Journey Builder Features: Guide to Salesforce Marketing Cloud(SFMC) Ecosystem

Sumeet Narang
Globant
Published in
6 min readNov 17, 2020
Leverage Automation Technology: Guide to Salesforce Marketing Cloud(SFMC)
Top Features: Guide to Salesforce Marketing Cloud(SFMC) Studio Ecosystem

Welcome to the world of digital disruption and transformation. To thrive in the digital era, companies need to become digital innovators with the adoption of marketing automation, reinventing the business model that is disrupting the market.

To woo and win customers with better engagement, you have to manage the customer journey with a personalized experience.

Thankfully, tools like SFMC exist to make marketing automation easier for the marketer and IT team. I am mentioning the top features and complete guide to Salesforce Marketing Cloud(SFMC) Studio Ecosystem

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

About Salesforce Marketing Cloud-SFMC

Salesforce Marketing Cloud-SFMC needs no introduction when we are talking about marketing automation and needs personalization at scale. It has always been the first choice for a smart marketer if the businesses are willing to invest in the automation tool.

You have the ability to convert customers quickly with cross channel marketing and move them quickly for the conversion cycle. This platform spearheads automation technology by allowing customers on their terms with dynamic, personalized campaigns.

This tool is an ideal choice for enterprise companies. It’s been quite a long time that I have invested in the tool to talk about its features and functionalities.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Campaign Orchestration

What are the features of SFMC-Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

  1. Use the concept of studios such as Email, Social, Advertising, Mobile, Web, and Interaction
  2. Able to roll out cross channel campaign such as Email, SMS, Ads, Whatsapp, Line,In-App Messages & Push Notifications
  3. Ability to gain a unified view of the customer and know better behavior insights
  4. Real-time engagement with the right message, in the right tone, at the right time
  5. Automation Studio and Journey Builder allow customers to automate their marketing efforts
  6. Leverage Einstein AI feature to make customer journey relevant

Such features allow companies to achieve better ROI and optimize marketing performance with customer retention by leveraging the marketing automation

SFMC Studio Ecosystem

Let’s deep dive into the functionality of four major studios with prevalent use cases to achieve the business KPI’s such as growing targeted subscribers & boost engagement.

Overview of Salesforce Marketing Cloud-SFMC Studios

Overview of SFMC Journey Builder

I am astonished by the salesforce marketing ecosystem that has been designed to meet the ever-increasing demand and put the customer journey at the center stage of the application

SFMC Application Menus

One of the best features I fell in love with is a journey builder that connects all the applications in one place to orchestrate the marketing campaign for customer engagement. You can also measure your journey performance using Goals.

Journey Builder Dashboard

Features of SFMC Journey Builder:

There are myriad features available for SFMC journey builder right from entry sources to multiple activities one can utilize to create a powerful customer journey. Enterprise companies can connect every small to big interaction across email, mobile, advertising, and the web.

Let's deep dive into entry source, activities, and advantages for SFMC Journey builder:

Entry Sources for SFMC Journey Builder

  1. Data Extension
  2. API Event
  3. CloudPages
  4. Audience entry
  5. Salesforce Data
  6. Google Analytics 360

The following component is available to build the customer journey in SFMC

Journey Builder Template Canvas

Activities available for SFMC Journey Builder

  1. Messages: Add the relevant marketing campaign
Journey Builder Features for Messages Activity

2. Advertising: Ability to build ads audiences and devise the paid ad campaign (Facebook)

Advertising Activity in SFMC

3. Flow Control- Add the flow based on the timeframe in between the campaign. Use AI features such as persona split, Einstein STO

Flow Control in SFMC

4. Customer Updates- Automatically update the contact based on user actions

Customer Updates in SFMC

5. Sales & Service Cloud- Utilise the audiences available in sales or service cloud

Entry Source For Sales & Service Cloud

Apart from the journey builder, there are a couple of functionalities that can help to streamline the customer data from internal or external integration

  • Automation Studio

Automation Studio focused on ETL capabilities. This product allows you to import, enrich and segment your data from any external data source, enabling you to integrate directly into Journey Builder

  • Behavioral Triggers

Marketers can now easily deploy abandonment journeys (browse, cart, and wishlist) in Journey Builder and add abandoned items with a drag-and-drop block in Content Builder

The above information is just the tip of the iceberg for understanding SFMC in a nutshell. You can learn more about it if you are thinking of onboard with the tool.

Advantages of SFMC Journey Builder:

Build a Journey with SFMC Journey Builder
  • A platform for 1-to-1 journeys for sending multichannel channel campaigns with the help of Multi-Step Journey, Single Send Journey, and Transaction Send Journey
  • Easily deploy abandonment journeys (browse, cart, and wishlist) with Behavioral Triggers
  • Devise cross channel campaign across Email, SMS, Whatsapp, Line Messages, Push notifications, Advertising, Cloud pages, and Apps
  • Ability to tailor journey content with native tools in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Community Cloud.
  • You can add goals to evaluate the journey performance based on the contacts that meets the goal criteria you set for journey
  • Deliver personalized experiences at every step of the customer lifecycle with features such as decision split, engagement split.
  • Advanced AI features such as Persona scoring split, Frequency Split and Einstein Send Time Optimisation-STO

SFMC Einstein Features

Einstein feature is an AI-Enabled Smart CRM Assistant that allows all users to:

  • Discover hidden insights and patterns
  • Predict business outcomes
  • Recommend the best action, offer, or engagement
  • Automate business processes and workflows
  • Build targeted subscribers

And here comes the final verdict:

SFMC is my personal choice. You can choose any marketing automation tool as it offers personalization along with the capabilities of managing data, smart automation, and personalization at scale. The successful use of Market Automation will not only help the company to transform its business but also helps to improve the overall reach, engagement & conversion.

You can also read about Proven tips to win the marketing automation tool with a data-driven marketing strategy

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