Salesforce MC-101 - Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Engagement Foundations

When a marketing associate needs to make changes to an existing journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, such as reordering the emails it contains, the recommended approach is to create a new version of the journey. This feature allows for modifications to be made while preserving the original journey structure and performance data. Creating a new journey version enables the associate to make necessary adjustments, test the changes, and then activate the new version without disrupting the existing journey's flow or performance.

This method ensures a smooth transition and allows for comparison between different journey versions, facilitating continuous improvement and optimization.

In an A/B test within Email Studio to determine the highest click-through rate, the system declares a winner based on the predefined winning criteria (such as highest open rate, click rate, etc.) and then automatically sends the winning version to the remainder of the subscriber list that did not participate in the initial test. This ensures that the most effective email version is distributed to the largest segment of the audience, maximizing the overall performance of the campaign.

Using a new From Name can help Cloud Kicks clearly distinguish the new publication from previous ones. This practice can reduce subscriber confusion and set clear expectations, particularly when launching a new type of content or series.

Considerations on From Name: While changing the From Name might impact immediate recognition, it’s beneficial if the new publication has a different focus, target audience, or format.

Salesforce Documentation Reference: For further details on best practices for sender name, refer to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Best Practices for Email Marketing.

The Bounce status describes the issue when subscribers complain about not receiving a newsletter they signed up for, and tracking information indicates the email server rejected the email. A bounced email is one that could not be delivered to the recipient's inbox due to various reasons, such as an incorrect email address, a full inbox, or server issues. The Bounce status helps identify and manage undeliverable email addresses.

To track key performance indicators (KPIs) prioritized by leadership, the associate should use Marketing Cloud Engagement Reports. These reports provide detailed insights into the performance of marketing activities, allowing for the analysis of various KPIs such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and other metrics that are crucial for evaluating the success of marketing efforts. Engagement Reports in Salesforce Marketing Cloud offer customizable options to focus on the specific KPIs that leadership has prioritized, providing a tailored view of campaign performance.

Send Throttling in Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows marketers to control the rate at which emails are sent. This can help manage the load on web servers and ensure that Cloud Kicks’ website can handle the traffic from email engagement during high-volume campaigns like “Holidays in July.”

How Send Throttling Helps: By limiting the number of emails sent per hour, it spreads the email engagement over a more extended period, which can help mitigate the risk of overwhelming the website with traffic spikes.

Salesforce Documentation Reference: For more on how to set up and use Send Throttling, see Send Throttling Documentation.

In Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement, items such as email templates, content blocks, and data extensions can be made accessible to users across different business units by storing them in a shared folder. Shared folders are designed to facilitate collaboration and reuse of assets within an organization's Marketing Cloud instance, allowing users from any business unit to access and utilize shared items in their campaigns and workflows.

By organizing and storing reusable assets in shared folders, businesses can ensure consistency in branding and messaging across different teams and campaigns, while also improving efficiency by reducing the need to duplicate assets for each business unit.

Intelligence Reports (formerly known as Datorama Reports) are designed for advanced analytics within Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This tool is ideal for calculating ROI across campaigns, as it can integrate data from custom data extensions and provides robust reporting capabilities, including custom metrics and performance analysis.

Why Intelligence Reports Are Ideal for ROI: They offer detailed and customizable reporting capabilities, which are essential for calculating metrics like ROI that require data from multiple sources.

Salesforce Documentation Reference: See the Intelligence Reports Overview for details on setting up and using Intelligence Reports.

To avoid auto-responses from filling up the customer service inbox, Cloud Kicks should configure Reply Mail Management (RMM) in their Salesforce Marketing Cloud account. RMM is a feature that handles replies to emails sent from Marketing Cloud, including managing auto-responses. With RMM, automatic replies, such as out-of-office notifications, can be filtered out or redirected to a specific email address, ensuring they do not clutter the customer service inbox.

This allows customer service staff to focus on genuine customer inquiries and provide timely and effective support. RMM can be customized to suit different operational needs, ensuring that only relevant replies reach the customer service team.

Journey History in Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder provides a record of each contact’s journey, including details about which steps they have completed and where any issues might have occurred. By reviewing Journey History, the marketing associate can investigate whether the emails were sent, and if not, identify any errors or skips.

Benefits of Journey History: It allows for a granular look at each customer’s interaction with the journey and can help troubleshoot any issues related to delivery or content processing within the journey.

Salesforce Documentation Reference: For more information, see Journey Builder History Overview.