website data, we use the “experience event” type schema with the experience event class. If we ever need to capture user profiles, we’ll craft an Experience Profile schema with the Experience Profile class. This adaptability ensures we’re prepared for diverse data scenarios.

Schema Creation 

With all the defined field groups, we can now combine this information to construct the schema. When it comes to building your schema, you’ve got two main paths to choose from:

• API-First Approach (Highly Recommended): This is the best approach if you want to align with AEP’s API-first philosophy.
• User-Friendly UI Interface (Great for Simple Use Cases): If the thought of working with APIs sounds intimidating, don’t worry! You can also create schemas through a user-friendly UI interface. This option is perfect for straightforward scenarios and when APIs might seem a bit daunting.

Final Schema Output

In this blog, we’ve opted for the UI method to construct our schema, and here’s the result:

In conclusion, Adobe Experience Platform empowers you to navigate the complex digital landscape easily. By understanding the language, creating blueprints, and organizing your data, you’ll unlock the potential to provide personalized experiences that resonate with your customers. Your journey to digital success has just begun!

Utilizing unique personal and professional experiences, Atlanta-based Adobe marketing expert, Jay Jackson, excels in his role as the Director of Perficient’s Adobe Digital Marketing practice. Before Perficient, Jay held various customer marketing leadership roles. With over 20 years of experience aiding Fortune 500 companies to enhance customer satisfaction, drive organizational efficiencies and boost revenue, he understands what truly matters to customers.  

In addition to his professional credentials, Jay is a passionate world traveler having visited over 107 countries, most recently Thailand. As Jay was interviewing to join Perficient five years ago, he was on a year-and-a-half sabbatical and had his initial interviews with Perficient in Ukraine and Prague. This personal sabbatical and all his traveling experiences allowed him to immerse himself in diverse cultures, languages and perspectives. His experiences have shaped him into a well-rounded leader who can sensitively and objectively adapt to the varying needs of a global workforce.  

Like running with the bulls in Spain, or going on a safari in South Africa, Jay understands that every customer is unique, just like the unique experiences of each country he’s visited. Continue reading to learn how Jay leverages his experiences to grow the practice globally while viewing the implementation of Adobe products as a means to help customers achieve their goals.  

Describe your role. What does a day in the life look like?  

My role as director of the Adobe Digital Marketing practice is twofold. Half of my responsibilities surround sales support to exponentially grow the business. This involves anything from helping prospective customers understand the “Art of the Possible” from an Adobe solution standpoint to building long-lasting “Trusted Advisor” relationships. The other half is delivering value. It’s one thing to simply sell a solution, but it’s another to deliver it well.  This includes project delivery management, solution expertise, sophisticated staffing models, resource hiring/enablement, continuous evaluation/client feedback loops, and ultimately consistent measurement of client objectives to ensure the return on their investment with Perficient. 

What makes you passionate about digital marketing with Adobe?  

Jay Jackson in Thailand

I have a background as a marketer, and I’m passionate about helping our customers make money. I’m not shy about that, it’s why we’re here. It excites me to help customers realize the value of their investments, but it goes beyond that. A lot goes into each client interaction, and each client has different needs and overall goals. Many of our customers are large, multi-national companies with shareholders who want to see a return on their investment, and strategizing how to successfully execute is another main driving factor behind my passion.

Share some insights about your upcoming speaking session at Adobe Summit, “Done in 60 Days: Driving B2B Personalization with Adobe Experience Platform.”

The days of customer experience being the sole domain of B2C experiences are gone. Relevant, personalized, and real-time experiences are required to drive B2B digital marketing objectives. I believe this session gives us a platform to showcase our expertise alongside a global leader in wireless technology as we discuss how we drove end-to-end implementation and bidirectional integration of the Adobe Experience Platform to achieve personalized experiences at scale.  

The work we do and the impact we make, I believe, is why we were selected to present at Adobe’s conference. I look forward to showing the value Perficient brings, in a way that members of the audience recognize our extensive capabilities and expertise.  

Register for the Exclusive Fireside Chat with Perficient and Morgan Stanley 

In addition to the speaking sessions, what are you looking forward to at this year’s Adobe Summit?  

I always look forward to interacting and connecting with existing and prospective customers. Adobe Summit also presents an exciting opportunity to learn new things. There are always announcements of new products and capabilities at Summit, and as head of the delivery arm, it’s important that I’m in the know with the latest information to better inform our roadmaps. Beyond the announcements, the labs at the conference also allow me to understand the technology and remain technically competent from a hands-on perspective, ensuring I’m properly hiring, managing and mentoring team members.  

What does it mean to you that we’re seeing more opportunities specific to Adobe in analyst relations?  

I believe the increasing opportunities specific to Adobe in analyst relations first and foremost signify enhanced brand recognition. As our brand becomes more prominent in the market, our inclusion in reports from reputable third parties like Forrester, Gartner, or IDC amplifies our brand awareness. In turn, potential customers are becoming more familiar with who we are.  

It’s crucial to not only help people understand our brand but also to demonstrate our expertise through these unbiased report inclusions. While advertising is one approach to increasing our brand recognition, having our capabilities objectively outlined by organizations with no stake in Perficient’s or Adobe’s success is another level of credibility altogether. It not only enhances our credibility but, in my opinion, also significantly boosts our brand recognition and exemplifies our Adobe capabilities.  

LEARN MORE: Perficient Included in Forrester’s Adobe Services Landscape, Q1 2024 Report 

How are you making a difference at Perficient?  

I’ve been driving growth and I feel it has several impacts; one simply being that we’re obtaining more business, which impacts Perficient’s overall goals and revenue. In turn, this has an effect on how we hire and retain resources. As we intentionally instill our culture throughout the organization, that could be tied to Perficient regularly being named a Best Place to Work, stemming directly from employee insights. If our colleagues are happy, we’re more likely to make our customers happy, and we’ve seen this create opportunities for future projects.  

What made you choose Perficient, and what keeps you here?  

The true differentiator was the ability to work with numerous customers within multiple verticals and industries with a vast array of challenges to be solved with individualized Adobe solutions.  

As I went through the interview process, it was clear from my new boss that the ultimate goal was to construct a new Adobe Digital Marking practice.  Initially starting as Adobe Digital Marketing “Employee #1,” throughout the past five years, I’m proud to say we’ve grown to a team of more than 30 direct colleagues worldwide supporting every solution within the Adobe Experience Cloud portfolio (with hundreds more indirectly supporting data services, QA, project management, etc.). We continue building and expanding our global resources, and our unique growth trajectory year over year allows us to see continued success.  

What are your proudest accomplishments?  

There have been a lot of great moments at Perficient. Some are very timely like being selected by Qualcomm, Morgan Stanley, and Adobe to showcase our expertise at Adobe Summit in two speaking sessions. In a broader scope, I’m proud of Adobe’s perspective of Perficient, and our recognition as a trusted partner. Also, being named an Adobe Partner of the Year for the Americas last year at Summit was a testament to our outstanding Adobe business unit at Perficient. Most importantly, however, is helping our clients succeed – it’s what contributes to our repeat business rate of more than 94%.

READ MORE: Perficient Named 2023 Adobe Digital Experience Emerging Partner of the Year, Americas 

Why are you Proudly Perficient?  

I’m proud to be a part of Perficient because of the flexibility and autonomy of my role. There are plenty of companies that do Adobe work, but being at Perficient gives me the autonomy to drive results derived from my experience and do what’s right for our customers and Perficient. Building the practice from the ground up allowed me to create the rules as I went along. There’s a level of trust that’s bestowed upon me to drive results, and I think those results have spoken for themselves. Nonetheless, I couldn’t have gotten here without the autonomy and trust in the first place.  

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT   

It’s no secret our success is because of our people. No matter the technology or time zone, our colleagues are committed to delivering innovative, end-to-end digital solutions for the world’s biggest brands, and we bring a collaborative spirit to every interaction. We’re always seeking the best and brightest to work with us. Join our team and experience a culture that challenges, champions, and celebrates our people.   

Visit our Careers page to see career opportunities and more!   

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. 

There’s a new type of environment known as a Rapid Development Environment (RDE) with Adobe’s Cloud Service. This environment was specifically made with developers in mind to accelerate code deployments and other development activities in Cloud Service. We’ve had a chance to use the RDE to better understand its capabilities, strengths, and gaps.

Pipelines in an AEMaaCS program are often executing and busy during high development activity, which is one of the main reasons for using an RDE. If a developer isn’t using an RDE and needs to validate that their code will work in Cloud Service, they may experience delays waiting on the traditional pipelines.

With an RDE, the developer can deploy within minutes or less, greatly accelerating the development workflow. Compare this scenario to the traditional CI/CD pipeline which can take hours or longer due to additional code security and quality checks.

Where the RDE Resides in a Program and the Deployment Lifecycle

The RDE is generally available as an environment on a per-program basis. Depending on the size of the team and anticipated activity within a program, additional RDEs can also be provisioned, however, this may come at an additional licensing cost from Adobe.

Creating an Rapid Development Environment

The RDE can be provisioned with a Program via Cloud Manager in AEM as a Cloud Service. In the Environments view, select “Add Environment” and then choose the RDE from the environment type. Provide a name and the region for where the RDE is to be provisioned.

Once the RDE creation is completed, it’s available as a blank-slate environment. Note that the RDE will have an author and publish environment segment. This is different from a standard environment, which also includes a preview environment.

Deploying to RDEs

The RDE can be deployed via automation in tools like Jenkins or from a developer’s local workstation using Adobe’s command-line interface.

The command-line interface is one of the easiest ways to deploy content to the RDE, also known as Adobe I/O Runtime Extensible CLI (or aio CLI for short.) In this simple example, a content package is deployed with the aio aem:rde:install command.

Similar commands can be executed for deploying content files, dispatcher configurations, OSGi configurations, and bundles.

Note: Follow the instructions provided by Adobe on this page to configure your environment for deploying to the RDE(s). 

There are many commands available to use with the RDE including login, installation, deletion of bundles and packages, status, and even resetting or restarting the RDE. Detailed instructions on the commands can be found on the Adobe GitHub page. 

If you’re planning to deploy to the RDE from an internal build mechanism such as Jenkins, then there are a few additional considerations to account for. Jenkins does not support the use of aio CLI. This means an environment will need to be created such as an AWS EC2 instance so that aio CLI can be installed and used. 

Resetting an RDE 

There will be times, particularly when the purpose of an RDE changes, that it may need to be reset. Resetting an RDE simply means bringing the environment back to a state of no content or code installed. This is essentially the same as recreating the RDE, which may also be an option. As mentioned earlier, the RDE can be reset as well using the aio CLI command. For more options and details on resetting the RDE for your program, review Adobe’s documentation on Experience League on this page. 

Multiple Developer Scenarios

As with any development team, there will be a need for developers to collaborate on their development activities in a shared environment. As such, the need for each developer to have the RDE as a deployment target will come about. But if only one RDE is allowed or in use, then the development team will need to coordinate their code changes so that the features being worked on don’t interfere or overwrite each other. The recommended approach here is to commit code changes to a shared git branch before deploying to the RDE. This ensures that developers on the team will have the appropriate changes done by other developers.

Appropriate Use Cases 

The RDE is certainly a nice addition to a program in AEM as a Cloud Service. We love that it allows for quick deployments to a cloud-based environment for quick validation and accelerating the developer workflow. That said, it makes sense to focus on feature development that is intended to work on Cloud Service environments. Things that can be easily developed like templates, components, workflows, sling models, or other functionality are better suited for the developer’s local environment.  

 Here are four considerations before moving forward with using the RDE.

1. Not all Forms development features are available in the RDE, such as configuring the Document of Record (DoR) for an Adaptive Form.
2. The RDE lacks a preview environment, unlike other environments in a Program.
3. Each developer does not automatically have an RDE provisioned and, depending on the team size, additional RDEs would need to be licensed and purchased from Adobe.
4. There are other various pieces of functionality that may not work as other Cloud Environments, such as support for viewing and debugging front-end code deployed via a CM Front-End Pipeline. See the Adobe documentation page that describes some of these differences between the RDE and other environments.

Wrap-Up and Further Reading 

Rapid Development Environments provided for AEM as a Cloud Service programs are a great addition to the suite of tools available to improve the development workflow. One of our favorite features is the ability to deploy dispatcher configurations. This can save a lot of time for developers. Particularly, when the configured pipelines for other environments are more rigid and don’t allow for quick deployments to test out Apache functionality.  

Check out more of our AEM as a Cloud Service development and deployment-related blogs for more help making informed decisions for your own implementations. 

 Thank you for reading! 

In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for success. One of the most effective strategies in today’s landscape is personalization. Understanding and implementing personalization techniques can significantly enhance customer engagement, conversion rates, and brand loyalty.

Perficient’s very own David San Filippo has authored yet another blog post that has been featured in CMSWire: “Mastering Personalization in Digital Marketing Strategy,” which offers an in-depth exploration of this critical aspect of modern marketing. Within David’s blog post, you will find the following information to assist you in your personalization journey.

• The Importance of Personalization
• Understanding Customer Behavior
• Creating a Personalization Framework
• Leveraging Technology
• Balancing Automation and Human Touch
• Measuring and Iterating

“Mastering Personalization in Digital Marketing Strategy” is an invaluable resource for marketers looking to take their digital marketing efforts to the next level. By providing a comprehensive guide to understanding, implementing, and refining personalization techniques, this post equips readers with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed in today’s competitive landscape.

We highly recommend giving this article a thorough read. It’s not just a guide—it’s a roadmap to unlocking the full potential of personalization in your digital marketing endeavors. So, go ahead and dive in; your audience will thank you for it!

Read the full article here: “Mastering Personalization in Digital Marketing Strategy”

Welcome to the continuation of our multi-part series on using Content Automation in AEM as a Cloud Service to accelerate your creative operations. To gain a more comprehensive understanding, make sure to check out Part 1 of this series which gives an overview of the feature by Adobe, along with helpful use cases and Part 2 for a walkthrough of applying Lightroom filters to Assets. In this third segment, we will take a closer look at the creative operations within Adobe Photoshop, and how this process is replicated in AEM as a Cloud Service.

Creative Operations Process in Adobe Photoshop

In this example, we’re going to walk through the process of running an action script in Photoshop, crafting a processing profile in AEM as a Cloud Service, and running the same actions script on multiple images:

1) Start the process by creating and selecting the primary image from a photo shoot.

2) Configure the image export settings, including quality adjustments such as 100% quality:

3) Make a request to have the image color-treated in each of the four quadrants of the image, using the out-of-the-box script in Photoshop.

4) In Photoshop, the treated image is created by loading the image and then executing the Quadrant Colors action:

5) Once the image is treated, it can then be exported as another image with default settings and saved:

6) Both images are uploaded to AEM Assets, in their respective folders.

Content Automation and Processing in AEM

Content Automation facilitates the following setup and the processing can start taking place in AEM:

1) Save the Action script from the actions panel. Do this by selecting the Action Set folder and then selecting the Menu, then “Save Actions”. The resulting actions are saved as file with a “.atn” extension:

2) Upload the Action Set file to a designated folder in AEM Assets:

3) Create a processing profile in AEM:

a) Create a new processing profile:

b) Add a creative processing section:

c) Select a target folder, “Apply Photoshop Action” in the Action script uploaded to AEM Assets, including a specific name of the script, or leave it blank to run all actions. Additionally set quality preferences.

d) Save the processing profile.

e) Apply the profile to a folder so that images uploaded there will run the processing profile.

4) Once the processing profile is created, it will be executed via microservices after an image is uploaded to the assigned folder. This will create an additional rendition, and optionally create an image based on the processing profile.

5) In the Card view, the folder will show the processing profile applied:

6) Upload one or more images to the folder, and note the additional images created from the processing profile, using the same action script from Photoshop.

7) Also note the additional rendition that is created by the processing profile.

After the initial setup of processing profile, any subsequent images uploaded to the designated folder will generate the additional renditions, complete with the color quadrant action script. This demonstrates the capacity to apply Photoshop actions on Assets in AEM as a Cloud Service, without requiring the intervention of creative professionals. Not only does this save many hours of manual steps, but it also opens the door to storing multiple actions in the Cloud, executed by microservices via the processing profiles.

For reference, there are several more processing profiles available with Content Automation, detailed below:

Wrap-Up and Further Reading

In addition to Content Automation, Adobe has several solutions for integrating AEM as a Cloud Service Assets and Creative Cloud applications. See their best practices documentation to explore some of the use cases.

The integration of AEM and Creative Cloud applications offers a multitude of possibilities for efficiency gains. Marketing teams can quickly develop web-focused assets, apply batch color treatments such as demonstrated in this example, and even incorporate logos or remove backgrounds. The potential for additional executed actions is limitless.

We hope this has given a great walkthrough on how to work with Content Automation in AEM as a Cloud Service. Thank you for reading!

If you’ve been involved in even a few usability testing projects, you’ve likely seen how participants can get tripped up in seemingly unexpected ways. Over the years, it appeared to me that tests with B2B audiences seemed more likely to go off the rails. Even though we follow common research methods — such as creating natural scenarios and tasks, using high-fidelity mockups, asking people to think aloud — there’s something about these users that makes them different.

Recently, I went back through a variety of tests to look for root causes of problems, and how to mitigate them for better outcomes. In this post I share several situations I’ve encountered in B2B usability testing (focused mostly on product catalog experiences). And I provide suggestions on what you can do to build better tests. I should note that these arose during moderated tests, since as you’ll read, most of these situations would likely derail an unmoderated test.

And while the focus is on B2B audiences — such as customers, buyers, partners, suppliers, retailers — you might find the topics of this post apply non-B2B situations as well, with employees or “prosumers.” In many ways it’s about the user and their knowledge of your business and industry. Taken together, these examples are somewhat interrelated, but I’ve tried to make them stand alone for different situations.

Reasons why B2B Research is More Complex

While the primary topic of this post is about planning for better B2B usability testing, there are a few things worth pointing out that relate to the generally complex nature of B2B digital experiences:

• Professional audiences, more granular personas: B2B tools are used by people who have specialized knowledge, and a variety of specific job responsibilities that involve interacting with your company frequently.
• Complex decisions: Often the digital research phase for B2B products and services reflects complex purchases and multi-step buying processes, with participation by many individuals. Often we see more rational fact-finding activities.
• Difficulty in finding participants: Along with nuances in planning and conducting the research itself, finding B2B participants can be time consuming and costly, given the complex roles and organizational contexts in recruitment. For example, time spent on the test while at work, compensation, and discussion of confidential or sensitive activities.
• Designers/researchers need specialized knowledge: Designers of the testing/prototypes and researchers need to be close to the subject at hand (deep domain expertise) to fully understand products/services, roles/responsibilities, and develop meaningful scenarios. This is often much more complex than B2C contexts.
  With that in mind, here are five situations you might encounter with B2B audience usability testing.

How to Improve your B2B Usability Testing

1. Be Aware of the Whole Scenario

The situation: Quite often when you’re optimizing a large platform you want to test just a portion of a site. For example, you are updating product listing and detail page functionality for eCommerce, and you’re testing if users are more successful in finding a product using new filtering and page design.

How B2B audiences might go wrong: Crafting a natural experience might involve users first navigating an existing home page or landing page where they encounter poor content/UX, or they have to interact with a product catalog taxonomy that is overly complex (or overly simple).

Also, if your expected B2B participants have a strong knowledge of your existing web site (which you know is poor), they might have already developed non-optimal workarounds or ways to get to where you task them to go. They might just want to put a part number in search (or a product description you mentioned). Be prepared to redirect and learn from these odd behaviors.

Being aware of the whole scenario here means that you need to carefully assess all elements of the experience that your participant might encounter and think of how some shortcomings you haven’t yet addressed can affect your ability to test your new features in a natural way. Make sure what you really want to test doesn’t get hung up by what comes before.

A solution would be to clean up and prepare more pages of the flow than you expected. You may have to take screenshots of existing pages and remove pieces of content, creating a simpler prototype that directs and doesn’t derail. You might have to create a simpler product catalog list, so they can find the category you want them to.

2. Mockup Data Can Muck Up Testing

The situation: When testing B2B prototypes, “bad data” — either made up, or from another product — can be worse than “lorem ipsum” as stand-in copy.

How B2B audiences might go wrong: Like testing around existing content that is not optimal, the use of bad data for B2B mockups can stop the user in their tracks. It’s always important to make sure your prototypes match the “industry knowledge” of the user, and it can be surprising how much your customers know. I’ve had situations where a person instantly noticed that several product images on a results page mockup were not correct. I also had people scan model numbers in a repair parts table and say they didn’t go with the product. These are not things we’re trying to test!

A solution to this is to make mockups with real data. But because UX/UI design doesn’t specifically need good data to create effective solutions, it can take more time during the process. It’s not overly critical, and you can probably get by if you set the stage with the user. Reiterate that the experience is a “fake picture” of the website, and “some things are not wired up” and “some data isn’t correct.”

3. When Savviness Drives Speediness (and Missing Things)

The situation: You might encounter a person who spends all day on sites like yours, has specific preexisting experience on your site, and who has an overly confident sense of “how these things work.” It might even be that the person has some experience in testing websites.

How B2B audiences might go wrong: Once I gave a participant the typical introduction about “asking for help in evaluating our revised site functionality…” and “we’re going to give you a few tasks related to finding products.” We began with a task where navigating to product details involved interacting with many UI elements that we wanted to observe (drilling down, filtering, reviewing results). I asked “can you describe what you see here” on the product listing page, in which the person then zoomed all around talking about all sorts of things up and down the page and what they thought everything did and what might happen if they clicked on them, etc.

I think this person didn’t do so well later throughout, not because of the UX/UI, but because they never got “into the zone” of being a typical user performing specific tasks. It was tough to get them to move through the screens, and each time they wanted to deconstruct all the features.

Mitigating this situation: First, be aware that some B2B people might not want to test the way you would like, they might just want to talk about your business. And second, there’s a challenge in evaluating interfaces: it’s best to spend most of your time observing what people do, it’s not always useful to ask them about functionality. In this case, even though the person claims they used web sites like this “all the time,” I didn’t get much out of their session.

4. Be Aware of “Task Switching”

Here’s an odd instance where again a person who has a great deal of knowledge about your products might go beyond the task at hand and use the site quite differently than expected.

What happened: This was a typical series of tasks with minimal prompting along the way, I was ready to coach if they get stuck. At one point I had the participant look at a product detail page designed with several tabs of different information. I asked them “now, if you wanted to see what is included in the package, where would you look?” The goal was simply to get to the “Specifications” tab and find the bullet.

But I could tell as they talked out loud that they changed my task to something like “find out if this specific item is the one that comes with the extra bracket” which led them to start looking for a comparison grid feature (which wasn’t on any other tab or anywhere on the site) to compare all the models in the family. They also pointed out that the product variant selector (a menu to change models) didn’t actually include enough data to “get to the product that had the bracket!”

I think the issue here is that in creating the new UI for the detail pages we didn’t select an average product to comp — we selected a top-selling, super popular product — which makes sense as something to show off during design, plus it had a lot of variants and other nuances. The problem was the knock-on effect this created where during testing, the person who purchases these products all the time still relies on printed literature – which does feature a comparison grid.

Perhaps if we also had a less common product mocked up, we could obtain a better focus on the pieces we were most interested in that iteration. But, while they didn’t actually find “what is in the package,” they did provide insight into some very different features that all B2B customers would find useful, and gave us a new story to understand the research-to-purchase journey.

5. When Usability Testing Turns into Contextual Inquiry

These examples lead me to a summary topic about B2B testing. Personally, I’m always ready to have these moderated usability tests turn into contextual inquiry. While we conduct contextual inquiry during early discovery stages of a product, and do a lot of planning with internal subject matter experts, I think it’s best to be ready to go with the flow.

Said another way, to the extent you have more professional, skilled audiences, with a variety of responsibilities, who have knowledge of your business and site, who are going through complex buying decisions, the more likely they might deliberately or accidentally give you something different than you expect.

And if you have difficulty in finding participants, you likely are doing a lot less testing, which is unfortunate but also means you must make the most of your time with them.

So, make sure to have some deeper questions prepared, to be able to ask them if something goes wrong, or if you can get more time with an individual.

Some things your could learn from your participants:

• How they define their job responsibilities (how many hats do they wear)
• To what extent their company is more progressive than peers
• What other kinds of systems/platforms they use to do their daily work
• What is in front of them when they use your website
• How they view your company vs. competitors

Tip: These insights help create more granular personas.

Summary

In this post I’ve identified many ways in which your best laid plans for B2B usability testing might go astray, with the following suggestions:

• Assess the whole experience, make sure existing bad experiences don’t get in the way of the flow
• Use real data as much as possible, or clearly indicate “this is not real data”
• It’s OK to ask people what they think certain functionality does, but do this after you observe them working on the main tasks
• Your time with B2B users is precious — be ready to switch to a broader discussion if that’s how they would like to interact with you
• Be prepared to run a few pilot tests and adjust depending on what happens, before you put it in front of more people.

Bonus Point: When it comes to analysis, be thoughtful about interpreting the results. Did the customer have trouble because of the new experience or design, or because they got tripped up by something out of place in the mockup, or maybe both, or something else entirely? It’s not as simple as pass or fail with B2B audiences.

Can we Help?

If you’re looking for help with B2B usability testing, contact our experience design research experts.

Identifying Opportunities in a Cookie-less World

In Part 1 of this series, we explored the disruption and impact that impending policies around the restricted use or removal of third-party cookies are poised to bring to the digital advertising and marketing industry. As we stand at the cusp of this change, it is important to embrace a new paradigm.

This article will discuss where opportunities lie, aiming to minimize disruption in personalization & optimization, ad experiences, data partnerships, and visitor analytics.

Personalization & Optimization

1. Personalization: Building first party data and maintaining a unified online domain

The significance of first party data has never been more evident. It is more accurate and more actionable. By harnessing tools like machine learning, different in-session algorithms can be built tailoring real time experiences for individual customers.

A pivotal facet of this approach is its device agnostic nature, increasing its effectiveness. Moreover, maintaining a single domain consolidates first party data, enabling seamless authentication and persistent identification throughout the user’s website journey.

Augmenting first-party data with people-centric identifiers, such user IDs or email address (or hashed values) is a way to reach personalization goals.

2. Optimization: Crafting Probabilistic experience Journeys

Leveraging geographic, demographic, and behavioral data collected from first-party sources can help in building customer segments. These segments can be analyzed to determine who is mostly likely to purchase, drop, or go inactive.

Experiences can be tailored based on the behavior shown and segment attribution to optimize conversion in likely buyers.

Ad Experiences & Marketing

1. Contextual Advertising: a Paradigm Shift

In the absence of historical third-party cookie data contextual advertising emerges as a strong alternative. By evaluating the current context and user actions, advertisers can analyze webpage or app content to deliver relevant ads. For instance, the topic or keywords on a landing page can inform ad delivery, aligned with the user’s immediate interests and behavior.

2. Synergy of First Party Data, Offline Data & Machine Learning:

Combining user specific identifiers (like ID, email ID/hashed email ID, phone number) captured via first party behavioral data with offline CRM records and harnessing the power of Machine learning & segmentation can yield dynamic ad experiences. These experiences adapt to user preferences, grounded in real-time & offline data analysis.

3. Forging Second Party Relationships: Unleashing Collective Potential

Establishing Second party relationships involves the reciprocal sharing of first party data through a mutual/contractual agreement (by dropping a container on the partner’s website or by exchanging files).

Particularly beneficial when businesses share overlapping customer bases, this approach facilitates enhanced segmentation delivering more relevant ad experiences. Consider scenarios where credit cards companies can collaborate with entities in the electronics, travel, and retail sectors.

Visitor Analytics

One privacy-friendly method, “Server-Side Tracking”,  can be utilized to track user behavior. This method entails the tracking and storage of user behavior at the server level, eliminating the use of cookies.

Leading analytics tools like Adobe Analytics (Google Analytics & many more) offer Data insertion APIs that enable server-side tracking. Data collected in XML format is directly sent to Adobe servers, where it can be read and activated for various platforms. A unique ID is given to every new visitor based a combination of user agent, IP address, and other points.

Key capabilities include:

• Event tracking data- Clicks, Page Views, Form Submissions, Video Milestones
• API based data tracking & insertion- Tracking data for behavior on third party platforms

Conclusion

Embracing a new paradigm, characterized by server-side tracking, switching to first-party data collection, soliciting consent for data collection, and fostering second-party partnerships lays the foundation for navigating a digital world in the third-party cookie less era.

What’s next?

Stayed tuned for our next article: “Cookies less Visitor Data Collection”.

The pandemic has changed the way we think about our time and how we use it. We have become more selective in our commitments and are more likely to attend events that offer a clear benefit or return on investment. In this blog post, we will explore how attitudes towards time and event attendance have changed, and provide tips for improving event registrations.

The pandemic changed our culture, in business and personal life, leading to time becoming more valuable.

The pandemic has changed things for us in more ways than one. In business, it has forced companies and organizations to redefine their operations and adapt quickly to the new normal. On a personal level, it has made people realize that time is a finite resource and should be spent wisely. People are no longer willing to attend events or activities that don’t offer clear benefits or returns on their investment.

This shift in attitude is seen in how businesses operate now compared to before the pandemic. Companies were forced to adapt in creative ways such as investing in video conferencing tools for virtual meetings and hiring freelancers instead of full-time employees. Now that many of their employees successfully work remotely, they are shedding office space and realizing cost savings.

At the same time, people have become more conscious about how they spend their time outside work as well. Instead of attending events that may not benefit them, they are investing time into projects or activities that help them grow professionally or personally.

Commuting has also seen a sharp decrease due to many people now working from home. This change not only reduces on their travel costs, but also gives people more time to pursue hobbies or to spend time with their loved ones – reducing stress and improving overall wellbeing.

Around half of Americans report that they are currently reevaluating their lives and work/life balance. People are prioritizing quality time on activities like working out, meditating or learning something new that would previously have taken up too much valuable space on their overflowing agendas.

People are less likely to commit to events, especially if there’s no clear benefit or ROI for them.

Time is now seen as a precious commodity, something that should be used efficiently and with purpose. People are less likely to commit to events that interfere with their personal lives and/or don’t clearly demonstrate a benefit or return on time investment (ROI).

People want to make sure they get something tangible from attending an event, whether it’s knowledge, new contacts, or skills. Before committing to an event, people look for clear advantages and opportunities for growth. They want to ensure that their investment will pay off in some way.

Gathering information before attending an event helps people decide whether it’s worth their while. They often research potential speakers and topics covered beforehand, looking out for points of interest that could enhance their future prospects. Many people also read reviews from previous attendees in order to assess if the event is right for them.

It’s no wonder that many events have had lower post-pandemic attendance rates as people become increasingly wary about where and how they invest their time. The uncertain economy has also caused organizations to cut back on travel budgets – making webinars more attractive.

In today’s world time really is money – if you can’t guarantee a worthwhile ROI then people may choose not to attend. It’s essential for organizers to be transparent about what attendees can expect from any given event so their audience knows exactly what they’re getting into before committing their time.

Tips for how to improve event registrations.

As events become increasingly competitive, organizers must ensure their offerings stand out among the crowd. Here are some tips to help improve registrations:

1. Clearly communicate the event’s value proposition. People need to know why they should invest their time in attending, so be sure to clearly outline what attendees can expect from it. This could include keynote speakers, networking opportunities or exclusive discounts and offers.

2. Build a presence on social media platforms. Creating an active presence on social media is a great way to spread awareness of your events and engage with potential attendees. Make use of targeted advertising campaigns to reach people who are likely to be interested in your topics and create posts that are visually engaging, informative and relevant to the topic being discussed at the event.

3. Offer incentives for early registrations or group bookings. Offering discounts or other incentives can be a great way to encourage people to register as early birds or as part of a larger group booking – which helps boost overall attendance numbers too! Consider rewards such as free e-books, special access codes for virtual events or even discounted tickets for future events – anything that adds value for those who sign up quickly or bring more people along.

4. Promote content related to the event ahead of time. Releasing teaser videos, sharing blogs about topics that will be discussed at the event, or even conducting polls can all help build anticipation and excitement.

5. Collect feedback from past attendees and use it to improve future events. Feedback from past attendees gives organizers insights into what worked well and what didn’t work so well, allowing them to make improvements where necessary and ultimately increase registrations over time!

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. 

• Maximize the available data 

• • 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.). 

• Automate Journeys with personalized messages 

• • 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. 

• Content should be well thought out and tested 

• • 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. 

• Keep up with release notes 

• • 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. 

• Utilize the available studios within SFMC 

• • 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. 

• Ensure your team is certified and takes advantage of all training 

• • 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.   

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) enables you to deliver relevant, personalized journeys across channels and devices, enabling your marketing team to deliver the right messages to your customers at the right time. It includes integrated solutions for customer journey management, email, mobile, social, web personalization, advertising, content creation and management, and data analysis.  

Perficient has delivered more than 540 Salesforce engagements, and the majority of those have been built on or integrated with Marketing Cloud. Our tried and true solutions enable our customers to: 

• Increase subscribers and engagement  
• Create a streamlined customer journey across all digital marketing channels 
• Personalize customer experiences 
• Gain insights from marketing data and make data-driven decisions 
• Increase ad clicks

So You’re Considering Marketing Cloud… 

We’ve compiled 10 considerations for those who are just starting out with Marketing Cloud. Review the below, and to learn more about how to make the most of Marketing Cloud, click here.  

1. Data migration can be extremely complex and should be approached as its own project. Starting with the documentation and plan, ensure that all teams are in agreement to the overall plan (including everything from budget to specific data sets that will be migrated). Once the data has been migrated and QA is complete and approved, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Configuration is a significant next step.
   • Ensure you have the primary key (SalesforceID if the instance will be integrated with the Salesforce platform (SFDC).
   • If your company plans to integrate with Salesforce Data Cloud, ensure you have a team well-versed in it. After Data Cloud is implemented, the data architecture for the integration with SFMC will need to be well mapped out (ensure the proper data is synced with either SFMC or other systems). Please note, Data Cloud currently only supports Marketing Cloud Enterprise 2.0 accounts.
2. Ensure you have the right team (internal and/or agency) that can get SFMC, along with any integrations, up and running properly.
   • Starting with a new email service is no small task, and SFMC requires a full implementation and ramp-up plan for a newly dedicated IP Warming. 
3. Explore the proposed contract thoroughly.
   • Ensure there will be the correct amount of super messages.
   • How many SAPs for how many business units/expected deployment?
   • Private domains?
   • How many contacts were purchased vs. volume?
   • Support level? 
   • Does the organization need a sandbox (do you know what that looks like for SFMC?)
   • Or is there a need to set up a sandbox folder system with limited access for devs?
4. Optional SFMC Studios or Integrations (a few possibilities are listed below, but there are endless possibilities on the SFMC AppExchange). 
   • Analytics Studio 
   • Google Analytics
   • Query Studio
   • Tableau 
   • DESelect  
5. Know SFMC lingo/terms
   • Data extension
   • Content Detective
   • Guided send
   • Send classification
   • AMPScript
   • Content blocks 
6. SFMC training topics
   • SFMC Templates can be utilized as a basis for brand consistency in emails.
   • How many will your team need?
   • Are there email examples you have seen in your everyday life that you like? If so, what did you enjoy about them? Is there a possibility to use similar ideas for this brand?
   • Journey Builder
   • Automation Studio
   • Contact Builder 
7. Explore your data strategy.
   • Where will your data be stored (CRM or data warehouse)?
   • What does your data architecture look like?  
     • Is it fully approved by all necessary teams (marketing, legal, and compliance)?
   • Will data need to be imported from other sources, or will APIs (REST or SOAP) be integrated?
   • Will there need to be segmentation queries configured to define ongoing audiences?
   • Will there be a custom preference center configured? If so, what will the options for unsubscribing or changing subscription preferences?
   • Settings for business units or global unsubscribe options 
8. SFMC users
   • Ensure that all users have clearly defined roles within SFMC and that their user login is associated with their correct role. Also, ensure that they will have the correct permission levels for their job. 
9. Documentation 
   • All processes within Salesforce should be well documented. If an employee (either internal or agency) is out of pocket, the documentation should be available to allow another user to read and be aware of the overall goal and how to make any changes should they be necessary. 
10. Sunsetting the old platform (to allow subscribers to unsubscribe or engage with recent emails).
    • Sync data over to ensure any unsubscribes are not missed during this transition (typically 30-60 days)

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.