• How to teach while learning Salesforce
    Last Updated on October 5, 2024 Background Many of you who have been following me, know all to well how I enjoy sharing my Salesforce knowledge. Regardless if this is on Trailblazer Groups, Salesforce Stack Exchange, or on this blog. I keep getting positive feedback, and as long as people out there see my contributions as something positive and helpful in their career growth, I will keep on sharing. This is also why I committed, without much hesitation, to this interview with Anthony Lamot from DESelect. The beginnings We discuss my journey from my early days working with ExactTarget to …

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  • Sending emails in SFMC from existing domain
    Last Updated on August 21, 2024 You might already know, that you can use either a Sender Authentication Package or Private Domain to brand your emails, so the sender email address reflects your brand. In almost all cases, this sender domain is a subdomain to your business domain. Assuming your website is based on example.com, the sender domain can be mail.example.com or e.example.com: I want to send my emails from my “real” domain, which is example.com – how can I make sure they arrive from sales@example.com? Marketing Cloud Administrator There can be cases, where you want emails to arrive not …

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  • Real time events triggered by email opens
    Triggering events, like journey triggers, in real time, immediately after an email open in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
  • Securing Cloud Pages with one-time password
    Last Updated on May 24, 2024 Have you ever wanted to share content with your subscribers, without exposing it to anyone – even when available on a public URL? As you know, there are already methods of securing Cloud Pages, especially if using Cloud Pages as apps. But this limits us to only showing the page to logged in users in SFMC. One-time password explained Are there any other ways of ensuring not everyone can follow a link, in case an email has been forwarded, and access the linked content? Well – we can build a solution which will utilise …

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  • SFMC Cloud Pages – logging with custom error pages
    Gain more insights into which Cloud Pages throw errors in your SFMC instance.
  • Avoid paying too much for your contacts in Marketing Cloud
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 You probably already know, that contact count is one of the main variable cost drivers of your Salesforce Marketing Cloud license. However this is also one of the factors which is most in your control. Let’s revisit what the contact count actually is: A contact in Contact Builder is an individual added to any contact database in Marketing Cloud Engagement. A contact can be someone who received a message from any Engagement tool, such as GroupConnect, Journey Builder, MobileConnect, or MobilePush.Marketing Cloud combines contacts from all sources based on the Contact Key value. The …

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  • Tracking clicks on outbound links from Cloud Pages
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 We are tracking clicks in our emails, but is there a way to track clicks on links from Cloud Pages? Salesforce Marketing Cloud Admin Wouldn’t it be fantastic, if your click tracking wasn’t limited to just emails? I have been asked more than once, if it is possible to track clicks performed on Cloud Pages. And while SFMC does not offer any standard functionality for this, we might be able to build a simple although custom solution. First, we need to understand how email tracking works. You might have seen that all your links …

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  • Understanding tracking across Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 Idea for this article came, as few other before this one, from an interesting discussion on one of the online Salesforce communities. I realised, that not everyone is looking for deeply technical explanation of SSJS based consent management, or building cross cloud LWCs. Sometimes it is what might seem trivial, which provides more value to some of the less experienced Trailblazers out there. This is why I have compiled this overview of how to track the engagement throughout the funnel – all the way from building your audience, and towards converting or abandoning your …

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  • Upcoming changes and guidelines from Google and Yahoo
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 Are you panicking, realising it is now 2024, and Google along with Yahoo will start enforcing some added protection mechanisms to safeguard their users against spam? Do you feel your engagement rates at risk, asking yourself what they mean by one-click unsubscribe? Let me calm you down and explain that you, as a Salesforce Marketing Cloud user, are already compliant potentially without even realising. Even though Salesforce is doing their best to ensure you being compliant, it is ultimately your responsibility. I have listed potential pitfalls under each item below. Sender Domain Authentication Firstly, …

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  • Avoiding time zone confusion in SFMC
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 Working with time zones in Marketing Cloud, especially in SQL, is not always easy. We have multiple time zones in there, depending on where you look. Here is a good unofficial (compiled in best effort) overview of where which time zone applies: Whenever you need to adjust the time zone in your queries, you need to observe that SFMC system time is actually hard coded to UTC-6, NOT CST. You might have been doing an approximate timezone conversion, which was usually done by using the DATEADD() function to add the needed number of hours. …

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  • MarketingTech Talk Alert!
    Embark on the intricate dance between technology and marketing. Join us to simplify and optimise your tech investments, breaking free from the chains of banal trends. Discover the hidden potential in processes and get practical solutions — no more Rolls Royce platforms for newsletters!!!
  • Showing SFMC data in Sales Cloud
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 I am seeing large numbers of questions, asking how we can sync large volumes of data from Marketing Cloud and into Sales Cloud. Well, let me start by asking you a question: Do you really need the data to be physically in Sales Cloud? Or do you want it to be presented in Sales Cloud? Well, that was actually two questions… What are your options? There is quite a difference to these two scenarios. Firstly, let’s talk about storage. A single record in Sales Cloud is about 2kb. Multiply it by tens, maybe hundreds …

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  • I am offering free Salesforce Marketing Cloud consultancy!
    How to connect with the top Salesforce Marketing Cloud experts across the globe, to get started on your learning path toward becoming a trusted expert? There are numerous communities out there, with dedicated experts, who will help you along the way.
  • What is a Sender Authentication Package in Marketing Cloud?
    Sender Authentication Package (SAP) features include Private Domain for Email sending, Custom Domain for CloudPages, Account Branding with view-as-webpage, link and image wrapping, Dedicated IP Address, and Reply Mail Management. While these features can be purchased individually, the view-as-webpage, link and image wrapping that brands your account only comes with SAP.
  • Impression Tracking in Marketing Cloud
    Have you ever created an email where you have tens of different offers in separate dynamic content blocks and wondered how you would report back the click data from the blocks? Are you using Ampscript to present highly individualised emails, and lost track of your click rates for those particular offers? Then Impression Region tracking is the right solution to stay on top of your engagement data.
  • Lead Scoring in Marketing Cloud
    There are ways of building lead scoring functionality with tools available in every edition of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. I will share with you some fundamentals on lead scoring in general, how it is used in Salesforce Pardot, and how you can build it in Marketing Cloud.
  • Contact Deletion in Marketing Cloud
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 Why is deleting contacts important? With privacy having rightfully increasing focus, you should ensure that you don’t store and process more data than needed, in your Salesforce Marketing Cloud environment. But what is a Contact and how are they being counted? Salesforce explains it quite well in this article. Deleting contacts in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is important for several reasons: Overall, deleting contacts in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is essential for maintaining data privacy, improving database management, optimising email deliverability, enhancing reporting and analytics, and delivering a better customer experience. It helps you stay compliant …

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  • Preference Center in Marketing Cloud
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 This is indeed a big topic, which I will do my best to cover in a single short answer here. This all comes very much down to your consent and identity data model. How many options for subscriptions will you be offering your subscribers?How many objects (data extensions) will you be using? – Will it only be a single master data extension, with boolean fields for consent and subscriptions? This can quickly and easily be solved using the Upsert Data REST endpoint. You will also need to use similar API to fetch the existing information …

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  • Deliverability monitoring in Marketing Cloud
    How can you be sure, that your emails make it all the way to the recipient’s inbox? Spoiler: keeping an eye on bounce rates is not enough. Let me introduce you to Inbox placement. It refers to the ability of an email message to successfully land in the recipient’s inbox rather than being diverted to a spam or junk folder. It is a measure of the deliverability and effectiveness of an email campaign.
  • Consent management with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
    Last Updated on June 18, 2024 Imagine a world, where you only have Salesforce Marketing Cloud. No Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, or other applications which you would normally consider a system of record for identity and consent. Especially when looking at the Consent Data Model of Salesforce: The Salesforce Consent Data Model is the standard data model for managing consent at multiple levels, from global preferences to more granular controls. This data model, the foundation of Salesforce’s long-term view of consent, considers the individual’s entire experience, not just a single contact point. Any record that relates to an individual can …

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  • Our SFMC implementation failed
    Although most implementations are successful and provide solid ROI to the organizations, I have also seen a failure or two. It is first of all, a question of not getting the expected value from the significant investment, which Salesforce Marketing Cloud is.
  • Why you (in some cases) shouldn’t trust ChatGPT
    Last Updated on May 13, 2024 Let’s have a look at the problem below: I am brand new to AMPScript and have a complicated use case I’m hoping somebody could help with. I have data that is being imported into SFMC that relates to offers that a customer may receive. In that data extension, some customers may receive all 5 offers, while others will only receive one. Is there a way to show content blocks for individuals who qualify (as listed in the data extension) and collapse and hide content for those that don’t qualify? Someone new to Marketing Cloud …

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  • Private Domains in Marketing Cloud – your ultimate guide
    There can be some confusion on how and when to use Private Domain on Marketing Cloud vs a Sender Authentication Package. It took me some time to understand this myself, and I will share some key findings here.
  • Updating email address in All Subscribers
    Last Updated on March 30, 2023 Did you read my post about using multiple email addresses for a single subscriber? Here I explained how important it is to ensure, that the email address stored in All Subscribers list is identical to the email address in your sendable data extension, when working with Salesforce Marketing Cloud: When a send to a data extension occurs, the following process occurs at sendtime, under normal circumstances: If the value does not exist, a new record is created: The related Subscriber Key field value is set as Subscriber Key on the All Subscribers list and the value …

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  • Can you have one Contact/Subscriber with multiple email addresses?
    Last Updated on March 30, 2023 Sometimes you find yourself in a situation, where a single Contact Key needs to provide multiple email addresses. This could have multiple causes, like providing both a work-email as well as a personal email. While you are able to store these emails in a data extension within Marketing Cloud, using both of them with same Contact/Subscriber is not as straightforward as you would think. In order to understand the multi-email address scenario per Subscriber Key, it is vital to understand the logic behind email address in a sendable data extension vs. email address in …

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