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Email Marketing, Mobile and Advertising

Build customer relationships with an engagement marketing platform that orchestrates every moment and harmonises messages into cohesive journeys, creating a unified brand experience for each customer. Activate your data to enhance message relevance, personalise campaigns, and improve customer lifetime value.

What can you do with an engagement marketing platform?

Create and deliver integrated campaigns, personalising every interaction across any channel, with AI-powered decision-making optimising every step of the way.

Manage and personalise email programs at scale.

• Email Marketing

Reach the right subscriber at the right time — every time. Build and deliver personalised email, from basic newsletters to complex campaigns. Create reusable content blocks, including text, HTML, images, buttons, dynamic content, and A/B testing. Use integrated message types to deliver promotional, transactional, and triggered messages in a single journey. Track and optimise email performance in real time and manage your sender reputation score, all within a single platform.

Content Builder

Build and customise attention-grabbing emails with a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface. Upload files, design your own, or choose from prebuilt templates to be shared across departments. Keep images, documents, and content in a single location for use within Marketing Cloud. Develop emails faster with code snippets to create nested tags for deeper personalisation. Keep your content library clean by recycling content, and get proper sign off fast with the Approvals feature.

Platform Scale

Grow every email campaign with greater reliability and performance. With industry-leading send volume, scale your email messages and campaigns — even complex content that relies on AI-powered decision-making and leverages dynamic content blocks. And, scale high-velocity data ingestion and automate workflow patterns across the entire customer lifecycle.

AI in the Inbox

Innovate with AI in the inbox using predictive and generative AI tools. Generate persuasive email subject lines and body copy that incorporate brand voice and tone. Personalise send times, messaging frequency, product recommendations, and email content for each subscriber based on their likelihood to engage. And, optimise subject lines, email performance, and important KPIs with AI-powered insights.

Deliver cohesive customer experiences across mobile channels.

Mobile marketing.

Seamlessly connect with your audience wherever they are. Deliver a connected marketing experience, with AI-powered decisioning, to better engage your customers across SMS, third-party messaging, and mobile push. Design, build, and deploy those moments, all in one central console. Learn more about your customers by interacting with them through conversational marketing for engagements like appointment confirmations, surveys, or building user preferences — all while delivering impactful experiences that build strong, brand-customer relationships.

Mobile App Engagement

Drive user engagement with integrated in-app capabilities. With push messaging, you can use geotargeting or behavioural data to deliver relevant and timely messages that maximise both app engagement and ROI. Reach your customers on their preferred channels, leveraging Journey Builder, Data Cloud, API Triggers, and geolocations to deliver timely messages across any use case. Send timely information, such as event-based engagement, to drive valuable interactions. Grow loyalty with responsive retargeting for a more personalised experience.

Conversational Marketing with WhatsApp

Transform mobile moments with WhatsApp conversational marketing. Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform helps you reach a global audience with rich, high-quality, and highly engaging messaging experiences, all managed within Marketing Cloud. Connect marketing, commerce, and service interactions seamlessly on a unified platform, powered by Data Cloud.

SMS Messaging

Manage, track, and optimise SMS messages all within Marketing Cloud. Send alerts and transactional messages to subscribers using templates and a drag-and-drop interface. Engage in real time with time-sensitive notifications, using AI-powered insights for optimal timing and preferred channels.

Design and deliver connected journeys across the lifecycle.

• Journey Orchestration

Build and deploy personalised journeys that build customer relationships at every step. Use a drag-and-drop interface to create journeys easily — with messaging, content, and AI decision-making built into a single workflow. And, stay top of mind for your customers by automating experiences like cross-sell or upsell opportunities — using data from various sources or API triggers.

Cross-CRM Engagement

With native integrations across Salesforce products, you can build connected journeys — across marketing channels, service centres, sales teams, or loyalty programs. Use prebuilt activities within Journey Builder, or create your own custom activity, to ensure a unified customer experience. And trigger relevant engagement across your business all from Marketing Cloud, like a service centre follow up after a negative customer survey, for example.

Digital Advertising

Power personalised customer acquisition and conversion campaigns with first-party data. Activate audience segments across the digital ad ecosystem, including Google, Meta, Twitter, and more. Find new customers resembling your highest-value audiences, and suppress ads for existing customers to prevent fatigue. Launch advertising-specific campaigns, or add advertising within existing customer journeys for connected cross-channel experiences.

Cross-Channel Analytics

Analyse journey performance with built-in dashboards to optimise campaigns across email, mobile, and advertising. With easy filtering, sorting, and grouping capabilities, you can build custom reports and easily share insights with key stakeholders. Use performance data to optimise campaigns, increase engagement, and grow customer lifetime value.

Extend the power of Marketing Cloud Engagement with these related products.

Data cloud for marketing.

Activate your data, scale insights with AI, and unify all your data into a single customer profile.

Marketing Cloud Personalisation

Automate dynamic offers for each customer in real time across each moment in the customer journey.

Marketing Cloud Intelligence

Optimise marketing performance and spend across every campaign, channel, and journey.

Loyalty Management

Nurture relationships and create lasting loyalty on the world’s #1 CRM.

Find the right Marketing Cloud Engagement edition for your business needs.

Professional.

Personalised marketing automation

• Content Creation
• Robust analytics

Personalised cross-channel strategic marketing

• Mobile Messaging
• AI-Powered Insights

Sophisticated journeys across channels, brands, and geographies

• Multiple Business Units
• Global platform

This page is provided for information purposes only and subject to change. Contact a sales representative for detailed pricing information.

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Marketing Cloud Engagement FAQ

What is an engagement marketing platform.

A marketing engagement platform helps marketers, businesses, and brands create and implement strategies to engage with their customers and build long-term relationships. It combines various marketing channels, like email, mobile messaging, chat apps (WhatsApp), and more with campaign management to engage with customers throughout their journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement.

Engagement marketing platforms provide features such as customer segmentation, personalised messaging, social media integration, email marketing automation, analytics, and campaign management. The goal is to create meaningful engagement, drive customer connect, and build loyalty by delivering relevant and valuable content or experiences.

How do engagement marketing tools help my business?

Marketing Engagement platforms enable brands to build loyal customer relationships with a range of marketing activities, including lead generation, customer retention, brand advocacy, and upselling/cross-selling. Using an engagement marketing platform effectively, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, strengthen brand loyalty, and ultimately drive growth and revenue.

How do I choose the right engagement marketing platform?

Choose the engagement platform that best suits your business's needs, aligns with your goals, and empowers you to execute effective and successful marketing campaigns across multiple channels. Key considerations include native connectivity to your data as well as marketing, commerce, and service experiences, channel breadth, flexibility to manage simple and complex journeys, native measurement tools, embedded AI, customer support and training resources, reputation (for example analyst reports and product reviews), as well as dependability and scalability.

Is Engagement the same as ExactTarget?

Marketing Engagement is the evolution of ExactTarget platform that was acquired by Salesforce. Marketing Engagement has greatly expanded on the original ExactTarget features and functionalities and incorporates additional messaging, data integrations, channels, and AI capabilities.

Is Engagement the same as Journey Builder?

Journey Builder is the campaign management tool at the heart of Marketing Engagement, with several embedded, marketer-friendly AI features like send-time optimisation, engagement frequency, and multi-variant testing. With pre-build Journey templates, customers are able to get started sending promotional and transactional emails, mobile messages, like push and SMS, and any custom channels quickly.

Is Engagement the same as Salesforce Advertising Studio?

Advertising Studio is one of the channels that can be used for audience activation in Marketing Engagement. Advertising audience targets can be added into journeys along with email, mobile messages, and so on, and can be added or removed from an audience based on engagement within the journey. Advertising supports audience mapping to Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as customer integrations.

• Marketing Cloud

Experiences

Access Trailhead, your Trailblazer profile, community, learning, original series, events, support, and more.

Build Custom Activities and Events

For simplicity, the documentation mostly refers to custom activities. In Journey Builder, custom events and custom activities use the same framework, so building either object follows the same structure. For event-specific instructions, see Considerations for Building Custom Activities.

Salesforce Customer Support doesn't provide support for your custom Journey Builder events and activities.

Prerequisites 

• A working knowledge of RequireJS for dependency management.
• A working knowledge of jQuery.
• An understanding of the Postmonger event framework
• Access to a Marketing Cloud Engagement account with a fully configured Journey Builder instance.
• An understanding of how journeys function in Journey Builder.

Steps 

Create the custom activity. Custom activities contain three fundamental components.

• Custom activity UI - Contains the activity's code and assets and is hosted on a public web server.
• config.json - Application extension that defines your custom activity.
• customActivity.js - Contains Postmonger events and sits in between your configuration app in the iframe and Journey Builder. See the Example Custom Activity and Postmonger Events Reference for details.

Host the custom activity. Use a web server that communicates via SSL (port 443). Salesforce recommends using Heroku as a hosting provider.

Register the custom component endpoint . Register the hosting endpoint for your custom activity in an installed package.

Related Items 

• Journey Spec
• Data Binding
• Troubleshoot Custom Activities
• Considerations for Building Custom Events

Search Tips:

• Please consider misspellings
• Try different search keywords

About 5 mins

Learning Objectives

Introduction, data extensions, query activity, decision splits, put your toolbox together.

• Challenge +100 points

Gather Your Tools

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Enter SQL into Marketing Cloud Engagement.
• Create specialized data extensions for Journey Builder.
• Insert AMPscript into Journey Builder messages.

If you look at a typical journey in Journey Builder, you’ll likely see many splits in the journey’s path. These splits are based on contact attributes, contact behavior, decisions from Einstein, or just random distribution. They’re an important part of guiding contacts along the journey to get them where they need to be. Journey Builder splits give you the ability to create the right experience based on individuals' behavior. And while some scenarios can be achieved using the splits as-is, others require additional configuration.

For example, the standard engagement splits in Journey Builder (which are based on contact behavior) don’t work well with links that use AMPscript for personalization. If your contact opens or clicks an email link that uses AMPscript, a standard engagement split can’t make use of that data to guide the next step in the journey. But there is a way! And we cover everything you need to know in this module. With a combination of AMPscript and SQL, you can make a decision split (which uses contact information) perform like an engagement split. In other words, your journey can respond to customer engagement—regardless of the link type (as shown in this example).

Let’s take a look at the tools you need to create this solution.

No surprise that in order to use data, you need a place to put it. This solution requires you to create a data extension that contains three fields.

• SubscriberKey: The key used to identify the subscriber.
• ClickDate: The date the click (or other behavior) occurred.
• LinkName: The name that identifies the link in the email message, known as the tracking alias.

From there,  put this data extension into an attribute group and relate the information to your account’s contact data via the SubscriberKey value. This connection makes sure you can access all of the relevant information as you create your engagement splits.

You can set the data retention policy to whatever makes sense for your journey. We recommend around 30 days, but configure this setting to best suit your use case.

This solution uses a query activity containing Structured Query Language (SQL) to collect the journey’s contact records from the data extension you create. We show you the actual SQL query in the next unit—for now, just know that SQL helps you identify the contacts who received a specific email and clicked the desired links. We recommend that you make the values that identify your links (that is, the tracking alias) unique. SQL queries tend to run faster and more efficiently when you reduce the amount of data they have to consider during the process.

You don’t want to go in and manually find all of these values every day, right? That’s why you also set up an automation that contains the SQL query, and run it for the duration of your campaign. We show you how in the next unit.

The decision splits in your journey control who receives further messaging and what types of messages they receive. For example, you could send a follow-up email to contacts who didn’t click an offer they received. And, with a decision split, you could skip the reminder for contacts who already took advantage of the deal. These decision splits look at the behavioral information stored in your data extension and move your contacts in the right direction.

Remember that the decision splits in this example are simulating the functionality usually handled by engagement splits in Journey Builder. 

Journey Builder lets you customize your contact interactions, and you can always find different ways to make your interactions more specific and detailed. But this unit identifies the basic tools you need to put the entire solution together and accomplish your goal. In the next unit, we join digital marketing manager Isabelle as she works in the Northern Trail Outfitters account to make it happen.

• Salesforce Help : SQL Query Activity 
• Salesforce Help : Journey Builder Activities
• Trailhead : Personalized Email Marketing
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Product Area

Feature impact.

• Email Client Privacy and Non-Subscriber Activity in Marketing Cloud...
• Run an Automation from the Overview Page
• Delete an Automation from the Overview Page
• Configure a Scheduled Automation
• Configure a File Drop Automation
• Configure a Trigger Automation
• FTP and File Drop Automation Example
• Filename Patterns Reference
• Advanced Run Once
• Run a Subset of Activities
• Automation Duration
• Use An Automation's Tabs
• Start an Automation Studio Activity
• Edit an Inline Email Activity
• Edit Emails in a Running Automation
• Build a SQL Query Activity
• Optimizing a SQL Query Activity
• Use Intermediate Tables to Optimize a Query
• Data View: Automation Instance
• Data View: Automation Activity Instance
• Data View: Bounce
• Data View: BusinessUnitUnsubscribes
• Data View: Click
• Data View: Complaint
• Data View: Coupon
• Data View: EnterpriseAttribute
• Data View: FTAF
• Data View: GroupConnect Contact Subscriptions
• Data View: GroupConnect MobileLineOrphanContactView
• Data View: Job
• Data View: Journey
• Data View: Journey Activity
• Data View: ListSubscribers
• Data View: Open
• Data View: Sent
• Data View: SMSMessageTracking
• Data View: Social Network Impressions
• Data View: Social Network Tracking
• Data View: Subscribers
• Data View: SMSSubscriptionLog
• Data View: SurveyResponse
• Data View: Undeliverable SMS
• Data View: Unsubscribe
• Query: Bounce History
• Query: Journey Builder Bounced Email Messages
• Query: Journey Builder Sends by Email Across Versions
• Query: Journey Builder Sends in Last 24 Hours
• Query: Opens in Last 30 Days
• Query: Subscriber Status
• Query: Subscribers by Date or Time Frame
• Query: Subscribers in a Publication or Suppression List
• Query: Subscribers with No Opens or Clicks
• Query: Top Bounces for a Job
• SQL Reference
• Restart a Suspended SQL Query Activity
• Update a List or Data Extension with an External File
• Create a File Transfer Activity in Automation Studio
• Manage a File with the File Transfer Activity in Automation Studio
• Move a File with the File Transfer Activity in Automation Studio
• Substitution Strings Example
• Create a Script Activity
• Create a Filter Activity
• Create a Data Extract File
• Configure a Tracking Extract
• Convert XML
• Data Extension Extract in Automation Studio
• GlobalUnsubImport
• Configure the Marketing Cloud for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Tracking...
• Import the Marketing Cloud for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Tracking Data...
• Tracking Extract Configuration
• API Data Extract Options
• ClickImpression
• Conversions
• ListMembershipChanges
• SendImpression
• SendJobImpression
• Spam Complaints
• StatusChanges
• Subscribers
• Contacts Without Channel Addresses
• Extract Outputs Reference
• Security Action Audit Log
• Audit Trail Access Log
• Verification Activity Example
• Verify Automation Data
• Mapping Contacts to Business Unit
• Automation Studio Activities Reference
• Add a Wait Activity
• Einstein Send Time Optimization in Automation Studio
• Einstein Engagement Frequency in Automation Studio
• Pause an Automation
• Skip an Automation
• Stop a Running Automation
• Copy an Automation
• Delete an Automation
• Automatically Deactivated Automations
• Automation Studio Statuses
• Get Automation Studio Notifications
• Find Activity Configuration and Error Details
• Data Extension Storage Usage
• Automation History and Health
• Journey Builder Prerequisites
• Permissions for Journey Builder
• Review Content Used to Benchmark Messaging Performance
• Monitor Journeys in Slack
• Journey Builder System Optimization Dashboard
• Journey Builder Configuration Recommendations
• All Journeys Dashboard View
• Scheduled Single Sends Dashboard View
• Recent Single Sends Dashboard View
• Transactional Send Dashboard View
• Create a Single Send Journey
• Welcome Campaigns
• Retail Campaigns
• Anniversary Campaigns
• Create a Transactional Send Journey
• Clear a Transactional Send Journey Queue
• Update an Email Activity in a Transactional Send Journey
• Create a Journey from a Template
• Share a Template
• Edit a Shared Template
• Delete a Shared Template
• Pause and Resume a Multi-Step Journey
• Pause and Resume a Transactional Send Journey
• Choose a Contact Entry Mode
• Enable or Disable Google Analytics
• Journey Builder High-Throughput Sending Considerations
• Entry Source Administration
• Edit an Entry Source
• Configure a Mobile App Event Entry Source
• Configure a MobilePush Message Engagement Entry Source
• Configure an In-App Engagement Entry Source
• Data Extension Entry Source Use Cases
• Selecting a Data Extension for Entry
• Configure the Data Extension Entry Source
• Schedule a Data Extension Entry Source
• Choose How to Process Entry Source Data
• Configure the Data Extension Entry Source with Data Cloud
• Create an Audience from Contacts
• Schedule an Audience
• Use Data Cloud in Journey Builder
• Configure the Inbound Chat Entry Source
• Select a Reusable Entry Source
• Create a Journey-Specific Event
• Create a Date-Based Event Entry
• Create a Shared Entry Event
• Events and Data Extensions
• Entry Results
• Test an Entry Event
• Prioritization Example: Update Entry Event
• View Rejected Contacts
• Create a Journey
• Define the Automation
• Run the Automation
• Confirm Journey Entry
• API Event Entry Source Use Case
• Audience Studio Use Case
• Honor Opt-Out Requests for Personalized Ads
• GA360 Use Case
• Configure the Salesforce Data Event
• Create a Salesforce Campaign Event
• Salesforce Experience Cloud
• Configure Events for Person Accounts
• Configure Events for Business Accounts
• Configure Events for Person Account Related Objects
• Get Started with Mobile App Events
• Define Your Mobile App Event Schema
• Upload Mobile App Events in Journey Builder
• Update Existing Mobile App Event Schemas
• Use Mobile App Events in Journey Builder
• View Your Contact and Journey Data
• Create a Filter
• Journey and Contact Data
• Linked Data Extensions in Journey Builder
• Specify an Explicit Attribute Path
• Attribute to Attribute Comparison
• Personalization in the Journey Builder Email Activity
• Email Personalization Use Case
• Journey and Contact Data in Decision Splits
• Resolve Excess Salesforce Data Events in Journey Builder
• Set a Goal in Journey Builder
• Exit Criteria
• Define Exit Criteria
• Activity Types
• Activity IDs in Journey Builder
• Configure the Email Activity
• Managing Contacts in a Journey Builder Email Activity
• Update an Email Activity in a Journey
• Things to Know About Journey Builder Triggered Send
• Marketing Cloud Journey Email Activity Tracking
• View Email Activity Statistics
• View Google Analytics 360 Email Activity Metrics
• LINE Carousel Activity
• Content Builder LINE Carousel Activity
• In-App Push Activity
• Content Builder In-App Activity
• Inbox Push Activity
• LINE Multi-Content Activity
• Content Builder LINE Multi-Content Activity
• Push Notification Activity
• Content Builder Push Notification Activity
• SMS Activity
• Content Builder SMS Activity
• WhatsApp Message Types and Use Cases
• Get Started with WhatsApp-First Business Messaging (Meta)
• Get Started with WhatsApp Chat Messaging (Sinch)
• Create a WhatsApp Business Account and Channels (Meta)
• Create Your WhatsApp Business Account (Sinch)
• Create Your WhatsApp Channels (Sinch)
• Create Your WhatsApp Audiences
• Create a WhatsApp Template Message (Meta)
• Create a WhatsApp Template Message (Sinch)
• WhatsApp Template Message Elements
• WhatsApp Template Message Approval
• Personalize Your WhatsApp Template Messages
• Send WhatsApp Template Messages in Journey Builder
• Edit a WhatsApp Template Message
• Create a Default WhatsApp Session Message (Meta)
• Create a Default WhatsApp Session Message (Sinch)
• Personalize Your WhatsApp Session Messages
• Send WhatsApp Session Messages in Journey Builder
• Create a WhatsApp Session Transfer Activity
• WhatsApp Media Attachments
• Locales for WhatsApp Data Extension Sends
• WhatsApp Chat Message Analytics
• WhatsApp Analytics and Reporting
• Create a Chat Messaging Data Extract
• Add a Phone Number to an Existing WhatsApp Business Account
• Delete a Phone Number from Your WhatsApp Business Account
• Transfer a WhatsApp Phone Number Between Business Units (Meta)
• WhatsApp Status Errors
• WhatsApp-First Business Account Statuses
• Using WhatsApp Data in Data Cloud
• SMS Analytics
• Google Analytics SMS Metrics
• Mobile Activity Tracking
• Activity Type Reference
• Undo or Redo a Canvas Action
• Reuse a Journey Builder Activity
• Configure a Path Optimizer Test Activity
• Configure a Wait by Duration Activity
• Configure a Wait Until Date Activity
• Configure a Wait by Attribute Activity
• Configure a Wait Until Chat Response Activity
• Configure a Wait Until API Event Activity
• Configure a Wait Until Push Event Activity
• Configure a Wait Until In-App Engagement Activity
• Configure an Engagement Split
• Prioritization Example: Update the Abandoned Cart Journey
• Prioritization Example: Update the Reengagement Journey
• Use Restricted Values
• Copy a Decision Split Path
• Reorder Decision Split Paths
• Configure a Random Split
• Configure Einstein Scoring Splits
• Configure a Join Activity
• View Frequency Split Analytics
• Einstein Send Time Optimization Use Cases
• Use the Einstein Send Time Optimization Activity
• Create a Control Path with Random Send
• View Einstein STO Activity Analytics
• Use the Ad Audience Activity
• Advertising Campaign Activity
• Update Contact Activity Use Cases
• Configure the Sitecore Connect for SFMC Activity
• Create an Account Activity in Journey Builder
• Update an Account Activity in Journey Builder
• Create a Campaign Member Activity in Journey Builder
• Create a Contact Activity in Journey Builder
• Update a Contact Activity in Journey Builder
• Create a Convert Lead Activity
• Create an Object Record
• Update an Object Activity
• Create a Task Activity in Journey Builder
• Create a Choose Object Activity
• Add Contacts to a Campaign
• Update the Campaign Member Activity in Journey Builder
• Contact Activity
• Create a Case
• Opportunity
• Create or Update an Account
• Update Person Accounts
• Update Business Accounts
• Associate Cases and Tasks to Person Accounts
• Best Practices for Integration Activity Fields
• Sales and Service Cloud Activity Field Validation and Error Handling
• Journey Builder Sales and Service Cloud Best Practices
• Configure a Journey Test with a Data Extension
• Manage Journey Folders
• Copy a Marketing Cloud Engagement Journey
• Delete a Marketing Cloud Journey
• Create a Tag
• Tag a Journey
• Show and Hide Journey Builder Tips
• Validate a Journey in Journey Builder
• Create a Journey Version
• Stop a Journey
• Bulk Actions in Journey Builder
• Delete Drafts and Inactive Journeys
• Journey Analytics Dashboard
• Use the Journey Analytics Dashboard
• Journey Health
• View Journey Health Data
• The Versions Dashboard
• Status Key Reference
• View a Contact Path in a Journey
• View a Contact Path on the Journey History Dashboard
• View a Contact's Journey History in a Journey
• View a Contact’s History on the Journey History Dashboard
• View Recent Contacts by Activity
• Error Message Troubleshooting
• Prerequisites
• Create a Behavioral Trigger
• Edit a Behavioral Trigger
• Pause a Behavioral Trigger
• Resume a Behavioral Trigger
• Set Behavioral Trigger Session Timeout Limit
• Create a Behavior Trigger Email
• Behavioral Triggers Optional Features

Journeys and Messages

Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder is a campaign planning tool that enables you to design and automate campaigns that guide customers through their journey with a brand. Its foundation is the journey, which is the communication plan you design. Canvas activities tell Journey Builder how to communicate to and direct contacts in the journey. Contacts enter from an entry source. The journey then continually evaluates contacts to determine when to move them to the next activity.

Journey Builder supports these Marketing Cloud editions.

• Journey Builder Prerequisites Review these items before using Journey Builder in the Marketing Cloud whether you’re a marketer or administrator.
• Permissions for Journey Builder Marketing Cloud user permission settings supersede user permissions granted in the Journey Builder app. Review the list of Marketing Cloud permissions required to access these features in Journey Builder.
• How to Optimize Journey Builder Performance The Journey Builder processing rate varies based on your data model, filters, configuration, activities, and content complexity. Journeys share processing resources, so stagger the start time for each journey to reduce the demand and increase the processing speed of individual journeys. Use the System Optimization Dashboard to identify and prioritize optimizations that could increase your overall throughput.
• The Journeys Dashboard The Journeys Dashboard provides an overview of all the journeys you create in Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder. The overview includes journey type, status, and the last date changes were made. You can also see which version of a journey is accepting new contacts. In this dashboard, you can sort by journey, status, performance by entry total and goal attainment, or last modified date. You can also filter the list of journeys, open a journey, and access the journey creation workspace.
• Manage Customer Journeys Journey Builder’s enables you to efficiently create and track Single Send, Transactional Send, and Multi-Step customer journeys in Marketing Cloud from a unified workspace.
• Journey Settings Choose the settings that determine when the contact enters a Marketing Cloud Engagement journey and which address Journey Builder uses to message that contact.
• Entry Sources The entry source on the canvas tells Journey Builder where customers entering this journey come from. Each journey must include an entry source.
• Marketing Cloud Mobile App Events Overview Highly relevant and contextually aware interactions are the cornerstone of amazing customer experiences. Now, user behaviors on your mobile app can drive relevant and personalized touchpoints, powered by easy-to-configure listening rules in Journey Builder. Mobile App Events help your brand deliver mobile moments that matter by creating meaningful engagement, increasing brand loyalty, and generating a higher return on investment for your marketing campaigns.
• Use Data in Journey Builder Journey Builder’s essential functions depend on data. To maximize your journeys’ reach, explore how you can use data for filtering, personalization, and other Journey Builder tasks.
• Goals in Journey Builder In Journey Builder, a goal is a measurement of customer actions that you want to promote. Measure goals based on a goal target you set by creating a filter on contact data. After you activate a journey, Journey Builder evaluates contact data against the filter set as the goal target. When Journey Builder determines that a contact met the goal, that contact is counted in goal target statistics. Reaching the goal can also prompt the contact to exit, if applicable.
• Activity Types Learn what each Journey Builder activity does.
• Activity IDs in Journey Builder Find any activity’s unique identifier in a draft, running, paused, or stopped journey after the journey is saved. This feature helps customers and Support agents locate the issue when troubleshooting an activity.
• Message Activities Messaging activities include email, SMS, LINE message, push notification, inbox message, in-app message, or any other form of content sent to contacts. To provide a mix of information about your brand or your product, vary the message content. Create message content before you build a journey.
• Journey Builder Activities Canvas activities include messages, decisions, updates, or a combination of these elements dragged onto the Journey Builder canvas. In a Multi-Step journey, the activities you configure affect each contact until they reach a goal or the end of the journey.
• Sales and Service Cloud Activities Use Sales and Service Cloud canvas activities in Journey Builder to create or update object records for connected Marketing Cloud contacts. You can grant users access to create or edit Sales and Service Cloud activities, except users with the Marketing Cloud Administrator role.
• Journey Builder Administration Journey Builder includes an administrative interface that is accessed by clicking links in the top navigation.
• Analytics and History Journey Builder includes journey health, history, and dashboards.

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SFMC Journey Builder – Everything You Should Know

• June 8, 2022
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud

SFMC Journey Builder comes with a plethora of features. Learn how to use it to the best potential...

[This post was originally published on 18th June 2020. It has been updated on 8th June 2022.]

Automation is a boon for the world of email marketing. 

We all need tools to automate our processes, and the easy way to do so is by using drag and drop activities in the canvas which makes the process of automation easier. With Marketing Cloud we can track interactions using the powerful data capabilities of Salesforce Journey Builder, also known as a live activity tracker of all the flows included within the Journey. Salesforce Journey Builder can be used if we want to build further flow based on instant response to any of the past activities. 

However, you need expertise and experience when it comes to building complex customer journeys. Apart from Journey Builder, there is the Automation Builder in Marketing cloud to serve almost the same purpose, which we can achieve using Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder. One of the key differences between the two is that in SFMC Journey Builder we can see the visual flow of our activities, whereas in Automation Studio we can’t.

There are multiple activities in SFMC Journey Builder to accomplish our requirements.  And if our Journey is responsive and optimized, then it would be easy for us to manage the flow efficiently. 

Let’s kick off our Salesforce Journey Builder tour.

What do you want to build?

1. Multi-Step Journey

You can build a journey that sends messages across any channel based on marketing logic and audience behavior.

2. Single Send Journey

In this, you can quickly build and send a single personalized message in any available channel.

Now, let’s discuss the several options available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder. It is divided into 5 sections:

1) Entry Source

2) Activities 

3) Flow Control

4) Customer Updates

5) Sales & Service Cloud

SFMC Entry Source

SFMC Activities Dashboard

SFMC Customer Updates

For all these aFor all these activities mentioned above [in snapshots] we can drag and drop in our Canvas and can build complex journeys as a salesforce marketing cloud email specialist does. Although, the more the number of decision-based criteria the more our journey will be complex, So, here are a few tips that we can follow to make it easy to read and well organized.

Let’s start with Entry Data Source :

1. As a best practice, we should always create a proper segmentation before admitting contacts into Salesforce Journey Builder. We can use either Automation Studio or Data Designer from Contact Builder to accomplish that.

2. In SFMC Journey Builder we should avoid using one Data extension in multiple journeys as it can make the journey slow at the initial stage. It can also impact the data extension and other activities like import, reports creation, send logging, or extracts.

3. We should avoid Data relationships, Data Extensions as an entry source in journeys because a one-to-many or many-to-many relationship can cause issues while retrieving records. In contrast, the Journey is Activated and we won’t get updated records due to inappropriate activities used to refresh the existing Data Extension.

4. If you have selected API as your Entry source, then there shouldn’t be too many 3rd party targeting servers because it will delay the flow process of admitting subscribers in Journey Builder.

5. Salesforce Objects can be selected as an entry source instead of the Synchronized Data Extensions or Salesforce Data Extensions of Marketing Cloud. Also, we should avoid using filter Data Extensions of Synchronized Data Extensions.

6. Cloud Pages are considered as the best workaround if we are planning to use API calls to start our Journey; Cloud pages considered as Landing Pages can be created within Marketing Cloud, and we can use that Smart Capture Form to insert our Subscribers into the Data Extension and Journey in real-time.

7. Event options can be used if we want our Journey to get a trigger from Automation Builder. This option will be used if we want our Journey to start after few activities of Automation like refresh Filter Data Extension, update the tracking of subscribers.

Data Filters of Journey Entry Source :

There are chances of having raw data from Marketing Cloud Pages or 3rd Party API calls. So, there will be a likelihood of this data getting inserted in Journey audiences. To overcome this, we can use Data Filters wisely in Journey builder. One should consider these things while creating and filtering of contact for the Journey:

1. By default, journeys without any contact filter accept two Millions records, whereas if there is any contact filter used, it can go up to 25K/h. 

2. Developers shouldn’t schedule all the journeys at the same time. It makes the account as well as the Journey to slow down as far as performance is concerned.

3. One should set a clear objective while creating Data Filter and Journey flows.

4. Decision split should be avoided as the first activity in the Journey. Instead, we can use filter contact while selecting the entry source.

Flow control decision with logical activities :

We have multiple activities in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder to use in our journey flow. But we need to be extra careful while selecting any of them with the combination of activities. 

1. Wait Activity: This activity sets the wait time between any two activities. In the initial stage, when you start building Journeys, you should avoid more wait activities because large numbers of these make the journey slow in its flow. This activity further distinguishes between 3 subparts:

1. Wait for Activity by Duration  2. Wait for Activity by Date 3. Wait for Activity by Attribute

The most used activity among the top three is Wait by Duration, which helps us to manage the flow and to keep track of data and Email/SMS sent to the subscribers.

2. Split Activity: It will split the records in random count/ selected count, based on the business requirement.

1. Decision Split 2. Random Split 3. Engagement Split

DECISION SPLIT is used to divide the subscribers based on any field in Data Extension. We need to create a custom path or use the fields existing in the Data Extension. RANDOM SPLIT will be used if we want to divide our subscribers on the basis of some random count, and then target Email/SMS will be sent to them. ENGAGEMENT SPLIT is based on the previous activity of the subscriber, i.e. if an email is sent to them, whether they have clicked on that email or not. Also, while configuring Engagement Split, we need to make sure that the Tracking code is enabled in HTML Emails or else conversion tracking is enabled in the org, else Engagement Split won’t work. 

To optimize the journey Decision Split is used with Join operation to make it more enhanced in functionality: JOIN : This option is used to join more than one Split Activity used in the account. Also, we need to ensure that data is stored in the correct location so that the decision split will work properly.

Although we can configure GOAL within our Journey to check if that is giving us the target result or not, it’s always a good practice to add and define goals within our Journey because , at last, the end goal of our process is to do business. Journey Builder allows you to personalize each customer’s Journey. It makes the journey more relevant to their interests, behavior, and needs. This in turn enhances customer engagement with your brand and ultimately increases sales. Likewise, Journey Builder helps to automate marketing, sales, and support teams’ activities. Today, the need to provide on-brand, high-quality, engaging experiences at each touchpoint can be fulfilled by creating an optimized customer journey. Salesforce offers a perfect tool in Journey Builder to understand, visualize, and create customer journeys across channels. 

In this blog, we have tried to make the things easier for a developer who is trying to create a Multiple Paths Journey Flow. We have mentioned the best practices which one should keep in mind while creating flow of the journeys. We hope this helps you use Salesforce Journey Builder to its maximum potential.  

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