How to Set Up Journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a powerful tool that helps businesses connect with their customers in a more meaningful way. It makes it easy to send personalized emails, texts, social media posts, and even mobile app messages. This helps businesses keep their customers engaged and interested.

Let’s explore how to effectively Setup the Journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud to create engaging customer experiences.

What is Journey Builder?

Marketing Cloud Engagement’s Journey Builder is a powerful tool for creating and automating personalized campaigns. It helps marketers guide customers through tailored interactions, enhancing their brand experience.

Journey builder is a Multi-Channel, Responsive, and adaptive.

Let’s check out the Journey Builder product strengths and benefits:

Before discussing a use case, let’s understand what measures to take while planning the journey and how it works.

How to Plan a Journey?

1. Define the smart goals.

Specific: Clearly define the goal, making it focused and well-defined.

Measurable: Ensure the goal can be quantified, so progress is trackable.

Achievable: Set a realistic and attainable goal, one that is challenging but possible to accomplish.

Relevant: Align the goal with your broader objectives and priorities, ensuring it matters to you.

Time-bound: Set a clear deadline to achieve the goal, creating a sense of urgency.

2. Identify the target audience.

Always choose the right audience to make the journey most effective considering Demographics, Geographic Location, the behavior of customer, etc.

3. Target the data

Identify Key Data Sources: Determine where your data comes from, such as customer databases, social media, surveys, or website analytics.

Segment the Data: Break the data into relevant groups based on factors like demographics, behaviors, purchase history, and so on.

4. Channel & Content

The platforms or mediums through which you deliver your content to your target audience. Channels can include Facebook, Instagram, email, website & other social platforms.

Now let’s understand how to access Journey Builder in the marketing cloud!

Navigate to Journey Builder in Marketing Cloud

Login to the marketing cloud then you can see the UI as below. Then go to Journey Builder.

Once you are in, you can see the journey builder dashboard, let’s understand how to read it.

1. List all Journeys created; we can see them here. View a list of all journeys or those within specific folders. This list displays the journey’s status, performance, and the last modified date.
2. Search for the specific journey you want to find.
3. To create a new journey from scratch or a template.
4. View the entry sources used in your journeys, which can be either unique or shared across multiple journeys like entry source and mobile app events created.

Next, will see what are all the 3 steps available in the Journey Builder to get started with. Also, there are some prebuilt journey templates available. You can also use this and customize it as needed.

Next, will understand all the entry sources to the journey builder.

Entry source in Journey Builder is the method or data point that triggers contacts to enter a marketing journey, like a data extension, audience segment, or API event, etc. Choose the best option when determining your audience for your journeys.

Disclaimer: The content and wording used in the table below are credited to Trailhead, Salesforce’s official learning platform.

In Journey Builder, we have many activities such as messages, flow control, customer updates & sales, and service cloud. Let’s see the picture of all those at once.

Use Case

A customer signs up for a giveaway offer on the company’s website. After subscribing, they receive a “Thanks for participating” email acknowledging their opt-in.

1. Customer Action: The customer subscribes to the promotional offer via a sign-up form.
2. Trigger: The submission triggers an automated email journey.
3. Email Sent: The customer receives a ” 🎉 You’re Entered in the Salesforce Giveaway! 🎉” email, confirming their opt-in for the giveaway.

For this use case, we’ll need to set up a few prerequisites before we can connect everything in Journey Builder. These include creating a Data Extension, a Cloud Page, and an email. Once these elements are ready, we’ll bring them all together in Journey Builder.

Let’s go through the steps one by one, starting with creating a Data Extension.

A data extension in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a table that stores and organizes data about contacts, such as their names, email addresses, and preferences. Learn more.

How to create a Data Extension in Marketing Cloud?

Create a data folder.

Go to Email studio ->Subscribers->Data Extension -> right-click on the data extension folder -> create new folder -> add name -> save.

Create Data Extension.

Select the created folder above -> right-hand side click create -> select standard data extension -> then in properties -> Add name & choose a creation method then click next.

Either you can create a new data extension or choose an existing one. Here I’m creating a new extension from scratch.

Keep the data extension policy as is; if the change is needed then do the change.

Then add the required fields for this extension.  Then map the relationship. Once verified click Create. Here I have chosen the email address as the subscriber key.

How to create a Cloud Page in Marketing Cloud?

A Cloud Page in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a web page that you can create and host directly within the platform. Cloud Pages are often used to create landing pages, forms, and microsites that integrate seamlessly with your marketing campaigns.

Create a Data folder.

Go to ->Web pages ->Cloud Pages -> click Drop down left side next to cloud page -> create new -> then add a name.

Create a Cloud Page.

• • • Click Right-hand side -> Add content -> Landing Page-> Select layout -> Save.

Customize the page as needed. As we are doing a giveaway we need to capture info for the signup. So drag smart capture into the canvas.

Add a form Name. -> Click the select data extension -> then select data extension created above. As we are automating this through Journey Builder make sure you select the checkbox i.e. Use in Journey Builder in the smart capture screen.

Then click save. -> click schedule/Publish ->Publish Immediately ->Publish.

How to create an Email Message in Marketing Cloud?

Once the giveaway sign-up is completed we need to send an email. So let’s create an email in the marketing cloud.

Create Email.

Go to email -> content then on the right-hand side click Create. Here I’m choosing Text Only. Different methods were available and chose as needed.

Then add content then save

That’s it. We are done with the email builder.

Note: Showed email can be enhanced further as needed. Also make sure to include personalize profile URL to avoid error.

How to create a Journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Create Journey

Navigate to Journey Builder -> Click Journey Builder. Create new journey ->Multi-step journey ->create.

Add Entry Source

From Entry Source Drag -> Cloud Pages to start with an entry source canvas.

Click on entry source cloud pages -> In define entry source choose cloud pages form submit event ->then click Next.

Choose the smart capture form -> click next.

Review the summary then click Done.

Add Email

• Then from Activities -> add email to the canvas, next to entry event.
• Click the Email icon -> then click the select message to select the email created.
• Then locate your folder -> then choose the email -> click summary. -> Click Done.

Validate the Journey

• Save the Journey -> then click Validate.

Add Entry Mode

• Edit Set values for Entry Mode-> choose contact entry mode -> Done.

Revalidate Journey

• Once contact entry is defined click revalidate.

Activate the Journey Builder

• Wait for the validation result. If successful then Click Activate.

Now we have successfully automated our journey through Journey Builder. Let’s see how the journey builder looks like.

How to test Journey Builder in the Marketing Cloud?

1. Open the Cloud Page URL in a new tab.
2. Once the page loads, enter the required information and click Submit.
3. After submission, check your email inbox to verify the email has been received.

Here’s a demo video of the process.

How to verify Data Entered in Journey Builder?

Through Data Extension

Click email, then go to data extension, locate the data extension created, click, and open. Next, you can see all the information entered in the records section.

Through Journey Builder

Go to journey builder created, and then you can see below the marked icon, which means records are entered. Click the icon to view more.

Journey Builder Best Practices

1. Introduce one new feature at a time.
2. Start small and build incrementally.
3. Avoid using consecutive decision splits.
4. Use Journey data instead of contact data for decision splits whenever possible.
5. Avoid using decision splits at the beginning of a journey for large-scale segmentation.
6. Set Journey system priority to low, standard, or high.

Conclusion

In conclusion, setting up Journey Builder in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a powerful way to automate and personalize your marketing efforts. By following this step-by-step guide, we’ve seen how to plan a customer journey, use a giveaway signup as a real-world example, and set up essential components like a Data Extension, Cloud Page, and email. Once these elements are in place, Journey Builder seamlessly connects everything to deliver targeted, automated messaging to your audience.

By adhering to best practices and testing your journeys, you can ensure a smooth and effective marketing experience. With the right setup, Journey Builder becomes a valuable tool to engage customers at the right moment and scale your marketing efforts.

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