Gifford / Hanshaw / Hilaire Automating Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Reap all the benefits of the SFMC platform and increase your productivity with the help of real-world examples
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80324-464-8
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 456 Seiten

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) allows you to use multiple channels and tools to create a 1:1 marketing experience for your customers and subscribers. Through automation and helper tasks, you can greatly increase your productivity while also reducing the level of effort required in terms of volume and frequency.
Automating Salesforce Marketing Cloud starts by discussing what automation is generally and then progresses to what automation is in SFMC. After that, you'll focus on how to perform automation inside of SFMC all the way to fully running processes and capabilities from an external service. Later chapters explore the benefits and capabilities of automation and having an automation mindset both within and outside of SFMC. Equipped with this knowledge and example code, you'll be prepared to maximize your SFMC efficiency.
By the end of this Salesforce book, you'll have the skills you need to build automation both inside and outside of SFMC, along with the knowledge for using the platform optimally.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gifford, Greg

Hanshaw, Jason

Hilaire, Guilda

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Business Application Unternehmenssoftware
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Programmierung | Softwareentwicklung Software Engineering
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Business Application Groupware

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents - What is Automation?
- SFMC Automation Tools

- SFMC Automation Best Practices
- Automating Email Sends
- Automating Your ETL and Data

- The Magic of Script Activities
- The Power of In-Step APIs
- Creating Mini Web Apps
- Getting Started with Custom Integrations
- Exploring SFMC as a Piece of the Puzzle
- Exploring SDKs, APIs, and Specs
- Webhooks and Microservices
- Exploring Custom Journey Builder Activities
- Carpe Omnia

Leseproben

Preface

Are you a current user of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC)? Have you ever thought, or ? Then this book is for you.

We will dive into learning how to create new efficient and scalable solutions for the platform based on automation, both internally and externally. You will learn how to make your emails essentially send themselves and how to build applications and scripts to do monotonous tasks and help create shortcuts for your development needs.

Let's help you learn the theory, knowledge, skills, and more advanced use cases so that once you are done, you can go on to build your own automations and solutions to make your Marketing Cloud platform rise to the next level of efficiency!

Who this book is for

This book is intended for those who are knowledgeable in SFMC and have a good grasp of both the platform and the tools inside of it. The purpose of this book is to help teach you how to inside of SFMC and get as much as possible out of the tools. Although not required, some development knowledge and skill is a plus to get the most out of this book.

What this book covers

, , takes you through the basic concepts of automation and why automation is important. It will go over what exactly automation is and the reason behind doing it. It will also go into detail on the best ways to implement and create solutions for automation. We will see high-level strategies as well as more intricate and technical tactics for automation implementation and maintenance.

, , is an overview of Automation Studio and Journey Builder. This chapter focuses on an overview of these two and how they work to help the internal automation of the platform.

, , dives into best practices for automation in SFMC with a major focus on things such as performance, efficiency, scalability, context, and preference.

, , covers the basics and some more in-depth knowledge of best practices and considerations for automation. With all this background under our belts, we start to explore real-life scenarios to put this knowledge into practice.

, , moves to the bread and butter of what automation is made for – data! We discuss automating ETL via import/export/query activities as well as filter activities, and similar activities for segmentation and data staging.

, , takes the next step forward into developer-level solutions. This is a quick introduction to utilizing custom solutions using AMPscript or SSJS inside of script activities.

, , explores the option of making API calls from inside SFMC. Through script activities, we can do API calls via WSProxy, native functions, and HTTP POST/GET to the internal endpoints. But we can also use Script.Util content syndication functions to make calls to external endpoints and add integration/interaction with external services.

, , introduces you to more advanced API implementation and uses. We will be diving into advanced development solutions that can essentially create mini web apps inside your automations!

, , introduces you to proper planning methods as well as helping you understand the basic integration toolkits. This should serve as an introduction to the tooling, terminology, limitations, and basic setup necessary to begin building custom solutions.

, , dives into determining how to identify areas in your processes for automation as well as how to structure your project for success.

, , covers the standard Marketing Cloud SDKs, including how to both read and extend the capabilities provided. Also, you will learn the major differences between the Marketing Cloud REST and SOAP APIs as well as how to create your own API gateway.

, , covers the basics of both webhooks and microservices as well as how to functionally incorporate these into your current business processes.

, , shows how to design, develop, test, and execute custom Journey Builder activities within Marketing Cloud. Special emphasis will be given to common component files as well as authentication and best practices.

, , is a basic recap and wrap-up of the book touching on the main points that we went over and the possibilities that are now open to us, as well as giving some last-minute tips and tricks based on this newly acquired knowledge.

To get the most out of this book

The following is a list of software and languages covered inside this book. Although there are a lot of development aspects listed, not all are a requirement for understanding; rather, they are more a recommendation to get the most out of the book. The only major requirement is to have a licensed version of SFMC and have good general knowledge of the platform.

As you may notice, there are a few different languages and development capabilities listed here. These are not required beyond a very basic level. Most of it you can pick up inside the book or use the listed resources or general references on the internet to make sense of it.

Note

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Automating-Salesforce-Marketing-Cloud. If there's an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781803237190_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "PUT sends across an encrypted payload to interact with the target for overwrite update, but if that object does not exist, then PUT may create it instead."

A block of code is set as follows:

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: "To do this, navigate to the User Settings menu and select Developer Settings."

Tips or Important Notes

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Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, email us at [e-mail] and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit...

Über Autor(innen)

Gifford Greg :

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, 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, 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.Hanshaw Jason :

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 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.