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Today’s customers expect a personalized experience that caters to their unique needs and interests. But, managing this at scale can be a hassle, especially with a fragmented marketing tech stack.
That’s where Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) steps in. It’s more than just a set of marketing tools; it’s a unified platform designed to elevate customer experience across the entire journey. This all-in-one platform empowers you to craft targeted, personalized experiences across every touchpoint – from email marketing and social media ads to customer journey mapping and laser-sharp audience segmentation.
By following the best practices and insights in this blog, your marketing cloud email specialists can unlock the full potential of SFMC. Let’s dive in and start creating marketing magic!
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
SFMC is a marketing automation platform with a comprehensive toolkit. It encompasses everything from data unification and email automation to social media insights and inbound marketing strategies.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers a suite of applications that empower you to:
- Break down data silos and gain a single, 360-degree view of your customers.
- Craft personalized content and experiences that resonate with each customer’s unique interests and actions.
- Streamline workflows and automate repetitive tasks, freeing you to focus on strategic initiatives.
- Track campaign results to learn what works and constantly improve your marketing strategy.
By leveraging SFMC’s capabilities, you can create seamless customer journeys that foster deeper engagement and loyalty and drive business growth. A Forrester study revealed a 299% ROI over three years for companies using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, along with the other notable quantified benefits:
| Metric | Benefit |
| Incremental Revenue | Over $5 million increase across channels |
| Site Conversion Rate | 60% increase in year three |
| Average Order Value | 35% increase in year three |
| Campaign Efficiency | Saved 60% of time building and running campaigns |
| Reporting Efficiency | Reduced post-campaign reporting efforts by 90% |
We can’t guarantee a specific ROI, as results will vary depending on your unique marketing strategy. But we can equip you with the strategies to make the most of this powerful platform.
6 Must-Know SFMC Tips to Optimize Your Campaigns
1. Master Customer Journeys with Journey Builder
Disjointed data and fragmented customer journeys are the biggest hurdles in creating holistic customer experiences.
Journey Builder provides a centralized workspace for creating, managing, and optimizing diverse customer journeys within SFMC. It offers a holistic view of your customers’ interactions across all channels—email, mobile, social media, ads, and more.
This unified perspective empowers you to design personalized experiences that resonate at every stage. You can identify and address customer pain points before they derail your marketing efforts. It ensures you prioritize strategies that resonate with your audience, eliminating wasted resources. Ultimately, you’ll build meaningful connections and fuel brand loyalty by understanding what your customers truly want.
The intuitive drag-and-drop interface of this powerful tool transforms campaign planning by–
- Crafting engaging campaigns tailored to specific customer segments.
- Streamlining workflows by automating repetitive tasks.
- Tracking key metrics for maximum impact based on real-time data.
So, how do you unlock the Journey builder’s efficiency?
To maximize the effectiveness of Journey Builder, follow these key best practices:
- Focus on Specific Goals: Keep journeys clear and focused on single objectives, like onboarding new customers or re-engaging dormant leads.
- Plan Ahead: Before building your journey, map out the customer experience and identify the data and content you need.
- Start Simple & Scale Up: Begin with basic journeys like triggered emails or short message series. This approach allows you to test your strategy and gather data before adding complexity.
- The Power of Timing: Strategically schedule data updates and automation to avoid conflicts and ensure a smooth customer experience.
- Utilize Pre-Built Templates: Leverage pre-built journeys (templates) as a starting point. Customize them to fit your specific needs and save valuable time.
- Pause & Resume with Control: Use pause and resume features to halt messages for strategic reasons or content updates temporarily.
2. Expand Your Audience with Email Marketing Automation
SFMC’s Email Studio simplifies email marketing automation. Users of all technical backgrounds can create, send, and track targeted email campaigns. Email Studio integrates seamlessly with the platform, allowing you to pull data and content for a more cohesive marketing experience.
Follow these steps to get the most out of your email campaigns–
- Offer Multiple Sign-Up Opportunities: Make it easy for users to subscribe by placing signup forms on your website, mobile app, and social media pages.
- Leverage Valuable Resources: Offer gated content like webinars, whitepapers, or ebooks in exchange for email addresses.
- Run Loyalty Programs (B2C): Entice customers to sign up with exclusive deals, discounts, and loyalty benefits.
- Utilize Opt-In Forms: Embed single or double opt-in forms strategically on your web and mobile pages to capture leads.
- Create Landing Pages with Web Studio: Design landing pages with built-in opt-in forms to acquire subscribers effortlessly.
3. Identify Your Customer Preferences
While gathering data on new subscribers can be challenging, Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers solutions to understand their preferences. The platform’s built-in profile and subscription centers allow you to manage your subscriber base through segmentation effectively.
Here’s how to use it–
- Profile Center: Allow subscribers to update personal details and basic preferences.
- Subscription Center: Empower subscribers to control which emails they receive from your brand.
- Preference Center: Centralize all subscriber information to create customized profiles for effective segmentation.
4. Analyze User Behavior With Einstein
Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s built-in AI, Einstein, takes the guesswork out of targeting. It analyzes vast amounts of customer data to predict how likely they are to open your emails, click on links, or even unsubscribe.
This lets you deliver highly targeted messages to the right audience at the right time, maximizing engagement and driving results. How?
- Leverage Predictive Intelligence: Use Einstein’s AI capabilities to analyze user data and predict future engagement behavior.
- Segment Audiences with AI-Powered Insights: Create sophisticated audience segments based on predicted behavior without needing data analysts.
- Personalize Emails at Scale with Email Studio Templates: Utilize pre-built templates or build your own personalized email campaigns tailored to different audience segments.
5. Create Templates for Dynamic, Personalized Messaging
Forget wasting time building emails from scratch! Email Studio provides a library of pre-designed, industry-approved templates that are visually appealing and reinforce your brand identity. These time-saving templates are easy to customize with your content, allowing you to launch high-quality email campaigns that get noticed quickly.
With templates that come with SFMC Email studio, you can–
- Personalize Templates with First-Party Data: Customize templates with information specific to customer segments.
- Incorporate Dynamic Content: Embed images, videos, text, or HTML code to make your emails visually appealing and informative.
- Generate Personalized Variations: Quickly create numerous customized versions of the same email for efficient audience targeting.
6. Combine Email and Advertising for a Unified Customer Experience
Stuck in a marketing rut with single-channel campaigns? It’s time to level up. Omnichannel marketing is the surefire way to reach customers everywhere they are.
Here’s the data that speaks volumes: Omnisend found a crazy 494% increase in order rates for campaigns using at least three channels compared to single-channel campaigns. That’s right; there are almost five times more sales just by creating a cohesive customer experience.
Imagine this: a customer browses your website for a pair of shoes. Later, while scrolling through Facebook, they see a targeted ad for those shoes. Finally, they receive a personalized email offering discounts on their dream footwear. This consistent, multi-channel approach builds trust, keeps your brand top-of-mind, and ultimately drives sales.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps you nail this by connecting every interaction across different marketing channels.
Here are some SFMC tips for omnichannel marketing–
- Retarget Website Visitors: Utilize email addresses collected during signup to target website visitors with relevant display ads on social media, search engines, or mobile apps.
- Synchronize Ad Campaigns Across Platforms: Launch coordinated advertising campaigns across YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook using Journey Builder Advertising.
- Go Beyond Emails: Integrate SMS and WhatsApp marketing alongside your mobile-friendly email campaigns for a comprehensive omnichannel strategy.
- Personalize Mobile Messages with Location Data: Utilize geofencing and Bluetooth beacons to trigger location-based offers and promotions.
- Send Hyper-Personalized SMS and MMS Messages: Leverage MobileConnect to deliver targeted text messages based on user data and preferences.
- Automate SMS Marketing with Pre-Built Templates: Utilize pre-built templates and a drag-and-drop interface to efficiently send automated and personalized SMS messages.
- Enhance Customer Journeys with Mobile Interactions: Incorporate push notifications into your customer journeys designed within Journey Builder for a more holistic marketing experience.
Wrapping Up
We hope these Salesforce Marketing Cloud best practices empower you to navigate its functionalities easily. Remember, this is just the beginning! For extra inspiration, delve into real-world examples of successful Salesforce marketing campaigns. By combining these best practices with practical case studies, you’ll understand how to leverage Marketing Cloud’s full potential for your marketing campaigns.
