Marketing Cloud Limitations (and Ways Around Them)

Welcome to another X Force Data Summit presentation. Today we have Cyril Louie, who, runs a Salesforce practice at a consultancy called Globaz.

And today he's gonna talk about the Sales Marketing Cloud limitations and workarounds. And I just wanted to mention that this is a great complimentary presentation to Carrie Townsend's presentation, which was Introduction to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. So if you like this presentation, you might wanna see Carrie's and those of you who saw Carrie's, welcome to Cyril's. And without further ado, here's Cyril.

Yeah. Thank you very much for the introduction.

Yes, indeed, I've built this presentation from my own experience when I started some marketing cloud implementation. So I faced some limitation, some difficulties, and I tried to find workarounds when when possible. And for sure, it's something I wish I knew when I started some implementations, so I hope it will be useful for you too to share something I faced when I did some marketing cloud implementations.

So who am I? So so my name is Siri Louie, I'm working at Globaz, and and I'm working in a CRM ecosystem since last seventeen years now and I'm specialized on Salesforce since last eight years now.

So I've built tons of project on Salesforce working on different clouds, sales cloud, service cloud, community cloud and so on. And then I started to specialize on marketing, not just marketing cloud, but different topics around marketing strategies and different tools, but obviously marketing cloud. And then when you're working on marketing, data is more and more useful and important. So I've been involved in different data and artificial intelligence projects using DNP, CDP, machine learning's, predictive intelligence and so on.

If you know me on the social media, you may see that like snowboard also, so it's something I do really like.

There is no since I think something like two thousand and two and no year without snowboarding.

Last topic to introduce myself is around travel as a community, so it's something I do like, share knowledge, being involved into the community.

So talking about community, I'm a user group leader and I've been also involved in community event, named Skieforce. So you see the link with Salesforce in the snowboard, and so I've been also awarded as a Salesforce MVP and Salesforce Lightning champion, and as I told you, I'm the user group leader in Geneva, Switzerland, And I've been also involved in different Salesforce events as a volunteers or as a speaker. So it could be Dreamforce, different Salesforce workforce or Basecamp or different kind of events.

I mentioned some trailblazer community events.

So it's also different kind of event. I like to be involved as a volunteer or as a speaker. So your event X Force Data Summit is one example and I've been involved in the French subs dreaming, Czech dreaming, North Africa training, sharing some best practices, sharing knowledge.

I also had the chance to, you know, guide or help people to train on Salesforce in different universities here in in Switzerland and also being a speaker in different e commerce or marketing conferences. And the last thing and I've been also, I've I had the chance to share some knowledge, insights or ideas in different blogs and newspaper.

But before I start my presentation, I will just share with you this nice forward looking statements, and I'm quite sure you know the slides. It's just for you to know that do not base your precision decision on what I was told you today, but only on you know, the the the features are already available on the platform because I may speak around features, evolution, innovation or roadmap like you will see ideas, ideas dot salesforce dot com. So today, it's sharing, it's about sharing my knowledge and my experience, my own experience on marketing cloud and talking about some known limitation and sometimes some unknown limitation and discuss about how I face those limitation and if I found some work around, share it with you. So the first topic is around sandbox.

So if you're working on Salesforce core platform, so for sure, when you start on marketing cloud, you will raise this question. So where is my sandbox? Where is my marketing cloud sandbox? I would like to test my data on a developer org or I would like to run some campaign on my marketing sandbox data, or I would like to synchronize with my sales cloud sandbox.

So the first action to do is to use the marketing cloud connector. You can synchronize. The the thing is to synchronize data, you will have all your data in the same what we call data extension. So in in marketing client, all your data will be at the same place. So first thing is maybe build another data extension instead of adding all your subscriber in what we call the old subscriber list, maybe build a dedicated testable data extension when you will put your your test data in it.

If you do not want to create dedicated data extension, you can just create a custom field on your all subscriber list, name you can name it whatever you you like, but name it sandbox, and then use this checkbox as a criteria when you would like to segment your campaign.

So you you would like you will be sure that you only segment test data.

Another way is to segregate your data. So I just told you that all your information, all your data will be in what we call the all subscriber list in Marketing Cloud, but you can also build a business unit. And a business unit, it's a kind of Chinese wall between your data. You you will really segregate your data. So if you have business units, you can create a business unit and you can name it sandbox and every data in this business units can be used for your test campaign for instance.

But to use it, you have to have a specific option named multi business units. And if you would like to synchronize these business units with your sandbox, you have also to purchase the multi org features. So you need multi business units and multi org to synchronize your test data with a sales sandbox, for instance.

Or you can also avoid for this idea. So if you're not aware of what is ideas dot salesforce dot com, it's the community that raise demand or claims IDs, and if a lot of people within the community have vote for this idea, Salesforce will include this new evolution in the roadmap for the future release. So please go to get go to the this idea of vote if you want to have a sandbox on marketing cloud.

Another topic when I started on marketing cloud is how did how do we how does it work to synchronize data between Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud for instance, but also in the other way from Salesforce to Marketing Cloud, Marketing Cloud to Sales Cloud and so on.

So a few question when you start. So how do you synchronize your Sales Cloud data to Marketing Cloud? How does it work? I know there is a connector that has worked.

But the second question is okay, and what if something happened on Marketing Cloud and I would like to now refresh and update my data on Sales Cloud.

So the first thing to synchronize is to use Marketing Cloud Connect. It's super easy to implement, and it will allow you to use your Seller Service Cloud data in Marketing Cloud. So you can use those data as criteria to build your segmentation and so on.

Straightforward.

But if you need to update Salesforce, your Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, you will need to be at the customer journeys and use Salesforce activities that will allow you to update from Marketing Cloud to Sales Cloud. Or you can also use Unscript and ups Unscript is the kind of specific language for marketing cloud. It's, you know, to develop for developers mainly.

Another option could be to have a closer look on the new Salesforce Customer three sixty. Salesforce is pushing a lot on Customer three sixty in order to have all those different clouds more and more connected. So maybe Salesforce through Customer three sixty will help you to synchronize and update your your data through all your different clouds.

Or you can also avoid for this idea to help you to synchronize information both ways.

The idea I've listed here is strongly focused on the email status, but if Salesforce try to deliver something, for sure they will also increase the capability around synchronization.

Another topic is around customer journeys. If you're using Marketing Cloud, it's also to build customer journeys.

So you have different question. The first one is, okay, I'm running Marketing Cloud, so it's live, it's in production, and I would like to build a new customer journey. How can I do? How can I test to make sure I will not, you know, run on my production data? How can I test it maybe on my sandbox business units, and then when it's like, I would like to deploy on the other other business units, or maybe someone in another business units build the super useful customer journeys, and we would like to reuse it in all the different business units?

So when I started this presentation a few months ago, the first answer was you can only share assets or email templates between different business units, and to do so you will use the shared folder.

But in the shared folder, you cannot put customer journeys.

So the answer was there is no workaround actually. If you want to share customer journeys between different business units, you have to just rebuild it. Or we had these ideas, and there is this is the real value of ideas because it's quite new, actually, this solution has been delivered by Salesforce.

The connector is available on the app exchange and it's named deployment manager for marketing cloud, and this app exchange will allow you to deploy your different customer journeys between your different business units.

So as you can see, if you see something missing on the solution, you create the idea, if a lot of people within the community avoid for this idea, this can be delivered in the next releases.

So we just talked about how to duplicate customer journeys. Another topic is landing pages.

So again, I've been the landing pages for, I don't know, a game or form or registration and so on, and I would like to reuse these landing pages maybe like a template. I would like to save it, clone it, copy and so on.

And actually, it's not possible within marketing cloud. It's quite crazy, but if you if you have linked page, have to rebuild the landing page. You cannot just clone it.

So what I found is instead of using the marketing cloud capabilities of building landing pages, you can use other tool like form form assembly or again, you can also avoid for one idea, like asking Salesforce to allow us to duplicate and clone our existing Linux pages.

Another topic on Marketing Cloud, it's you know, the multi channel. So you will use different channels and one of the channel could be the mobile. So you're building your templates. Before to send the template, you will have the preview on Marketing Cloud, and you would say, would like to see what will be the rendering on a mobile phone.

So you see it on your Marketing Cloud solution.

It looks good. You click on send and when you receive it, it's going total crazy. So you don't understand why because the template looks good, then you click and when you receive it, something goes wrong. So as a walk around, I found that during my test send, when I send the test of my campaign, I use Litmus and with Litmus, you can have tons of preview, you can select what kind of mobile phones you you would like to have, what kind of email client you would like to see the rendering on.

So it's super useful, super easy also to use and obviously it's integrated with Marketing Cloud. So you can have a look on that, it will save tons of times for you.

Another option could be to wait with because Salesforce just bought Rebel months ago, so maybe through this acquisition, Salesforce will bring additional capabilities to Marketing Cloud. As an example, you know, you may be aware of what is interactive email. So interactive email is how to build form or survey within an email. So this this feature is coming from Rebel. So maybe Salesforce will have more and more, like, instead of the art mobile preview, maybe it's coming through this acquisition.

Or you can also vote for this idea asking to the Salesforce team to have a look on the mobile rendering, because obviously, they have something new, it's not good enough, so they they could also work on that.

Last topic, another topic is about about the commercial threshold. So if you're using different type of solution for marketing automation, it's something that you usually see. You do not want to oversolicitate your subscribers. You don't want to send too many messages. So you would like to say, I would don't want to say in another email if someone, I don't know, have received more than five emails in the in the last two weeks for instance.

But the thing it's not these features which exist in other solution is not an an out of the box features in marketing cloud.

So walk around, maybe you can use marketing cloud measures to track the number of email you've sent, and then reuse these measures as a criteria, maybe.

Another option could be to use SQL query.

So within Marketing Cloud, you can build some SQL query, so you can evaluate number of email that have been sent to every contact, and then use automation studio to automate this query, and use the results of this query to build an exclusion list. So if your query is, I would like to have all my subscriber who received more than five emails in the last fourteen days.

So it will be added, they will be added to the exclusion list to make sure they will not be oversolicited.

Or you can ask Salesforce to have a look on these features and upvote for this idea, and maybe it will be delivered in the next release.

So we talk about automated number of email we sent to the customer and make sure we do not over solicit.

But actually, when you started on Marketing Cloud, you will you you have to buy a package of super messages. So what is a super message? Super message is the unit within Marketing Cloud for all you the email you will send, the SMS, the push notification or also the landing page and cloud pages impressions. So it's the units.

So you you buy a pack of units and the question will be, where am I? How many how many super messaging I still have now because my my database is growing, I've sent more and more email. And actually, there isn't this information does not exist within marketing cloud. You have to ask your account executive.

So walk around. If you're using only email as channel, you can just run a report and you will see how many how many emails you've sent so you can you know how many super messages you've you've you've bought, so you will see where you are. But if you're using also SMS's push notification and cloud impressions, there is no workaround. You have to raise the equation to your account executive and it will give you the answer.

So which is weird because if an account executive can have the answer, so this answer should be shared to the customer. So you can vote for this idea asking to Salesforce to display this information within your own marketing cloud org.

You should be able to see this information without you contact your account executive.

And the last topic, when you're working on marketing clouds, because it's a solution for marketing automation, you may have question about scoring, because you said, okay, Salesforce, I know that Salesforce has a solution named Pardot, and with within Pardot, you have scoring, you have grading, But what about Marketing Cloud? So where is the scoring for my subscriber? How can I do if I would like to score to grade my subscriber list?

So it's not available out of the box. So we can think of different ways to address this this topic.

Actually, with with some people, we think about it before.

So you can have some insight on this blog post on Salesforce Ben dot com.

The first one is maybe you can build a custom scoring on Sales Cloud using the Marketing Cloud Connect. So the Marketing Cloud Connect will send information to Sales Cloud, like what kind of how many email you you have opened, how many clicks you've done on the on the emails, how many interaction, and with process builder on your sales cloud, you will increase this dedicated custom scoring.

Maybe opening an email is five points and clicking on the links is ten points, and you will increase this information.

And again, through the connector, you will reuse this custom score send back to Marketing Cloud using and use it as a custom criteria.

Another option could be to build a customer journey to increase the custom scoring into a custom data extension. So after each email you've sent, if the email has been opened, if a click up, if a link has been clicked, or if you submit form in the landing page and so on, you will update that extension and then you can also reuse this information.

Another option if you do not want to build that extensions, you can implement Saleswing app. So Saleswing app is is an external application, it's for lead scoring and website tracking. So you will add intelligence, you can have scoring and and grading, and this all this information can be also synchronized to marketing cloud. So sell sales doing apps can bring you the kind of pilots scoring and website tracking into Marketing Cloud.

And by the way, it's a it's a Swiss company.

And of course, you can also vote for this idea, a link here to ask Salesforce to allow us or give us this kind of features for scoring on Marketing Cloud.

So this is few topics that I faced, so sometimes because I I was used to have this this features in different solutions, so I was like quite surprised not to have the solution within Marketing Cloud, and sometimes it just using us dedicated, you know, use cases and I said, oh, it's strange that I could not just duplicate the landing page, now now that I have faced this this problem, how can I do to ease my day to day work? So I hope I hope, I really hope this this feedback from my real life experience will be useful for a lot of people watching this session. And of course feel free to reach me on different trials, email, Twitter or LinkedIn and I will be more than happy to help.

Thank you, Cyril. It's interesting to see the kind of an eye opening list of shortfalls on Marketing Cloud. I guess one of the one question I had is if you run out of super messages during the middle of a campaign, what happens? Can you restart your campaign after you get another quota of super messages or does does Marketing Cloud fail gracefully or is it a is it a cleanup?

No.

You you have when you started with marketing cloud, you have different criteria on your on your contract. So the first one is super messages, how many super messages you will use, and the second one is how many contacts you will store in your database.

When you Right. Hit when you hit one number on your contract, it's not like a strict stop of your campaign. Okay. I'm sorry. It will just ring a bell into the to the account executive, they will come back to you and asking, do you need more super messages or pay attention, you've just hit the maximum number of contacts that you can store Into your contract, so two options, do you want to raise your limit or do you want to clean part of your database?

Okay.

Well, that's better than just failing right Yeah, sure. So when you're previewing your mobile emails, basically you send an email, you send a test email to Litmus and then look at it in Is that is that what you do with the Litmus workaround you're talking about?

Yes. So you can send only one email actually. You send one email and and then you open the rendering on Litmus and then you say, I would like to see how it looks on an iPhone, I don't know, it's iPhone six. I would like to see how how the email looks like in age or in Chrome or in in a Mac or and so on. So you you you will select your mobile device but also your email clients. So you have tons of options. You can also have a look on how it looks on on, I don't know, Outlook or have tons tons tons of options.

Nice. So they but the the internal one isn't very good, That's interesting. Yep.

Yes. Salesforce needs to acquire Litmus.

Tell me a little bit about Customer three sixty. What is what do you think that's gonna bring to Marketing Cloud or allow you to do in marketing?

So what Salesforce is trying to do is to connect all the different clouds to to hollow you to have a real complete view of your customer, all the different touch points you may have. So The main example is you have part of your customer data on your sales cloud, part of your service cloud, but also could be on your commerce cloud and on your marketing clouds. And because part of the clouds also coming from acquisition from Salesforce, they are not on the same infrastructure or on the same data model.

Customer three sixty will help you to duplicate your data because you have different records but at the end of the day, it's the same customer behind. So customer three sixty will help you to have the customer unique view depending on the different touch points you may have. So it's a way to connect all the different cloud of Salesforce, but also how to, you know, merge all the data.

So this is why for Marketing Cloud, it can be also useful to synchronize with all the clouds. It's a way to deduplicate, find what actually is the unique key, and how to find that a subscriber in marketing cloud is a consumer in commerce cloud which is a customer or prospect in sales cloud and so on. But at the end of the day, it's the same human being behind.

Yeah. That would be helpful I think. Very helpful. Well, thank you so much for the presentation, Cyril. Welcome. And I've learned a lot about Marketing Cloud and its limitations and hope you stay healthy.

Yeah. So keep in touch, ask question and I I hope it will have a lot of people to, you know, to go into Marketing Cloud and maybe to have more certification on marketing cloud and so on.

Great. Great. Thank you.

Welcome. Thank you very much.

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