Category: Salesforce

Data And Salesforce Marketing Cloud What is Marketing Cloud?Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC, or simply Marketing Cloud) is a marketing automation platform developed by Salesforce. In 2020, it ranks as one of the leading marketing automation platforms.Who is this eBook for?We wrote this eBook for all Marketing Cloud users. Whether you’re a data specialist, an email ortechnical marketer, whether you work in a specific industry, work at an agency or are aconsultant, this eBook was written with all relevant audiences in mind and our goal has been tomake it as useful to you as possible.Throughout the text, you will notice that certain chapters are indicatedas primarily focused on Marketing Cloud admins, while others for emailspecialists. The idea is to make it more convenient to navigate within theeBook and quickly be able to find exactly what you need.How to read this eBookThe purpose of this book is to serve as a guide for data management in Marketing Cloud. The book is logically divided into sequential sections that unravel the data processes in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC).Main subjects covered in this ebook:• What is a data model?• Identifying and preparing data for Salesforce Marketing Cloud• How to define your data model in Salesforce Marketing Cloud• How to leverage data in the studios and builders of Salesforce Marketing Cloud• How to manage data in Salesforce Marketing CloudWe tried to make this as practical as possible and hope you will find it to be a useful tool to add to your Salesforce toolbox. You can use it as a practical handbook; returning to the information you might need at any time.What is not covered in this eBook?Our goal is to empower marketers with the knowledge of data management in Marketing Cloud. We deliberately focused on specific areas to keep the book consistent and as practical as possible. This eBook doesn’t cover certain studios like Audience Studio, Mobile Studio, Advertising Studio, Web Studio, or Interaction Studio. Neither does it cover other Salesforce solutions for data management like Datorama or Customer360. We might cover these in the future. If that interests you, let us know by emailing at hello@deselect.io! Just as we develop DESelect based on the needs of our customers, we align our content strategy with the needs of the Salesforce ‘Ohana’ - you!If you’d like to learn about other aspects of Marketing Cloud not covered in this eBook, you cansubscribe to our newsletter here and be the first to learn about SFMC best practices.What is a data model?Diving straight in, a data model is a framework that organizes the elemental relationships within a database, standardizing their relationship with one another and the properties of real-world entities. For instance, a data model may specify that a data element representing a house should comprise several other elements, which represent the building materials, the number of rooms, as well as defining its inhabitant. On the one hand, the term ‘data model’ (DB) can refer to the formalization of objectsand relationships found in a particular application domain. For example, the customers, products, and order information held by an organization.At other times it refers to the set of concepts used in defining such formalizations: For example, concepts such as entities, attributes, relations, or tables. This eBook uses the term in both senses.What is a data model?Diving straight in, a data model is a framework that organizes the elemental relationships within a database, standardizing their relationship with one another and the properties of real-world entities. For instance, a data model may specify that a data element representing a house should comprise several other elements, which represent the building materials, the number of rooms, as well as defining its inhabitant. On the one hand, the term ‘data model’ (DB) can refer to the formalization of objectsand relationships found in a particular application domain. For example, the customers, products, and order information held by an organization.At other times it refers to the set of concepts used in defining such formalizations: For example, concepts such as entities, attributes, relations, or tables. This eBook uses the term in both senses. We think that all Salesforce Marketing Cloud users will benefitfrom this chapter. It gives a short and sweet overview of what adata model really is and what type of data model you will use inMarketing Cloud. Which databases are used within Salesforce Marketing Cloud?Relational databases aim to represent the world in a logical wayOne such database is a relational database — a digital database founded on the relational model of data.Normalization is the process of organizing data. This includes the creation of tables and then establishing relationships between them, according to rules designed to protect the data while making the database more flexible. This eliminates redundancy and inconsistent dependency.The normalized data model is used in the data designer function of Contact Builder, which we cover in more detail in a later chapter. Keep reading and we’ll get to that :)Flat-file databases represent the world in a more practical wayHowever, it’s also possible to denormalize data, by designing your data model using as few objects as possible, so you can read data with simple queries and fewer joins between tables. Essentially, when you denormalize data you get flat-files DBs.With a flat-file database, records follow a uniform format, and there are no structures for indexing or recognizing relationships between these records. The file is simple. A flat-file can be plain text or a CSV. Relationships can be inferred from the data, but the database format does not make those relationships explicit.An example of a flat-file data model would be a data extension in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. These tables might be familiar to some Salesforce users, as the Salesforce CRM uses a normalized data model like the one below: However, when you start to manipulate the data in relational data models in Marketing Cloud (for instance when querying the data), it converts into the flat-file data model for easier use in the actual marketing campaigns. In Marketing Cloud, you will use tables called data extensions (as visualized in the screenshot above). We will cover the subject of Salesforce Marketing Cloud data extensions later in the eBook. Keep reading :)It is important to remember that your data (just like your customers!) will continue to evolve. Many factors can influence that. For example, over time you may add or rework data sources that feed into Marketing Cloud, which might impact your data model. You may initiate new campaign initiatives that require an enhancement of your data model or require you to recombine pieces of your relational data model into new flat-files.We refer to this as “having an agile data model”. Your agility is the key to ensure easy adaption to any new reality, to make sure you can keep optimally leveraging your data model in a future-proof way.In the next chapter, we’ll dive into data itself, identifying what data we need to store in Marketing Cloud and how to prepare your data to upload in SFMC.Data PrivacyWe live in an age where data privacy is paramount for organizations that collect, store, and manipulate users’ data. It’s key to comply with GDPR and CCPA data privacy guidance (amongst other worldwide data privacy regulations).Be aware of your organization’s data retention policy. It stipulates when data might no longer serve its purpose (and should thus be deleted). This documentation also records whether the data retention period has expired. The process of implementing a data retention policy begins by knowing what kind of data your organization holds so that you might classify it.Data privacy also implies the right to be forgotten; where a Contact’s entire record must be deleted upon request. In Chapter 3 we will discuss Contact deletion options in Marketing Cloud.Identifying and preparing the data for Salesforce Marketing CloudSo in our last chapter, we explored the nitty-gritty of the different types and uses for data models, as well as some cautionary words about data privacy. In this next chapter, we’ll talk about preparing your data specifically for Marketing Cloud.We assume that this chapter can be most beneficial for Marketing Cloud Admins and Marketing Automation professionals. Since in order to leverage most of the functionality mentioned in this chapter you have to obtain a certain level of permissions.What source data do you want to use in Salesforce Marketing Cloud?As we’ll see, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) provides a great deal of flexibility to our data model. As a consequence, SFMC can support nearly as many use cases and journeys as you can think of, provided you have the data to support them.For starters, it can make great sense to collect Subscribers, leads, and other customer information, and store it in SFMC. This can immediately be used for campaigns, or even trigger the start of a real- time journey such as a welcome or confirmation email.Many SFMC customers choose to connect their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to the platform. This allows them to not only push relevant contact information to SFMC but also commercial information, such as orders (usually B2C) or opportunities (usually B2B). Doing so allows for myriad automated journeys, and can provide marketers with the right information to execute cross-sell or up-sell campaigns.Depending on your industry, you may also be able to obtain useful commercial data from other systems. For instance, think of common retail point-of-sale (POS) systems that can be used during the customer checkout process. The digital equivalent is of course eCommerce platforms, of which we’ve seen a great rise not just in B2C, but also in B2B. Other customers may keep track of things like orders in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. This too can provide useful data to be leveraged (or at least to trigger) a journey inside SFMC.Whilst the above examples cover the use of that data for commercial purposes, you may have realized you can also use SFMC for transactional communication. The platform even allows youto set up different send classifications that come with their own unsubscribe mechanisms. Indeed, there are communications from which a customer should not even be able to unsubscribe. Think of communications you may have a legal obligation to send out, such as invoices or updates in your terms & conditions. You can also create transactional send journeys by managing transactional API messages using Journey Builder. We will cover Journey Builder and how to use it soon. Keep reading :)Some customers seek to connect their social media to SFMC in different ways. A common use case is connecting the out-of-the-box Facebook lead capture feature, supported by Salesforce Marketing Cloud Advertising Studio.If you’re considering triggering different kinds of time-sensitive and real-time communication, you may wish to contemplate logging certain ‘events’ inside SFMC. Think of events such as webpage visits, physical store visits (using technology such as beacons or geofencing), or user actions inside one of your mobile apps. Besides leveraging such data as triggers for real-time communication (mobile push message, SMS, etc.), just having the data in SFMC may open up interesting scenarios for targeted outbound campaigns. Just be mindful of the amount of data you may need to store.There could be other data you want to use (event attendees, brokered data, legacy data from yourprevious marketing automation platform, etc.) and there are probably as many cases as there are tools and systems out there. However, it’s not important to have all your data inside SFMC. Neither is it important to have all your data in SFMC at once. What is important is that such data is useful and used. Marketing automation platforms, just like your organization, tend to evolve and grow. Take it one step at a time. After all, you’ll also need to consider how to get your data inside of SFMC.It’s more important to realize the data that you actually need to use in Marketing Cloud; think in advancewhich marketing channels you’ll use. Is it just email marketing? Or is it full-on mobile marketing and complex journeys? Thinking in this way will help you determine what kind of data you’ll need to store in Marketing Cloud. Remember it’s not a data warehouse!How will you integrate your data in Salesforce Marketing Cloud?There are several ways you can integrate data inside Marketing Cloud. Deciding this will depend a lot on the source and the purpose of the data. Remember that just because a certain way to integrate data is available, does not mean you have to use it. Always prioritize the journeys you want to support, then consider how best to support them.The most basic way to integrate data is through manual imports. Throughout SFMC, there are places you can upload files in different formats, such as CSV or Excel files. Check out the video tutorials we made on how to upload CSV files in Marketing Cloud here. This process is relatively quick, easy, and may already be familiar to many marketers. It could be used when you first set up SFMC, have a one-off list (from an event, for example) that you want to use, or when you don’t have an immediate alternative. However, imports can be laborious and increase the risk of human error. It also leaves the door open for poor data quality or even mismanagement of customer consent. This is an important consideration in the post-GDPR era.Many SFMC customers will already be using Salesforce CRM solutions, such as Sales Cloud or Service Cloud. Sometimes, these solutions are collectively referred to as ‘Salesforce Core’. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll use the term SFDC (Salesforce.com) which has been around for longer. In this case, it usually makes a lot of sense to use ‘Marketing Cloud Connect’, the out-of-the-box connector that is available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud under the Contact Builder. We’ll revisit this subject in the next chapter in more detail. In the meantime, just be aware that this connector is unidirectional (data will only sync from SFDC to SFMC, not vice versa), and a given record may take up to ten minutes to sync (which may be a problem for journeys that need to be real-time).If you’re looking to integrate a system other than SFDC with SFMC and that integration does not have to be real-time, then using FTP (file transfer protocol) integration may be a good option. SFMC allows you to set up FTP server locations on which files can be placed (manually or automatically). SFMC can then fetch these files and import the data they contain into the platform. For this, you will need to use SFMC Automation Studio, which can fetch and import data at a set time — something commonly referred to as a “batch process”. By the way, the same process in reverse can allow you to export data to other systems.You can set up automation on an everyday basis; this way you’ll avoid uploading all the data in Marketing Cloud at once. Instead, you’ll upload only the data you need for the specific campaigns.FTP integration can support many use cases, but if you’re looking for something that can let data syncin real-time and be more secure, you may want to go with API integration. A word of caution: This will effectively require you to write and manage your code to integrate SFMC to other internal applications. This may be excessive if it’s only to support a specific journey or use case. If you intend to make this integration robust and scalable, this may require the allocation of several full-time resources. Having said that, API integration is the way to go for real-time communication and truly leveraging capabilities like triggered send.A technical side note to the API integration: A significant portion of the SFMC API is not based on REST API (the more common industry standard these days), but also SOAP API (which resembles XML to some extent). In particular, the SFMC API to manage data is SOAP-based, so there is no real way around this. As a developer, you will first want to create a standardized methodology to interact with SFMC. This is essentially what we did at DESelect to create the plug-and-play app that it is. By taking care of a robust API ourselves, we allow customers to leverage all their data immediately, and in real-time, inside of our app.If you look for a way to integrate additional data sources (either real-time or in automatic patch uploads), then DESelect Connect may be something for you! Essentially, this is our connector custom-made for Marketing Cloud, allowing admins to integrate data sources with simple plug-and-play.Lastly, there are some ways to integrate data inside of SFMC that could be categorized as ‘other’, because they serve to connect very specific apps or modules within the platform. For instance, Mobile Push allows you to integrate Marketing Cloud with a mobile app your company has built.What data to store in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and how to use it?With Marketing Cloud, you have a powerful platform in which to store and integrate many data sources. Throughout this chapter, we’ve emphasized the importance of asking some key questions: What journeys do you want to support with SFMC? What campaigns will you run using SFMC? How will you use your data within SFMC? Only when you’ve answered such questions will you have a framework to help decide what data sources to integrate into SFMC. Once things have taken off, you will want to review and revise that framework from time to time. Consider then if there are new journeys you want to implement, or perhaps more personalized versions of existing journeys can be designed. When that happens you can always return to this eBook for guidance.Business units in Marketing CloudIf you’re an Enterprise 2.0 tenant (like most Marketing Cloud users these days), you’ve probably come across the concept of business units in Marketing Cloud. What are they for? And how can you leverage business units for your needs?Marketers work within Marketing Cloud as team or sub-team members. These teams can be divided into various categories depending on the enterprise or specific use cases. The marketing teams can be categorized based on factors like region, markets, organizational hierarchy, products, brands, or any particular setup. This categorization helps the organization and its marketing teams recreate an ideal working environment within Marketing Cloud.This functionality is facilitated within Marketing Cloud through a feature known as ‘business units’. business units within Salesforce Marketing Cloud help organize and control access to the information with various marketing teams. Content can be in the form of templates, Subscriber data, and settings. business units can control all of these.A Business Unit typically performs one or many business functions and has a specific place in theorganizational hierarchy. Usually, each Business Unit has a manager, strategic objectives, a level of autonomy, and responsibility for its profit and loss.How are business units organized?Business units are created in Marketing Cloud in the form of a hierarchy. The top businessunit is called the ‘Parent Business Unit’, and sub-business units are called ‘Child business units’. The top parent is sometimes also referred to as the ‘Grandparent’ or enterprise business unit (EBU). The business unit hierarchy is illustrated in the below image: How is the data shared between business units?The Subscriber data shared by the Parent business unit (with its Child business units) should be placed inside the Shared Data Extension folders inside Email Studio. This will be helpful to reuse the information across the business units without copying it manually.Where to integrate data?Normally, you’ll integrate with the EBU, especially when you use Marketing Cloud Connect. Since from there you may make queries to create data extensions you’ll share across business units. We’ll cover the subject of shared data extensions later in this eBook. Keep reading! :)It’s also possible to have business units for separate parts of the business, that can be quitedifferent since they are connected with different CRMs. In this case you integrate them separately per business unit.In the next chapter, you will find out how to organize your data inMarketing Cloud using Contact Builder. Moreover, we’ll cover whatit entails and how to leverage Data Designer. We’ll also explainhow you can avoid using Data Designer and still have a great dataoverview in Marketing CloudHow to define your data model in Salesforce Marketing CloudSo we’ve got into how to use your data within Marketing Cloud, but what about Contacts and defining your data model? In this next section, we explore the big wide world of SFMC Contact Builder. Keep reading! :)What is Contact Builder in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and what is it for?Contact Builder is a Marketing Cloud “builder” (essentially an app) that allows you to manage contacts and related data. You use Contacts to store demographic, commercial, transactional, and behavioral information about individuals. The main purpose of Contact Builder is to organize your contact data into a single customer view.Why would you use Contact Builder?Leverage information from any Marketing Cloud app for any contact. The data in Contact Builder (as discussed in the earlier chapters) is presented in a form of the relational data model.Design, map, and link data about your customersAdd synchronized data sources from Salesforce CRM to Salesforce Marketing Cloud using Marketing Cloud Connect (if applicable).With this single view of your customer, you take an important step towards creating personalized and targeted campaigns. In other words, you can deliver a better customer experience.Contact Builder stores customer data that can later be used in Email Studio, while creating actual email campaigns. Data management in Email Studio will be covered later in the eBook. Keep reading :)This next chapter will most likely be most beneficial for MarketingCloud Admins and Marketing Automation professionals. This isbecause you have to obtain a certain level of permissions in order toleverage most of the functionality mentioned in this chapter.How to get access to Contact BuilderThere are several roles that can be assigned to users, granting access to Contact Builder. Normally, Marketing Cloud admins assign these roles, which can vary from having basic app access to having permissions for more specific functions within Contact Builder.Why should you give someone access to Contact Builder?It’s important to provide access to contact data in Contact Builder for various Salesforce Marketing Cloud users. For instance, for a marketing agency to create templates in Content Builder, you would probably like to restrict access to features like contact deletion.On the other hand, you would like to provide admins with permissions for Marketing Cloud Connect, and data deletion in Contact Builder.How can you provide access to Contact Builder?To administer access to Contact Builder, you will need the necessary administrative permissions and navigate to Setup. Within Salesforce Marketing Cloud, click on your name (top right), and then click on ‘Setup’. There, under ‘Users’, you can assign roles to define access to Contact Builder. As recommended earlier, you can also create custom roles. To do so, click on ‘Roles’, and click on ‘Create’ to define a new custom role.It is a best practice to create a custom role for marketers(or other groups of users) who need access to Contact Builder,so you assign them specific and relevant permissions.What are “contacts” in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Contact Builder?A “contact” is a data record that contains contact information (like an email address or phone number),and to which other relevant data may be related (like personal details, demographic information, behavioral data). A contact ideally refers to a single person, although there may be situations where you may actually end up having several contacts that represent the same person. For instance, you may know a person by two email addresses (business and personal), for which two ‘contacts’ are created.However, one of the advantages of Contact Builder is that it can help you build a single view of your customer. So ideally, your contacts represent persons one to one. This means you may need to connect different pieces of contact information (like email or phone) to the same contact in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Because of this, it’s a best practice to use a unique identifier, defined by a system (think Salesforce CRM Ids) or potentially by the business, as the Contact Key.How to identify contacts in Contact Builder?Each contact in Marketing Cloud Contact Builder can be identified by a unique Contact Key and a Contact ID. The Contact Key and Contact ID are two sides of the same coin: You can define the Contact Key while the Contact ID is automatically generated by SFMC.Where can I find my contacts?You’ll find contacts via the All Contacts tab within Contact Builder. Here, you can choose to view your contacts coming from different sources and channels.Contact information is also stored in data extensions. These are basically tables that contain a variety of data. Data extensions are used in Data Designer within Contact Builder, which we will explain further. Note that, in Contact Builder, data extensions are also known as attribute sets.Where does the data about contacts come from?Define where your data comes from and what you really need to store in Marketing Cloud. There are several options here. For instance, your data source can be an external preference center, or perhaps leads collected through your website. It can also come from POS if you use retail purchase data, or from product catalog CSV. In the earlier chapter we already discussed how the data appears in Marketing Cloud.Read further to find out about the synchronized and custom data sources. What is a Contact Key?A contact is managed across different channels (like email or SMS) using a single Contact Key. Let’s say you have a contact in Email Studio that you identify using her email address, and in Mobile Studio you use her mobile phone number. Without the Contact Key, it would be difficult for Marketing Cloud to be ableto relate these two pieces of contact information. The Contact Key identifies a contact within a Marketing Cloud account across business units, and ties together different pieces of contact information across channels through which you interact with that contact.Ideally, a given contact has the same Contact Key regardless of the channel you use to communicate.Make sure you are consistent across all channelswhen assigning a Contact Key to a contact. The Contact Key is essentially a Subscriber Key in Email Studio. So to be consistent, use the Subscriber Key value in Email Studio as your unique Contact Key in Contact Builder. Note that a Subscriber Key is generated the moment you send an email through Email Studio to the Subscriber.Contact Keys across different Studios in Salesforce Marketing CloudA Contact Key is used across different channels in Marketing Cloud, which means you will find it across different “studios” in SFMC. For instance, when importing contacts in MobileConnect, you use the Contact Key as well. If you want to import data in MobilePush, you also need to specify the Contact Key.You might use a mobile number as a Contact Key for MobileConnect, or email as a Contact Key for Mobile Push. However, the best practice is to create a Contact Key using a unique identifier (unique ID/ customer ID) that you can use throughout different studios in SFMC.