NEGOSENTRO | SFMC Journey Builder Best Practices to Vouch For [Infographic] | Salesforce Marketing Cloud is one of the most robust CRM tools and it has totally changed the way marketing works. The tool comes with a plethora of useful features that have totally redefined customer experience. It has empowered marketers to leave a more profound impact on their leads and customers alike.
One such remarkable feature is SFMC Journey Builder. It is an intuitive tool that helps to impart a customized user experience across different channels.
In our extensive experience of working with several clients, we found out that many SFMC users are not too comfortable using this functionality.
To make things easy for them, we got in touch with SFMC experts and asked them about the best practices to follow while using it.
Here are our some key takeaways from the entire exercise:
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Carry out proper segmentation
Segment the data before the entry source of the Journey. More often than not, you do not have to filter out the email opt-ins, mobile opt-ins, push device opt-ins, and custom attribute opt-ins. Just check the criteria after the entry source or inside the journey. Therefore, it is advisable to pre-filter and inject eligible contacts only. By doing so, you will be able to measure your campaign performance effectively across different channels.
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Chart out the customer’s journey on a whiteboard
You might find it old-fashioned but it works. Pen down the activities of the customer, the tools that help you achieve the task, and how those tools operate.
This will give you a clear picture of how the journey is working for your teammates and stakeholders.
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Set appropriate goals for your Journey
Many marketers consider this to be an optional step. However, experts strongly advise the users to set the correct goals if they want to achieve the marketing objectives at the Journey Goal section.
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Keep optimizing your content based on the user engagement
Depending on the business type and industry, your target audience will resonate with different types of content. While an infographic or whitepaper may work for one business, blogs might work for another. Monitor the performance of these content types and see which one yields maximum conversions. Accordingly, you can optimize them for better results.
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Determine the data trigger and how it will start the journey
Data trigger is of paramount importance when it comes to “data”.
Here are three questions that you must answer to make sure that your Journey Builder works well for business.
- What information will trigger your system to start the journey?
- Which data fields point to a customer action?
Generally, it is a date field. For example: An order completion date or a contract signing date
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Where is the data located and how will you connect it to your email strategy?
Note that if the date field can be overwritten by a repeat behavior, you must create safeguards so that the action gets triggered just once and does not let it re-enter.
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Set the right benchmarks to measure the success of your journey
Standard reports will let you know the status of your customer in the journey. If you need detailed insights, you must capture the respective attributes in a Data Extension as a person progresses through different journeys. You must set the right expectations when you design the journey.
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Test your Journey
You must always test the journey so that you can be sure that the contact receives the expected communication. By configuring a test journey with real contacts, you will get to see the exact path that the contact will follow in the journey according to the customer persona. It will also help you to ignore the wait times in the journey.
To learn more about Journey Builder best practices from the experts themselves, just head to this detailed and interactive infographic by Email Uplers: Journey Builder best practices SFMC experts swear by.
Source: Journey Builder Best Practices
Author Bio:
Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.
