8 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Marketing Cloud

We all know that Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a digital marketing platform with tools for email marketing, social media, mobile interactions, and B2C marketing journey management. What can you use Marketing Cloud for, that you may not have thought about?

I’ve put together this collection of blog posts written by some of the best thought leaders in the space, who are pushing beyond the run-of-the-mill Marketing Cloud use cases. If any appeal to you, why not give them a spin in 2021?

1. Shifting Your Marketing Cloud Data Model: Avoid Data Extensions and Leverage Drag-and-Drop

Rebekah makes a noteworthy statement straight off the bat: “taking a visual user like a marketer and putting them in front of a detailed interface like we see in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Data Designer and Data Extensions can be incredibly overwhelming”

In this guide, her mission is to show us how we can turn Marketing Cloud into a more user-friendly experience by leveraging its drag-and-drop capabilities to the max – just like she put into action for her own team. Who doesn’t want to ensure better Marketing Cloud adoption?

2. How to Set Up Progressive Profiling in Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Progressive Profiling enables you to gather more data about a subscriber over time, without overwhelming data collection methods (eg. forms) that risk turning them off completely.

Progressive Profiling is an out-of-the-box feature in Pardot – so, how can you achieve this with Marketing Cloud? Naveen shows you how show you how using a custom solution in CloudPages.

3. Power-up Journey Builder with Marketing Cloud Connect and Salesforce Data

Marketing Cloud, alone, can do great things. When you use Marketing Cloud Connect with Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, you have just opened up a new range of automation options.

You may be familiar with Marketing Cloud Connect, but have you truly capitalised on what data you can pull in from Salesforce to drive your marketing journeys?

4. Easy Ways to Enhance Marketing Cloud Email Templates

Many brands using Marketing Cloud have the same basic email templates that offer limited branding options. So how do you make yours stand out?

This blog post will teach you easy changes you can make to your basic templates so they look in tip-top condition, including responsive images, adding custom fonts, and zhuzhing-up with hover effects.

5. Content Builder Features You Should Be Using

Content Builder has multiple features that marketing teams should be using to analyze and optimise email campaigns sent through Marketing Cloud.

Are you taking advantage of all of these features?

6. How to Automate Segmentation Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s built-in data filters will work for companies just starting out. With SQL you gain a wider variety of uses for your data, but the technical expertise needed can perplex marketers – not to mention delays when they need to rely on the IT team to write the queries.

Here is how you can get around these limitations:

7. Build an Application Portal With Marketing Cloud & Cloudpages

I love it when a project pushes you (as a consultant or admin) to investigate deeper. When asked to design solutions within the bounds of available resources, the result can involve both technical know-how and imagination; as they say, necessity is the mother of invention!

That is what Aman was challenged with, when a university approached him to build an application portal integrated with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Here is the solution that he developed for the university, which is still working out well for this institution:

BONUS: Marketing Cloud New Year’s Resolutions 2021

Will there be a dull moment in 2021 for Marketing Cloud? Our friends over at DESelect gave it some thought – here’s what they think SFMC admins should keep front of mind for the new year – including Transactional Journeys, Marketing Cloud account security, backing up your data views, and keeping Marketing Cloud adoption front of mind.