A jack of all trades talking and doing business, marketing, code and tech. CEO of Avagate.
I’ve been in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) ecosystem since the early days of ExactTarget. There are a few nuances, however there are many powerful delights which SFMC offers. The trick is taking time to learn from the community and build powerful processes that helps your brand, company, and professional career blossom.
Here are some amazing resources which I’ve gathered over the years that should assist you in your Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation, some of which I had built and shared myself:
90% of Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementations are undocumented. It amazes me that large agencies can offer their services and walk out without leaving any documentation of the setup and configuration for clients. Here’s a handy SFMC template to get documentation started from the fine team members at Avagate when they do an initial SFMC account audit/discovery. (Disclosure: I’m the CEO of Avagate)
Sending an ad hoc email can be a chore (i.e., building emails from word docs, importing lists, defining the segmentation, configuring the personalization, revising the creative, scheduling the email, providing tracking results, etc). A tool like Blocks Edit allows for building and editing of corporate branded emails using a simple drag-drop interface, thus reducing word docs and encouraging creative writers into the email build process, Blocks Edit has a free forever plan and the integration into Salesforce Marketing Cloud is stellar for large teams. It’s just plain simpler than Content Builder and it does one job, editing emails, really well. (Disclosure: I’m a co-founder of Blocks Edit with my good friend, Ovi Demetrian Jr.)
Combine Blocks Edit with the free Email Scheduling Calendar Template from Avagate and you begin to outline a workflow to increase efficiencies.
Oh- and check out the free Email Reporting Dashboard Template to help communicate campaign metrics post deployment. Reach out if you’d like to see our automated dashboards w/ Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrated.
Designed and shared by Chelsea Crawford.
But wait — there’s more! And it’s truly Open-Source. What if you could build, package, and deploy within Salesforce Marketing Cloud using a simple command line interface (CLI)? What if you could implement a git-workflow and have version control of your assets within Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
We’ll be attending and speaking at this year’s Dreamforce, September 20–22. Dreamforce is the premier Salesforce user conference. Tony Zupancic will outline the latest features of the BLDR CLI app for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and demonstrate a true developer workflow within SFMC.
You’ll soon find all types of open-source BLDR packages that you’ll be able to deploy into your SFMC instance with an intuitive command, check out this One-Click Unsubscribe BLDR package as a real world example.
At Avagate — we love building nimble yet powerful solutions to combat any/all nuances. Our services and solutions are made to fit into existing teams as extended assistance with knowledge sharing across industries. If you need assistance with your Salesforce Marketing Cloud instance (new or old) consider reaching out to us.
If you’re curious — here’s the other things which we are working on.