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As technology evolves, so does digital marketing. Marketers’ jobs become more and more complex and data-driven, which can be both beneficial and devastating. However, you cannot underestimate the benefits of various advanced marketing tools, building appropriate strategies, collecting and utilizing data, and measuring outcomes—all of which are becoming highly complicated processes. Handling this many variables manually is virtually impossible, but there are marketing tools that can aid marketers in these tasks. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a suite that can help marketing and sales teams to get the most from collected customer data, automate mundane procedures, explore CRM integration services, and gain invaluable insights into user behavior and trends. In this article, we will discuss SF Marketing Cloud, explore essential tools and capabilities, and learn how this platform can benefit your business. 

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Before we explore the tools that make the platform so effective, we have to answer the question of what is Marketing Cloud in Salesforce. An SaaS-based platform for automating, optimizing, and executing marketing campaigns, Salesforce Marketing Cloud consists of multiple modules that facilitate efficient management of customer relationships and marketing activities. The main objective of the Marketing Cloud in Salesforce is to enable a multichannel experience, customer support across all channels, customer acquisition, and sales increase. The platform streamlines the planning, monitoring ,and analyzing of marketing decisions in real-time.

The modules that comprise the system include Email, Social and Mobile Studio, and Builder. Studio components aim at engaging with communication channels, whereas Builder deals with data, content, and customer journeys across the channels. 

Capabilities of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Virtually all marketing activities of today are directed at the customer. The Marketing Cloud in Salesforce offers a range of opportunities for marketers to learn their audience and personalize their experience. Using the platform, businesses can track vital customer-related KPIs in real-time, automate marketing activities, utilize social media and mobile messaging, and take advantage of embedded customer marketing analytics features. Through the three pillars of data-driven messaging, multichannel messaging, and dynamic components, you can create customer journeys across all channels and provide tailored experiences to your client base.

Data-Driven Customer Messaging

This messaging tool sends out messages based on customer data that includes contact and journey data. Contact data refers to the contact information associated with a certain customer and changes whenever the customer moves down the sales pipeline. For example, when a prospect converts to a paying customer, their contact data transfers from the prospect journey branch to the new customer branch. This feature allows marketers to maintain a consistent customer journey and have the most recent contact data at hand. 

Journey data is the second pillar of data-driven messaging and stores information regarding customer interactions with marketing materials. For instance, the tool tracks whether a customer opens introduction emails and interacts with them in any way. If the system detects the lack of any actions from the customer, another email will be automatically sent to remind them to take a certain action. On the contrary, if the customer did open the email and interacted with it, the system can send the next call to action. 

Multi-channel Messaging

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud enables messaging across several channels such as email, social media, and SMS texts. This feature can be helpful for timely customer support, purchase confirmation, status updates, financial communication, and more. While emails serve well for updates, marketing campaigns, various inquiries, and product information, SMS messaging is used for urgent communication such as payment reminders, shipment status, or customer support replies. 

Dynamic Components

This feature allows marketers to create personalized messages and send profiles without any manual labor. Using relevant customer data, the system generates email content and subject lines that speak to a certain customer base. Moreover, the sending email address can also change based on the recipient’s information. For example, the system will automatically insert the sales agent’s email address when crafting a letter to enable trusting customer relationships. 

Tools of Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers an array of tools to generate content that targets various customer groups via multiple channels. An essential part of digital marketing best practices, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) functions allow brands to establish their brand presence and engage the audience in the most fruitful and cost effective ways. In this part, we will focus on the most prominent tools that this platform has to offer and explore their functions and benefits. 

Journey Builder

Journey Builder is an SFDC Marketing Cloud tool created to make and maintain personalized multichannel customer journeys. This feature allows marketers to set trigger actions based on various customer interactions such as clicking an ad, completing a purchase, and so on. For example, you can utilize the Journey Builder as a remarketing tool and send out new emails to customers who have interacted with your brand in the past. 

Another common obstacle for businesses is abandoned shopping carts. Using Journey Builder, you can send out automatic reminders to the customers and drive up sales. Finally, the tool facilitates a multichannel experience by enabling communication via email, SMS, social media networks, direct mail, and even in relation to traditional brick and mortar shops. For instance, you can send out messages with the latest discounts and offers whenever the customer is in proximity to your physical store. 

Email Studio

A successful email campaign requires sending the right message at the right time. Email Studio from SF Marketing Cloud allows businesses to automate these processes and helps marketers craft tailored emails. Using customer data, you can send out emails at the most suitable time and reach the intended audience. On top of that, the tool comes with custom report generation and the ability to import data from a plethora of sources. 

Audience Studio

Audience Studio is a tool that is designed to investigate your customer base and learn their behavior by gathering data from multiple sources. The Marketing Cloud in Salesforce stores all customer data in one location, enabling easy access and usage of this valuable information. Marketers can break down their audience into segments and monitor their behavior separately to put forward different marketing approaches. 

Data Studio

The Data Studio tool is aimed at connecting marketers and publishers, thus giving companies access to new potential audiences. The platform benefits both parties by helping marketers expand their customer base and allowing publishers to monetize their data. The greatest advantage of the tool is its transparency, which reveals the seller’s information, how the data will be used, who will be using it, and for how long. 

SFMC Data Studio is a trustworthy platform that deals with large retailers and guarantees a high quality of data. Working with over 200 activation channels, the tool provides great opportunities to reach new audiences and increase revenue. 

Social Studio

Social media networks have become an essential part of any marketing strategy. Social Studio from SFDC Marketing Cloud allows marketers to publish and manage content across various social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others. The platform offers social listening features that help businesses keep track of the brand and product reputation across different channels. 

Monitoring every post, comment, like or any other interaction manually is virtually impossible, and Social Studio streamlines these tasks. This solution can create, schedule, and track the posts while also measuring performance indicators and analyzing the outcomes of your social media campaigns. 

Pardot

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Pardot is an intelligent business tool to bridge the gap between marketing and sales departments. Marketers can utilize the platform to quickly build custom landing pages and web forms using intuitive drag-and-drop features. Furthermore, they can track leads and movement throughout the website to gain insights into their interests, needs and behaviors. The tool can also be used for email campaigns and provides a variety of templates as well as an A/B testing tool to make your message stand out. Finally, the tool comes with SEO features that help marketers identify the appropriate keywords and enhance traffic. 

The sales department can gain access to the lead data and their engagement history. This way, they can prepare the talking points that are more likely to entice the customer to make a purchase. Another feature is the ability of sales representatives to launch their own small-scale email campaigns directed to their customers. This enables a more close connection between the salesperson and the customer and allows them to build a strong long-lasting relationship. 

Advertising Studio

A marketing campaign management and CRM targeting tool, Advertising Studio provides means to collect customer data from push interactions, site conversions, and email campaigns to target customers using social and display advertising networks. Using Salesforce for marketing, you have access to real-time data which allows you to target users with personalized content. The tool also opens up the opportunity to use the collected data to reach potential customers that exhibit similar behavior. 

Advertising Studio is created to drive lead generation and acquire new customers across various channels. The leads can also be automatically pushed to the SFDC Marketing Cloud to allow marketers to take further actions and turn them into paying customers. Finally, the tool can be used to revive old relationships and reconnect with customers who have stopped interacting with your product. 

Mobile Studio

The ability to communicate with the customer in multiple ways across different platforms is a vital advantage in a business’s marketing strategy. Mobile Studio enables smooth communication using MobileConnect, GroupConnect, and MobilePush options. MobileConnect allows you to create, send, and track SMS messages, as well as generate automatic replies and manage keywords. GroupConnect handles all communication over messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. By integrating this feature with Journey Builder, you can collect message data and set up triggers to facilitate instant replies. MobilePush is created to send out push notifications over the company’s app. This feature is meant to incentivize people to use your application and gain the intended value from it. 

Interaction Studio

Another useful tool from the Salesforce Marketing Cloud suite is Interaction Studio which is designed for real-time content personalization and interaction management. In simpler words, marketers can promote their products in real time based on how the user interacts with the website. While the user is browsing the website and clicks on certain pages, the system records this data and uses this insight to generate personalized recommendations. As a result, you get a website with dynamic content that is tailored to each individual customer. 

Datorama

Datorama is a business intelligence tool that allows marketers to merge various data sources into one data visualization model. The platform pulls data from different sources and standardizes it to maintain a unified format. Using these features, you can swiftly create dashboards that display any relevant information marketers require to make data-driven decisions.

Benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a full-fledged system that incorporates tools for various aspects of digital marketing activities. The platform is fully developed and ready to use by both small and large businesses. In this section, let’s explore how this tool can benefit your business. 

Customer Engagement and Retention

SF Marketing Cloud provides a suite of tools that helps marketers attract the right audience, learn their behaviors and understand their needs and wants. Using various features, you can personalize the user experience and target your customers more precisely. The dynamic content options allow marketers to adjust what the website displays in real-time, thus enriching customer experience and driving up sales. 

Marketing Automation

Modules like Journey Builder facilitate process automation and allow marketers to create campaigns that basically run by themselves. For example, a customer receives an email that invites them to finalize the purchase. If they complete the requested action, their customer journey ends there, but if they don’t, they receive a push notification or an SMS regarding the purchase. The following actions can be as complex or simple as needed, but are directed at offering the best experience. 

Performance Measurement 

The Analytics Builder helps marketers generate real-time reports to track website traffic, the reach of the campaigns, social media interactions, and other metrics. Using Salesforce for marketing, marketers can gain deep insights into performance indicators across channels and campaigns to make better decisions in the future. 

Data Management

The Datorama tool facilitates smooth data management and allows marketing teams to build comprehensive data models and dashboards. SFMC can store various types of data, standardize them, and create specific data models to offer more insights to your staff. You can explore even more complex data management tools by utilizing numerous third-party integrations that make Salesforce more versatile and flexible. 

Artificial Intelligence Application

Salesforce for marketing is a highly advanced tool that explores new technologies to provide better experiences for their clients. The embedded AI technology is called Einstein, and it utilizes predictive analytics to help companies stay ahead of their competition. For example, this technology allows marketers to predict who is more likely to interact with a certain message. The algorithms also offer insights into engagement frequency and allow businesses to identify how many messages are sufficient for each customer. You can also calculate the best time to send an email or message to each user to ensure it will be read. 

How to Set up Salesforce Marketing Cloud

The process of SFMC configuration can be quite overwhelming to a new customer. Although the company provides comprehensive documentation with a detailed guide on Salesforce integration, the process is lengthy and complex. If you would like to get professional support and gain valuable insights into the platform, reach out to NIX United. We are a team of technical professionals who will assist you with the setup, configuration, and customization of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud suite. 

Being a Salesforce Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Partner, we are qualified to handle any challenge relating to the Salesforce suite. Whether you would like to learn more about the benefits of the platform, build a custom application, or automate your marketing activities, our team will be there for you at every step of the way. 

Roman Bilokon
Roman Bilokon Practice Leader, Enterprise Workflow Automation

With more than 10 years of experience, Roman is a thought leader committed to driving long-term value for C-level client stakeholders and decision-makers through the integration of custom Salesforce and ServiceNow solutions.

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