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Automating Salesforce Marketing Cloud Reap all the benefits of the SFMC platform and increase your productivity with the help of real-world examples Greg Gifford Jason Hanshaw BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI Automating Salesforce Marketing Cloud Copyright © 2022 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. Group Product Manager: Alok Dhuri Publishing Product Manager: Richa Tripathi Senior Editor: Nisha Cleetus Content Development Editor: Nithya Sadanandan Technical Editor: Pradeep Sahu Copy Editor: Safis Editing Project Coordinator: Deeksha Thakkar Proofreader: Safis Editing Indexer: Manju Arasan Production Designer: Vijay Kamble Marketing Coordinator: Deepak Kumar First published: March 2022 Production reference: 1100322 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-80323-719-0 www.packt.com I dedicate this book to my wonderful wife and spectacular son, who make my life infinitely better every day. I also dedicate this book to the wonderful Salesforce Marketing Cloud community, which has helped me grow to where I am today. – Greg Gifford This book is dedicated to my wonderful partner and children, who inspire me to push the boundaries of what's possible in my career and life. Without them, none of this would be possible. – Jason Hanshaw Contributors About the authors Greg Gifford, also known as Gortonington inside the Salesforce Marketing Cloud community, is a Salesforce MVP, Salesforce Marketing Champion, Trailblazer Community Group Leader, and a subject matter expert on the platform. As founder and managing director of HowToSFMC.com, Greg has made a large investment in the community and has striven to create a nurturing and learning-focused environment. Greg is also the owner and author of a blog, gortonington.com, where he posts interesting things he learns about Marketing Cloud or any other helpful tips or advice he can share. Greg is also very active on Salesforce Stack Exchange and is currently the top Marketing Cloud contributor of all time there under his alias, Gortonington. Greg is currently employed at Merkle as the director of SFMC engineering. Jason Hanshaw is a Salesforce Marketing Cloud engineer with extensive experience in building solutions for the platform. A former web developer, he brings a background in web application development to Marketing Cloud in order to build innovative solutions that extend capabilities and meet complex needs. He is the author of the blog InvokeCreate.dev where he shares project-based examples for getting the most out of the platform. Jason is an avid contributor on Stack Exchange and within digital marketing communities, and is always seeking to grow his knowledge and share his own with others. About the reviewers Cameron Robert is a marketing and automation subject matter expert from Australia. He is a Salesforce Certified Expert, Salesforce Marketing Champion 2020-2021, Trailblazer Community Group Leader, and a YouTube and blog content creator, as well as contributing to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud community wherever possible. Specializing in implementation and enablement, Cameron has helped numerous businesses adopt Marketing Cloud and realize value from their projects. He is passionate about helping new users to onboard and unlock the full potential of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Jason Cort is a 4x Salesforce Certified CRM Technology specialist with 12+ years' experience across multiple platforms. With a primary focus on Salesforce Marketing Cloud, he has been a Salesforce Marketing Champion since 2020 and is one of the co-founders of HowToSFMC.com, where the community shares advice and tips for making the most of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and much more. Jason has presented webinars covering email deliverability and Salesforce Marketing Cloud functionality and has delivered presentations at email industry events including Litmus Live. He has worked in a range of industries, both on the brand side and as a consultant, and is a passionate advocate of making technology work harder to enable users to work smarter and more effectively. Shibu Abraham is a Salesforce MVP and a Marketing Champion. Shibu currently heads the APAC Salesforce Practice for UST, a Crest Partner of Salesforce. He is also an Agile Champion and holds numerous certifications from both Salesforce and the Agile community. He also leads the Marketing Cloud Trailblazer Community Group in Malaysia. He is a big fan of Lightning Web Components (LWC), marketing automation, programming in SFMC, and content creation on SFMC topics. He believes in innovation, continuous learning, and sharing knowledge about Salesforce and promotes various events for the Salesforce Trailblazer Community. Table of Contents Preface Section 1: Automation Theory and Automations in SFMC 1 What Is Automation? Automation theory 4 Data collection 12 Automation definition 6 Information routing 12 Activity tracking 13 Automation opportunities and pitfalls 6 Implementation best practices 13 Opportunities 7 Starting small 13 Expanded opportunities 8 Understanding the process 14 Pitfalls 9 Sticking to the objective 14 Concepts of automation 10 ABD – Always Be Documenting 15 Infrastructure 10 Documentation best practices 16 Triggers 11 Summary 17 2 SFMC Automation Tools Salesforce Marketing Cloud 20 Multi-channel marketing 22 The ExactTarget years 20 Cross-channel marketing 23 Salesforce acquisition 21 Marketing Cloud evolves beyond email 24 Multi-channel and Automation tools cross-channel marketing 21 in Marketing Cloud 25 viii Table of Contents Marketing Cloud tools 26 Scheduled automations 46 File drop automations 50 Journey Builder overview 27 Automation Studio activities 59 Single Send journeys 27 Transactional Send journeys 28 Comparing Automation Studio and Journey Builder 60 Multi-Step journeys 28 Journey Builder configuration overview 29 The key differences 60 Journey entry events and activities 35 Which one should I use? 63 Journey Builder considerations With our powers combined 63 and best practices 43 Automation Studio and Journey Builder interactions 64 Automation Studio overview 45 Summary 66 3 SFMC Automation Best Practices Best practices 68 Can your solution handle triple the volume and frequency that's Establishing a best practice 69 currently expected? 87 Maintaining best practices 70 Is the solution fully planned Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) 71 out and developmentally sound? 87 Creating high-quality testing 76 Is efficiency greater than Testing woes in Salesforce performance? 89 Marketing Cloud 76 Why am I not certain? 90 Creating test versions Is efficiency better than performance? 91 in your production business unit 77 Creating a sandbox business unit 79 Best practice is not always best 92 Developing and testing outside Context matters 93 Marketing Cloud 81 Subject matter experts don't Performance and efficiency know everything 94 in your architecture 83 Do research and testing 96 Will the solution solve the problem? 83 You (your preferences) matter 97 Is the solution your best path Imposter syndrome 97 forward to meet your needs? 84 Trust yourself 98 Does this solution consider Your situation matters 98 all future scenarios? 85 Summary 99 Table of Contents ix Section 2: Optimizing Automation inside of SFMC 4 Automating Email Sends Email marketing automation 1:1 messaging 116 overview 104 Batch messaging 120 Real-time versus scheduled 106 Batch or 1:1? Why not both? 124 Real time 106 Analytics-powered insights 124 Scheduled 110 Analytics in Marketing Cloud 124 Real time or scheduled – which is the right choice? 116 Considerations regarding email automation 129 1:1 messaging versus Summary 131 batch sends 116 5 Automating Your ETL and Data What is ETL? 134 Filter activities and data segmentation 153 Extract 135 Transform 135 Filters 154 Load 136 Groups 158 How is ETL used? 136 Filtered mobile lists 159 Activities for data in Import data options 160 Automation Studio 137 Export data options 160 SQL Query activities 138 Data extract 161 What is a SQL Query activity? 139 File Transfer activity 161 Uses of the SQL Query activity Tracking extract 162 in automation 140 Summary 163 x Table of Contents 6 The Magic of Script Activities Technical requirements 166 More capabilities than we can mention 186 Script activities (SSJS and AMPscript) 166 WSProxy 186 AMPscript inside of a Script activity 167 A real-life example implementation 186 Overview of SSJS in Marketing Cloud 169 Setup 186 Functions 187 What is SFMC SSJS in a nutshell? 170 Global variables 190 Oh, the possibilities! (What allTriggers logic 190 you can do in SSJS) 173 for loop 192 Arrays and objects 174 The upsert 193 Functions in SSJS 182 Summary 194 try…catch in SSJS 184 7 The Power of In-Step APIs What are APIs? 196 HttpResponse 214 The REST and SOAP APIs 198 HttpGet 215 HttpRequest 216 Authentication 198 The SOAP API in Marketing Cloud 201 Why is this important? 219 The REST API in Marketing Cloud 204 External services 219 SFMC native functions Example 1 220 and WSProxy 209 Example 2 224 Example 3 225 AMPscript 209 Example 4 226 Server-side JavaScript 211 WSProxy 212 Summary 227 Script.Util for the REST API 213