Who should take this course?

This course is designed for digital marketers who manage the email channel for their marketing team. Whether you’re new to Marketing Cloud or want tips to improve your existing customer journeys, this class is a great place to start. No prior knowledge of Marketing Cloud is needed.

When you complete this course, you will be able to:

Explain compliance concepts to ensure optimal deliverability.

Use tools within Marketing Cloud to uphold deliverability standards.

Utilize email design best practices to ensure the best customer experience.

Develop effective, relevant messages using Content Builder.

Evaluate different delivery methods and options when sending an email message.

Implement customer journeys using automation tools within Marketing Cloud.

Differentiate the use cases for automation activities in Automation Studio and Journey Builder.

Define fundamental data management and structure terminology.

Use data segmentation tools to create targeted emails.

Apply a simple data model concept to a real-world scenario.

Define subscriber statuses, unsubscribe methods, and preferences.

Analyze marketing campaigns using common key performance indicators (KPIs).

Solve a common marketing problem with troubleshooting guidance.

Implement testing methods and tools to ensure quality control.

Explain fundamental account and sending administration best practices.

Know where to go for more information, guidance, and support.

Describe Marketing Cloud platform capabilities.

Class Registration

Lessons and topics.

Introduction to Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Describe Capabilities Across the Marketing Cloud

Know Where To Go for Support

Administration Essentials

Set Up an Account 

Send Setup Information

Data Management

Gather Contact Data

Generate Data Extensions

Segment Data 

Synchronize Data Extensions

Email Message Design and Creation

Design Email Messages

Organize Content

Create Content

Message Testing, Delivery, and Email Marketing Best Practices

Test Messages

Deliver Messages

Follow Email Marketing Best Practices

Marketing Automation

Discover Automation Studio

Explore Journey Builder

Learn About Journey Testing

Analytics and Troubleshooting

Track Performance

Generate Reports

Review the Capstone

Explore our latest thought leadership, ideas, and insights on the issues that are shaping the future of business and society.

  • Reshape our future with Generative AI
  • Leading sustainability
  • Future of Technology
  • Marketing for customer experience
  • Our research library
  • Expert perspectives

Choose a partner with intimate knowledge of your industry and first-hand experience of defining its future.

  • Aerospace and defense
  • Banking and capital markets
  • Consumer products
  • Energy and utilities
  • Hospitality and travel
  • Life sciences
  • Manufacturing
  • Media and entertainment
  • Public sector
  • Service Industries

Discover our portfolio – constantly evolving to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of our clients.

  • Customer first
  • Cybersecurity
  • Data and artificial intelligence
  • Enterprise management
  • Intelligent Industry
  • Sustainability

Become part of a diverse collective of free-thinkers, entrepreneurs and experts – and help us to make a difference.

  • Why join Capgemini
  • Life at Capgemini
  • Meet our people
  • Back Career paths
  • Students and graduates
  • Experienced professionals
  • Our professions
  • Careers at Capgemini Engineering
  • Careers at Capgemini Invent
  • Contracting with Capgemini
  • Back Join us
  • Recruitment process
  • Interview tips

See our latest news, and stories from across the business, and explore our archives.

  • Press releases
  • Analyst recognition
  • Client stories
  • Inside stories
  • Social media

We are a global leader in partnering with companies to transform and manage their business by harnessing the power of technology.

  • Back Who we are
  • The way we work
  • Values and Ethics
  • Innovation ecosystem
  • Nobel International Partner
  • Back Management and governance
  • Board of Directors
  • Executive committee
  • Responsible business
  • Environment, Social & Governance
  • Back Corporate social responsibility
  • Environmental sustainability
  • Diversity and inclusion
  • Digital inclusion
  • CSR partnerships
  • Social Response Unit
  • Back Passion for sport
  • The America’s Cup
  • World rugby
  • Peugeot Sport
  • Technology partners
  • Asia Pacific
  • Europe & Middle East

Our number one ranked think-tank

Explore our brands

Explore our technology partners

Explore careers with our brands

Management team

Artificial intelligence, customer journeys in salesforce marketing cloud: making a more relevant experience.

customer journey marketing cloud

Like a tree falling in an empty forest with no one around to hear, even the most perfectly crafted marketing message isn’t going to be noticed unless it reaches the right audience at the right time. So, how do you know who the right audience is and when they need to hear the right message? By understanding the customer journey and ensuring shoppers receive messaging and content relevant to their stage within the journey.

The stages along the  customer journey  – awareness, consideration, and conversion – result in customers wanting different information. Without the right data and systems, retailers will have an incredibly difficult time aligning the right content with the right customers.

Thankfully, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is built with the customer journey in mind. With a straightforward visual wizard, the Journey Builder tool in Salesforce Marketing Cloud simplifies the creation and automation of customer journeys and does so without requiring coding. This allows the marketing team to work independently on their own schedule as the commerce strategy evolves to stay in tune with customer’s wants and desires. This post will take a look at how the tool works and the value it delivers to retailers.

What is a Customer Journey in Marketing Cloud?

In the Marketing Cloud vernacular, customer journey is just that – where, how, and when you intersect your campaign with the digital lives of your customers. More specifically, a customer journey can be described as a communications campaign – including email and mobile messaging – that reinforces your brand and travels with your customer to ensure they receive messaging relevant to their behavior. This can be anything from welcoming a new shopper to your brand to re-engaging with an inactive customer. Each stage of the journey can include a different customer communication and provides for customers to traverse more than one journey at a single time.

How does a Customer Journey work?

Using the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder wizard, you can combine a wide-range of data to finely craft the steps in the journey and what content is delivered to the customer at each step. Critical analytic data such as customer engagement score, customer purchase history, or customer account creation date are selected to define which customers enter a particular journey and when they do. For each step in the journey, you define what content is delivered to customers at that point in the journey which can include sending an email or analyzing and using level of customer engagement. This is performed in the Journey Builder by dragging assets in the wizard into the visual representation of the journey. Based on engagement conditions, steps can route customers to a different branch of the journey or remove them from the journey entirely.

customer journey marketing cloud

For example, let’s make a journey welcoming visitors that sign up for our email list. First, we need to set conditions that create a new account upon sign-up and immediately insert the new account into the welcome journey.

Next, we would configure the first communication. This could be an offer like an exclusive “welcome” coupon code or an invitation to add additional information to the customer’s user profile which would provide you with more information on what interests them the most. Based on the customer response to the first communication, the customer could automatically be moved to the next stage of their journey. This can be determined by many factors such as whether the email was opened, whether or not the coupon was used, whether or not the profile was updated in response to the email, etc. This allows you granular control over each waypoint in the journey and provides insight into customer behavior and reaction to digital messaging.

Journeys can be set up for different campaigns and tactics, such as re-engaging inactive past customers. Once a defined amount of time has passed between their most recent purchase or communication engagement, these past customers would be automatically entered into the re-engagement journey. Next, they would be sent a personalized enticement message with a limited time coupon or a message highlighting potential items of interest according to their purchase history. Then, based on the customer behavior, the customer could exit the journey or be sent another enticement message all according to their expected behavior patterns which you know best.

An especially important capability is that the content of the communications and offers can be customized and personalized given the customer’s previous behaviors or segmentation data. This enables marketers to design specific, articulate campaigns that deliver the most relevant content on an individualized level.

These are just a couple of examples to provide you with ideas on how to maximize customer interaction with automatic custom customer journeys to tune your reach to where your customer lives today.  Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder  tool provides you the control to guide your customers to your product offerings and maintain the level of engagement needed to reinforce your brand and drive increases in sales. The tool provides a great level of flexibility while removing the time and expense for IT developers to do it for you. Steps in the journey are customized for each customer by simply dragging and dropping content into the journey flow with the visual wizard app. This allows for better responsiveness to your customers’ needs as you can make changes whenever needed to continue to customize the reach to your customers.

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Journey Builder tools allow you to send digital messaging with confidence they will be heard.

Get in touch

Thank you for reaching out. we will be in touch..

We are sorry, the form submission failed. Please try again.

  • Digital Marketing
  • Customer Experience
  • Unified Commerce
  • Globalization
  • Operational Excellence
  • Uncategorized

thumbnail

Customer Journeys in Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Making a More Relevant Experience

Chris Connell • June 19, 2018

Like a tree falling in an empty forest with no one around to hear, even the most perfectly crafted marketing message isn’t going to be noticed unless it reaches the right audience at the right time. So, how do you know who the right audience is and when they need to hear the right message? By understanding the customer journey and ensuring shoppers receive messaging and content relevant to their stage within the journey.

The stages along the customer journey  – awareness, consideration, and conversion – result in customers wanting different information. Without the right data and systems, retailers will have an incredibly difficult time aligning the right content with the right customers.

Thankfully, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is built with the customer journey in mind. With a straightforward visual wizard, the Journey Builder tool in Salesforce Marketing Cloud simplifies the creation and automation of customer journeys and does so without requiring coding. This allows the marketing team to work independently on their own schedule as the commerce strategy evolves to stay in tune with customer’s wants and desires. This post will take a look at how the tool works and the value it delivers to retailers.

What is a Customer Journey in Marketing Cloud?

In the Marketing Cloud vernacular, customer journey is just that – where, how, and when you intersect your campaign with the digital lives of your customers. More specifically, a customer journey can be described as a communications campaign – including email and mobile messaging – that reinforces your brand and travels with your customer to ensure they receive messaging relevant to their behavior. This can be anything from welcoming a new shopper to your brand to re-engaging with an inactive customer. Each stage of the journey can include a different customer communication and provides for customers to traverse more than one journey at a single time.

How does a Customer Journey work?

Using the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder wizard, you can combine a wide-range of data to finely craft the steps in the journey and what content is delivered to the customer at each step. Critical analytic data such as customer engagement score, customer purchase history, or customer account creation date are selected to define which customers enter a particular journey and when they do. For each step in the journey, you define what content is delivered to customers at that point in the journey which can include sending an email or analyzing and using level of customer engagement. This is performed in the Journey Builder by dragging assets in the wizard into the visual representation of the journey. Based on engagement conditions, steps can route customers to a different branch of the journey or remove them from the journey entirely.

customer journey

For example, let’s make a journey welcoming visitors that sign up for our email list. First, we need to set conditions that create a new account upon sign-up and immediately insert the new account into the welcome journey.

Next, we would configure the first communication. This could be an offer like an exclusive “welcome” coupon code or an invitation to add additional information to the customer’s user profile which would provide you with more information on what interests them the most. Based on the customer response to the first communication, the customer could automatically be moved to the next stage of their journey. This can be determined by many factors such as whether the email was opened, whether or not the coupon was used, whether or not the profile was updated in response to the email, etc. This allows you granular control over each waypoint in the journey and provides insight into customer behavior and reaction to digital messaging.

Journeys can be set up for different campaigns and tactics, such as re-engaging inactive past customers. Once a defined amount of time has passed between their most recent purchase or communication engagement, these past customers would be automatically entered into the re-engagement journey. Next, they would be sent a personalized enticement message with a limited time coupon or a message highlighting potential items of interest according to their purchase history. Then, based on the customer behavior, the customer could exit the journey or be sent another enticement message all according to their expected behavior patterns which you know best.

An especially important capability is that the content of the communications and offers can be customized and personalized given the customer’s previous behaviors or segmentation data. This enables marketers to design specific, articulate campaigns that deliver the most relevant content on an individualized level.

These are just a couple of examples to provide you with ideas on how to maximize customer interaction with automatic custom customer journeys to tune your reach to where your customer lives today. Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder tool provides you the control to guide your customers to your product offerings and maintain the level of engagement needed to reinforce your brand and drive increases in sales. The tool provides a great level of flexibility while removing the time and expense for IT developers to do it for you. Steps in the journey are customized for each customer by simply dragging and dropping content into the journey flow with the visual wizard app. This allows for better responsiveness to your customers’ needs as you can make changes whenever needed to continue to customize the reach to your customers.

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Journey Builder tools allow you to send digital messaging with confidence they will be heard.

Chris Connell

About the author

Chris Connell

Subscribe to our blog

Related posts, which content publishing system is right for you.

Shawn Wallace • July 30, 2019

Rich, engaging content is critical to building a successful digital experience. From helpful blog posts to vivid brand imagery and shoppable how-to videos, content comes in numerous shapes and sizes. […]

Managing the Cognitive Load of Website Monitoring

Sam Williams • July 25, 2019

We can monitor everything, and we can alert on everything, but in the end, cognitive overload can quickly exhaust the support team who is responsible for getting up in the […]

How to Work with a 3rd Party Creative Agency

Kent Winfield • July 16, 2019

Working with an outside agency to make the client’s creative vision an eCommerce reality brings with it many collaboration challenges and opportunities.  I’ll start by listing the common problems and […]

Let's discuss the next step in your commerce journey.

Product Area

Feature impact.

No results

  • What Is Experience Cloud?
  • Building Blocks of a Site
  • Find Your Way Around
  • Supported Browsers
  • Site Vision & Purpose
  • Frameworks & Templates
  • Who Does What?
  • Structure, Layout, & Design
  • Customer Engagement
  • Content Management Strategy
  • Performance & Scale
  • Promotion & Measurement
  • Enable Digital Experiences
  • Configure Experience Management Settings
  • Grant Super User Access to a Partner User
  • Grant Portal Super User Access to Customer Users
  • Select Moderation Rule Settings
  • Configure Salesforce Mobile for Experiences
  • Enable Account Relationships
  • Enable External Account Hierarchies
  • Enable Embedded Login
  • Use Share Groups to Share Records
  • Considerations for the Convert External User Access Wizard
  • Configure a Custom Domain for Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Configure Settings in Your Administration Workspace
  • Set Up Customer Insights
  • Considerations When Using Customer Insights
  • Update Your Experience Cloud Site’s Name, Status, and Description
  • Key Concepts in Page Redirection in Aura and LWR Sites
  • Setup Checklist
  • Brand Your Pages from the Administration Workspace
  • Brand Your Experience Builder Pages
  • Create a Custom Login Discovery Page
  • Customize the Apex Login Controller
  • Set Up Dynamic URLs with Experience Workspaces
  • Redirect Users to a Custom Logout URL
  • Customize Your Forgot Password and Reset Password Pages
  • Configure Your Self-Registration Page
  • Considerations for Creating Experience Cloud Site Users
  • Set Custom Site Roles
  • Reset an External User’s Password for Experience Cloud Sites
  • How do external Experience Cloud site members get login information?
  • How do I update Experience Cloud site membership using the API?
  • Assign a Default Experience to a User Profile
  • Membership Processing Best Practices
  • Use Custom Visualforce Error Pages for Authenticated Users
  • Create the Account Switcher User Permission Set
  • Allow External Users to Manage Partner Members
  • Allow External Users to Manage Partner Brands
  • Activate Your Site
  • Deactivate Your Site
  • Considerations for Archiving a Site
  • Unarchive a Site
  • Merge Fields for Experience Cloud Sites
  • Customize the One-Time Password Email Template
  • Customize the Device Activation Email Template
  • Customize the User Lockout Email Template
  • Customize the Email Address Change Template
  • Customize the Headless Registration Email Template
  • Manage Your Site Email Notifications
  • Troubleshooting Steps If Site Members Don’t Receive Welcome Emails
  • Experience Cloud Sites: What’s Different or Not Available in the...
  • Enable Objects for Experience Cloud Site Users
  • Hide Fields in Lightning Knowledge Search Results
  • Set Up the Site Case Feed
  • Emails in the Site Case Feed
  • Enable Question-to-Case
  • Restrict Experience Cloud Site User Access to Cases
  • Send Emails to Leads and Contacts from an Experience Cloud Site
  • Set Up Approvals for External Users in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Close a Conversation, Poll, or Question in an Aura Site
  • Pin Posts in an Aura Site
  • Add Groups to an Aura Site
  • Move Feed Items from One Public Group Feed to Another
  • Threaded Discussions in an Aura Site
  • Chatter Streams in Aura Sites
  • Enable Direct Messages in an Aura Site
  • Verify Answers for Your Company
  • Add Rich Publisher Apps to Your Feeds
  • Enable Upvotes and Downvotes
  • Migrate Peer-to-Peer Conversations to Your Experience Cloud Site
  • File Visibility and Sharing in Experience Cloud Sites
  • Customize Experience Cloud Site Libraries with Images
  • Limit Files in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Make Files on Records Visible to Customers
  • Display Images Faster on All Devices
  • Display Optimized Images on Mobile Devices
  • Enable Ideas in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • The Customer Account Portal Template
  • The Partner Central Template
  • The Customer Service Template
  • The Build Your Own Template (Aura)
  • Standard Components for LWR Templates
  • Considerations for Using Flows in LWR
  • Actions Bar Considerations in LWR Sites
  • Send Visitor Information to the Salesforce Case Object
  • Create a Microsite
  • Configure Microsite Layout and Create Navigation
  • How Do Experience Cloud Forms Connect to Marketing Cloud?
  • Connect the Marketing Cloud Form Component to Marketing Cloud
  • Send Visitor Information to the Salesforce Lead Object
  • Capture Visitor Information with the Lead Form Component
  • Objects Supported by Out-of-the-Box Components and Pages in...
  • Considerations for Changing Your Template
  • Considerations Before You Migrate an Aura Site to Lightning Web...
  • Migrate a Koa or Kokua Site to a New Template
  • Account Brand Details
  • Account Management
  • Announcement Section
  • Article Content
  • Articles with This Topic
  • Campaign Marketplace
  • Case Comments Publisher
  • Case Deflection
  • Channel Menu
  • CMS Collection
  • CMS Connect (HTML)
  • CMS Connect (JSON)
  • CMS Single Item
  • CMS Single Item (Detail)
  • Contact Request Button & Flow
  • Contact Support Button
  • Contact Support & Ask Buttons
  • Contact Support Form
  • Migrate to the Contact Support Form and Case Deflection Components
  • Create Record Button
  • Create Record Form
  • CRM Analytics Dashboard
  • Customize Code for Lightning Components on Login Pages
  • Customizable User Profile Menu
  • Customizable User Settings
  • Dashboard List
  • Deflection Tracking
  • Einstein Predictions
  • Einstein Scoring
  • Enhanced List View
  • Embedded Appointment Management
  • Embedded Messaging
  • Embedded Service
  • External Account Hierarchy List Card
  • Featured Topics
  • Featured Topics & Feeds
  • Feed Compact
  • Feed History
  • Feed Post & Comments
  • Feed Publisher
  • Allow Guest Users to Access Flows
  • Flow Orchestration Work Guide
  • Follow Button
  • Global Search Box
  • Global Search for Peer-to-Peer Communities
  • Global Search Results
  • Group Banner
  • Group Detail
  • Group Related List
  • HTML Editor
  • Knowledgeable People
  • Language Selector
  • Manage Members Section
  • Member Profile and Settings
  • Message Notification
  • Navigation Menu
  • New Message Button
  • Page Refresh
  • Path (Experience Builder Site Component)
  • Paused Flows
  • Profile Header
  • Recognition Badges
  • Recommendations
  • Recommendations Carousel
  • Record Banner
  • Record Detail
  • Record Information Tabs
  • Record List
  • Record Related List
  • Related Record List
  • Related List - Single
  • Related Articles List
  • Related Questions List
  • Related Topics List
  • Report Chart
  • Report List
  • Report Summary
  • Reputation Leaderboard
  • Rich Content Editor
  • Search Results
  • Stream Detail
  • Stream List
  • Suggested Actions
  • Top Article by Topic
  • Topic Catalog
  • Topic Description
  • Topic Metrics
  • Trending Articles by Topic
  • Trending Topics
  • Unanswered Questions
  • User Profile
  • Add Actions to Your User Profile
  • User Profile Image
  • User Profile Knows About
  • User Profile Related List
  • User Profile Menu
  • User Profile Stats
  • User Profile Summary
  • User Profile Tabs
  • Visualforce Page Component
  • Brand the Login Pages
  • Employee Login Link
  • Forgot Password
  • Self-Registration
  • Set Icons for Social Login
  • What Is the Enhanced Sites and Content Platform?
  • How Many Experience Cloud Sites Can My Org Have?
  • Find Your Way Around Experience Builder
  • Add Contributors
  • Update Roles
  • Remove Contributors
  • Prebuilt Experience Builder Themes
  • Change the Theme of Your Experience Builder Site
  • Use Branding Sets in Experience Builder
  • Adjust the Style and Layout of Your Site Theme
  • Theme Guidance: Header Components
  • Theme Guidance: Hero Component
  • Theme Guidance: Search Component
  • Change the Theme Layout of Your Experience Cloud Site’s Pages
  • Change the Content Layout in Experience Builder
  • Find and Create Asset Files in Experience Builder
  • Experience Builder Settings
  • Update Your Experience Builder Site’s Template
  • Preview Your Experience Builder Site
  • Publish Your Experience Builder Site Customizations
  • Page Properties and Types in Experience Builder
  • Considerations for Page Hierarchy and URL Conflicts in Experience...
  • Enable the App Launcher in Experience Builder Sites
  • Use a Custom Service Not Available Page for Your Experience Builder...
  • Use a Custom Too Many Requests Page for Your Experience Builder Site
  • Assign Different Values for Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile Properties...
  • Show or Hide Components on Mobile, Tablet, or Desktop for Enhanced...
  • Hide Components on Mobile Devices with Experience Builder for Aura...
  • Error Messages for Pages Without Data in Experience Builder
  • Create a Flexible Layout
  • Delete a Page in Experience Builder
  • to Customize Your Experience Builder Site" data-is-link="true" aria-level="4" id="community_builder_page_head_leaf" role="treeitem" lwc-g4l6pknunt=""> Add Markup to the Page <head> to Customize Your Experience Builder...
  • Create Component Variations in LWR Sites
  • Create Dynamic Component Visibility in LWR Sites
  • Expression-Based Visibility Rules in LWR Sites
  • Build an Expression-Based Visibility Rule in LWR Sites Using Custom...
  • Considerations for Audience Targeting in Aura Sites
  • Criteria Types and Conditions for Audience Creation
  • Assign an Audience to a Page Variation
  • Assign an Audience to a Branding Set
  • Assign an Audience to a Component
  • Assign an Audience to a Component Variation
  • Prioritize Audiences in Aura Sites
  • Use Visualforce in Experience Builder Sites
  • Add Streams to Your Experience Builder Site
  • Configure Google Analytics™ for Experience Cloud Sites
  • Create a Multilingual Site
  • Set the Default Language for Your Aura Site
  • Add Languages to Your Aura Sites
  • Set Language Options
  • Edit Language Content on the Page
  • Export Language Content
  • Import Translated Content
  • Delete a Language
  • Best Practices and Considerations for Multilingual Sites
  • Add a Translate Button to Feed Items in Experience Builder Sites
  • The Scale of Your Experience Cloud Sites
  • Scale and Performance Optimization Tools for Experience Builder Sites
  • Which Performance Tools Do I Need Based on My Experience Cloud Site?
  • Use Apex to Configure Self-Registration in Batches for High-Volume...
  • Use Apex to Configure Record Creation in Batches for High-Volume Sites
  • Use Experience Builder to Configure Micro-Batching for High-Volume...
  • High-Volume Registrations and Record Creation Fixes
  • Progressive Rendering Guidelines
  • Prioritize Component Display Order with Progressive Rendering
  • Analyze and Improve Experience Builder Site Performance
  • Improve Experience Cloud Site Performance with Browser Caching
  • Set Up Your Experience Builder Site for SEO
  • Identify Your Preferred Domain to Improve SEO Results
  • SEO Page Properties in Experience Builder
  • Create a Custom robots.txt File for Your Experience Builder Site
  • SEO-Friendly URLs for Custom Objects in Lightning Web Runtime (LWR)...
  • Make Objects Available for SEO
  • Provide Search Engines with Fresh Content Snapshots
  • Generate a Manual Sitemap Refresh for Your Experience Builder Site
  • Reassign the Scheduled Jobs that Generate an Automatic Sitemap Refresh
  • Best Practices and Tips for Using SEO in Experience Builder Sites
  • SEO for Experience Builder Sites FAQ
  • Connect Experience Cloud to Data Cloud (Beta)
  • Add Content to Your LWR Sites with Data Binding
  • Use a Grid Component to Show Enhanced CMS Collections and List Views...
  • Add an Image from Salesforce CMS to Your LWR Site
  • Nest Content Components in Your LWR Site
  • Bind Data to CMS Content Pages in Your LWR Site
  • Create a Manual CMS Collection for Your Aura Site
  • Edit a Manual CMS Collection in Your Aura Site
  • Create a Conditional CMS Collection for Your Aura Site
  • Salesforce CMS Topics for Aura Sites
  • Show CRM Data in Your Aura or LWR Site Using Object Pages
  • Show Record Lists in Your Aura or LWR Site Using Navigation Menus
  • Bind Data to CRM Record Detail Pages in Your LWR Site
  • Add CRM Connections to Your Aura Site
  • Create a Salesforce CRM Collection for Your Aura Site
  • Add a Salesforce CRM Collection to Your Aura Site
  • External Data Sources in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Set Up CMS Content Search in an LWR Site
  • Set Up CRM Object Search in LWR Sites
  • Set Up Search Pages for Aura Sites
  • Enable Search Autocomplete for Guest Users
  • Add the Global Search Box to Your Customized Experience Cloud Site...
  • Allow Users to Search Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce Sites
  • Create a Branded Mobile App for Your Experience Cloud Site Using...
  • Create a Lightning Bolt Solution
  • Export a Customized Experience Builder Template for a Lightning Bolt...
  • Export a Customized Experience Builder Theme for a Lightning Bolt...
  • Export a Customized Experience Builder Page for a Lightning Bolt...
  • Add Flows to a Lightning Bolt Solution
  • Export and Packaging Considerations for Lightning Bolt Solutions
  • Requirements for Distributing Lightning Bolt Solutions
  • Package and Distribute a Lightning Bolt Solution
  • Rename the Chatter Tab
  • Brand Your Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce Site
  • Enable the Global Header for Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce Sites
  • Choose a Landing Tab
  • Use a Custom Service Unavailable Page in Your Salesforce Tabs +...
  • Configure the Default Login Page to Use a Custom Home Page
  • Add Custom Pages That Don’t Require Login
  • Help Center Set Up Tasks
  • Create a Help Center
  • Help Center Template Pages
  • Change from Help Center to a New Template
  • Partner Central—Build Lightning Partner Sites
  • Create a Partner Site with Partner Central—Setup Tasks
  • What’s Your Partner Experience Cloud Site Strategy?
  • Migrate from a Partner Portal to an Experience Cloud Site
  • Set Up the Channel Manager Role
  • Disable Partner Accounts
  • Partner User Profile
  • Partner User Roles
  • Sharing Data with Partner Users
  • Set Partner Username Uniqueness Requirement to the Org Level
  • Enable Leads for Visualforce Sites
  • Assign Cases to Partners
  • Assign Tasks and Events to Partners
  • Configure an External Account Hierarchy
  • Sharing Considerations for Using Account Role Optimization in...
  • Use a Shared Person Account Role for Community Users
  • Create a Channel Program
  • Create Channel Program Levels
  • Manage Channel Program Members with Sharing Groups
  • Channel Program Member Limits
  • Configure Account Relationship Data Sharing Rules
  • Create an Account Relationship
  • View Shared Account Records in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Create Reports for Account Relationships
  • Considerations When Using Account Relationships and Data Sharing Rules
  • Best Practices for Account Relationships
  • Assign Leads to Partners
  • Create a Lead Process for Lead Distribution
  • Create a Queue for Lead Distribution
  • Create Page Layouts for Lead Distribution
  • Create Lead Record Types for Lead Distribution
  • Create Assignment Rules for Lead Distribution
  • Customize Partner Central for Lead Distribution
  • Create Processes for Deal Registration
  • Create Page Layouts for Deal Registration
  • Create Lead Record Types for Deal Registration
  • Create a Global Action to Let Partners Register Deals
  • Customize Opportunities for Deal Registration
  • Create Approval Workflows for Deal Registration
  • Customize Partner Central for Deal Registration
  • Create a Market Development Budget
  • Customize Page Layouts for Partner Marketing Budgets
  • Grant Channel Account Managers Access to Partner Marketing Budgets
  • Share Partner Marketing Budgets with the Channel Account Manager
  • Create Approval Workflows for Partner Marketing Budgets
  • Create a Partner Fund Allocation
  • Customize Page Layouts for Partner Fund Allocations
  • Grant Channel Account Managers Access to Partner Fund Allocations
  • Share Partner Fund Allocations with the CAM
  • Create a Partner Fund Request
  • Grant Channel Account Managers and Partner Users Access to Partner...
  • Create Approval Workflows for Partner Fund Requests
  • Customize Page Layouts for Partner Fund Requests
  • Create a Partner Fund Claim
  • Create Approval Workflows for Partner Fund Claims
  • Customize Page Layouts for Partner Fund Claims
  • Best Practices for Campaign Marketplace
  • Guided Setup: Distributed Marketing for Experience Cloud
  • Configure Reports for Partner Scorecard
  • Enabling More Features for Partner Relationship Management
  • Lead Distribution Reports
  • Deal Registration Reports
  • Market Development Fund Reports
  • Build a Portal with the Customer Account Portal Solution
  • Create a Customer Account Portal—Setup Tasks
  • What’s Your Customer Account Portal Strategy?
  • Extend Salesforce to Customers with the Correct Licenses
  • Experience Cloud Journey Data Model
  • Email Preferences
  • Triggering Journeys Based on Events
  • Triggering Journeys Based on Audiences
  • Determine If an Object Can Trigger Journeys
  • Sync an Object to the Marketing Cloud
  • Experience Cloud Objects for Creating Member Journeys
  • Share CRM Data in an Experience Cloud Site
  • Enable Clickjack Protection in Experience Cloud Sites
  • Configure SAML SSO Between Salesforce Orgs or Experience Cloud Sites
  • Customize SAML Start, Login, Logout, and Error Pages
  • Integrate Service Providers as Connected Apps with SAML 2.0
  • Authentication Provider SSO with Salesforce as the Relying Party
  • Authorize Apps with OAuth
  • Encrypt Experience Cloud Site Data
  • CSP and Lightning Locker Design Considerations
  • Where to Allowlist Third-Party Hosts for Experience Builder Sites
  • Select a Security Level in Experience Builder Sites
  • Experience Cloud Cookies
  • Show Nicknames Instead of Full Names in an Experience Cloud Site
  • Guest User Security Policies and Timelines
  • Guest User Setup Checklist
  • Secure Guest Users’ Sharing Settings and Record Access
  • Review Guest User Object, Record, and Field Access for Sites
  • Best Practices and Considerations When Configuring the Guest User...
  • Best Practices and Considerations When Working with the Site Guest...
  • Best Practices and Considerations for Using the Guest Record Default...
  • Discover Which Records Are Available to Guest Users
  • Reassign Records Owned by Guest Users
  • Remove Guest Site Users from Queues and Public Groups
  • Remove Records Shared Manually or via Apex Managed Sharing
  • SEO Best Practices and Considerations for Guest Users
  • Best Practices and Considerations for Page-Level Access in...
  • Experience Builder Sites Search Best Practices and Considerations...
  • Set Up Web-to-Case for Guest Users in an Experience Builder Site
  • Chatter and Discussions Best Practices and Considerations for Guest...
  • Files Best Practices and Considerations for Guest Users
  • Test Guest User Access in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Control User Visibility in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Site User Visibility Best Practices for Guest Users
  • Deploy A Full Experience Cloud Site with Change Sets
  • Deploy Partial Experience Cloud Site Content with Change Sets
  • Considerations for Deploying Experience Cloud Sites with Change Sets
  • Deploy Your Experience Cloud Site with the Metadata API
  • Assign an Experience Cloud Site Manager
  • Assign a Moderator
  • Track Experience Cloud Site Activity with the Moderation Overview Page
  • Enable Members to Flag Items in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Create Criteria to Moderate Your Site
  • Create Rules to Moderate Your Site
  • Review and Approve Posts and Comments in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Set Up Apex Triggers for Flagging Items
  • Experience Pulse
  • Experience Cloud Site Moderation Limits and Limitations
  • Manage Topics in Experience Cloud Sites
  • Automatically Assign Topics to Articles
  • Set Up Featured Topics
  • Set Up Navigational Topics
  • Set Up Content Topics
  • See Your Site’s Topics and Subtopics in One Place
  • Add Topics to Articles or Remove Them
  • Translate Topics Names and Descriptions for Experience Cloud Sites...
  • Create Audiences for Your Recommendations
  • Recognition Badges Limitations
  • Enable WDC Thanks
  • Turn On Recognition Badges in Experience Workspaces
  • Configure Who Can Create Recognition Badges
  • Configure Who Can Assign Recognition Badges
  • Use Components to Display Assigned Recognition Badges on Member...
  • Create, Edit, and Delete Recognition Badges
  • Manage Who Can Assign a Specific Recognition Badge
  • Display the Full List of Assigned Recognition Badges on a Member’s...
  • Create a Mission
  • Display Unearned Mission Badges
  • Assign Recognition Badges to Experience Cloud Site Members
  • Delete Assigned Badges
  • Use the API to Give Recognition Badges Sample Code
  • Enable Reputation in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Set Up Reputation Levels
  • Set Up Reputation Points
  • How is my Experience Cloud site reputation calculated?
  • Share a Link to Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Switch Between Your Salesforce Org and Your Experience Cloud Sites
  • Track User Engagement with Google Analytics 4
  • Report on Experience Cloud Sites with AppExchange Packages
  • Enable Analytics in Your Experience Cloud Site
  • Track Site Activity with Custom Reports
  • Enable and Map Dashboards
  • Insights for Engagement
  • Login History Report Codes
  • Create a Report from Your Site with Report Builder
  • Allow External Users to Access and Report on Tasks and Events
  • Report and Dashboard Considerations for Sites
  • How Experience Cloud Uses Lightning
  • Who Can See What in Experience Cloud Sites
  • Experience Builder Site Limitations
  • Experience Cloud Sites Usage Allocation
  • Experience Cloud License Limitations
  • Upgrade Experience Cloud User Licenses
  • Migrate Community Users Between Licenses
  • Experience Cloud Site User Account Ownership Limitations
  • About High-Volume Community or Site Users
  • Share Personal Contact Information Within Experience Cloud Sites
  • Update Public Accessibility Settings for Standard Visualforce Pages...
  • Additional Experience Cloud Site Limitations

Map the Customer Journey and Drive Engagement

You defined a site vision that aligns your site with your company’s purpose. Now you want to design a site experience that encourages users to visit your site and interact with your content. But to promote customer engagement, you must first understand your customers’ needs and create compelling content in to meet those needs.

Required Editions

Why is this important.

Engagement describes just how involved your customers and partners are with your site. How often do they visit the site? How long do they stay? What do they do on the site?

Improve customer engagement and satisfaction by understanding the customer experience. The customer experience is a combination of two factors:

  • User personas represent specific types of customers. Think of your personas as fictional characters with real-world responsibilities, goals, and challenges.
  • Customer journeys map how your customers use your products and services. Identify what your customers want to accomplish and how they feel at each stage of their experience.

When you understand what your users need, you can design a site that helps them accomplish their goals.

Tip

What Should You Keep in Mind?

To begin mapping the customer journey, first develop the characteristics of your user personas. To start the process, answer some questions.

  • What roles do the top two or three users have?
  • What are their responsibilities, challenges, goals, and motivations?
  • What do they want to accomplish on your site?

You can then start asking some questions about the customer journey to detail the sequence of customers’ key activities on the site. Where possible, seek input from your support, sales, and marketing teams.

  • To meet their goals, what type of content do your customers need?
  • Are customers looking at your content for informational or learning purposes?
  • Are they accessing the site using desktop or mobile devices?
  • What do they do when they access the site?
  • Which interactions are most important?

Ideas for Promoting Engagement

Obviously, the best way to engage users is to have a site that meets their needs. Let’s look at some examples.

Example

Cookie Consent Manager

General information, required cookies, functional cookies, advertising cookies.

We use three kinds of cookies on our websites: required, functional, and advertising. You can choose whether functional and advertising cookies apply. Click on the different cookie categories to find out more about each category and to change the default settings. Privacy Statement

Required cookies are necessary for basic website functionality. Some examples include: session cookies needed to transmit the website, authentication cookies, and security cookies.

Functional cookies enhance functions, performance, and services on the website. Some examples include: cookies used to analyze site traffic, cookies used for market research, and cookies used to display advertising that is not directed to a particular individual.

Advertising cookies track activity across websites in order to understand a viewer’s interests, and direct them specific marketing. Some examples include: cookies used for remarketing, or interest-based advertising.

Cookie List

5 Simple Steps for Creating Successful Customer Journeys

5 Simple Steps for Creating Successful Customer Journeys

Here are the five key steps that will help marketers transform the way they plan customer journeys.

customer journey marketing cloud

Amanda Miller

Share article.

  • Link Copied

“It takes too long to launch a journey.”

“How do we prioritize the messages we’re sending to our customers?” 

“We have a solid process for sending campaigns, and we know we need to start building journeys, but we don’t know where to start.”

I hear questions and comments like these regularly. If you can relate, you’re not alone.

As a marketing consultant in our  Marketing Cloud Services  organization,  customer journeys  are my jam. Think of journeys as a series of interactions customers have when they interact with your company and brand. I help Salesforce customers create strategically sound journeys and transform the way their teams approach the process of creating them.

Based on my experience guiding customers across industries, I developed five key steps that will help you transform the way you plan customer journeys, reduce frustration, and start seeing results faster.

1. Kick some cooks out of the kitchen 

Shifting your organization’s approach from ad-hoc campaigns to automated, multi-touch journeys is an exciting and often highly visible process that gets a lot of leadership attention. Lots of people want to be involved, and many don’t want to hand over control. But the reality is that having too many cooks in the kitchen slows decision-making and progress.

How do you combat this? First, designate a leader. Empower them to make decisions and give approval, and draft a journey implementation team to do the work. Use a  RACI matrix  to assign roles and responsibilities, and this will provide clarity and structure for your work.

2. Start simply and build

Don’t let  perfect  be the enemy of  done . A simple journey that takes you six weeks to launch will give you the chance to learn and iterate long before a complex experience that takes you a year to get off the ground. The temptation is to think big, but you should start simply.

Choose low-hanging-fruit experiences first.  Go for easy wins such as existing automated messages you can test and expand, transactional communications, or regularly sent ad-hoc emails you can automate. 

Create simple journeys of just two or three touchpoints.  Launch the first version of the experience quickly and start learning from it immediately. 

Start with data sources that are easy to access.  If you’ve already configured a data connection in Marketing Cloud, that’s your ideal starting point.

Graphic with examples of varying customer journeys complexities in marketing cloud

3. Prioritize and focus

Having a vision will keep you on track and help you prioritize new opportunities. Create a vision considering three main areas:

  • Customer experience: What customer experience do you want to create? What are the gaps in the experience today that you can address?
  • Long-term vision: What does the brand vision dictate?
  • Fiscal-year goals: What are the business goals and priorities for this fiscal year? What about for this team specifically?

As word gets out in the organization that you’re having success with your new journey approach, opportunities and requests will start trickling (or pouring) in. Create a process for accepting new projects and ideas — rigidity won’t allow for growth — but always come back to the vision and priorities to evaluate best fit and resourcing.

Consider a process to control the flow of new requests that includes:

  • Regularly scheduled open-forum meetings (e.g., quarterly or bi-monthly) where your journey team will accept new, well-formed proposals.
  • A standardized project intake form with the details and requirements needed before work can begin.

4. Craft each journey around the four pillars of strategy

Mapping journeys — whether at a whiteboard or within the application itself — is fun! But before you get to that, do your homework. It will save you time in both mapping and building.

Go back to your vision and develop a measurable goal for this specific journey. Then plan around the four pillars of strategy:

  • Audience : Is your audience narrow or broad? Who is the specific target?
  • Data : What do you have? What do you need to access? What do you want to plan in the long term?
  • Content : Can you make use of what you already have? What do you need to create? Consider content that is both in the journey itself and post-click.
  • Channel(s): What channel makes the most sense for your audience, message, and timing?

5. Lean on your resources

Take full advantage of all the resources you have at your disposal to learn about journeys and troubleshoot.

  • Salesforce team (Strategic, technical, and product experts)
  • Trailhead (Free, self-guided, and fun online education)
  • Accelerators (Quick, personalized work sessions included with Premier Success Plans)
  • Webinars and Videos
  • Trailblazer Community (Connect with other customers online and through user groups)
  • In-person events (Connections, Dreamforce, World Tours)

Transform your customer journey strategy

Follow these five steps, and you’ll begin transforming the way you plan and build journeys. With a defined team and responsibilities, a vision and prioritization method, and strategically sound planning for each journey, you’ll be able to spend more time improving your customer experience and less time battling organizational obstacles.

Want more hands-on help? Check out Success Cloud and get personalized attention from strategic, technical, and product experts who can work with you every step of the way.

Just For You

Illustration showing lead generation in action: a young woman shopping for a black dress online, looking excited when she receives it.

Lead Generation: How To Turn Interest Into a Sale

A robot inside a computer screen helps a woman with a wheeled cart shop as part of retail AI strategy.

Make Good Choices: 5 Ways to Evolve Your Retail AI Strategy

customer journey marketing cloud

Explore related content by topic

  • Marketing Cloud
  • Customer Experience
  • Customer Journey
  • Personalization

customer journey marketing cloud

Amanda Miller is a Marketing Consultant with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. She partners closely with her clients and specializes in developing strategic marketing plans that enhance their customers’ experience and drive measurable results. She pushes her clients to challenge their status quo and be best-in-class leaders in their industries. She finds particular joy in helping create order and structure out of complexity. In her seven years at Salesforce, she has worked with organizations from all industries, including FedEx, Best Buy, HSN, Enterprise Holdings, and Ubisoft.

Get the latest articles in your inbox.

customer journey marketing cloud

How To Get Started With Email Segmentation

Man snaps photo of Salesforce logo: What does Salesforce do

What Does Salesforce Do?

Brandy the Fox holds a clipboard readying to interview email marketers about generative AI

Experts Predict How AI Could Impact Email Marketing

Illustration on a light blue background of a digital assistant robot hand and a human hand joining two puzzle pieces together

9 Ways AI Can Save Marketers Time, Money — and Grief

Illustration on a mint green background of a woman sitting at her desk on a laptop, sending emails. Behind her is a helpful robot with a magic wand. / AI marketing

Your One-Stop Guide to AI in Marketing

An illustration of a woman working on a laptop, her data possibly being housed in a consumer data platform.

A CDP Is a Powerful Tool — Here’s How To Make It Work for You

A young woman, working in her coffee shop and dressed in a white shirt and a dark blue apron, checks her laptop on the counter. / email marketing for small business

Email Marketing for Small Business: Here’s All You Need to Know

A woman tasting a trade promotion sample at her local supermarket before making a purchase.

Everything You Know About Trade Promotion Management Is Wrong

customer journey marketing cloud

360 Highlights

Yes, I would like to receive the Salesforce 360 Highlights newsletter as well as marketing emails regarding Salesforce products, services, and events. I can unsubscribe at any time.

By registering, you confirm that you agree to the processing of your personal data by Salesforce as described in the Privacy Statement .

customer journey marketing cloud

Thanks, you're subscribed!

Salesforce logo

New to Salesforce?

  • What is Salesforce?
  • Best CRM software
  • Explore all products
  • What is cloud computing
  • Customer success
  • Product pricing

About Salesforce

  • Salesforce.org
  • Sustainability

Popular Links

  • Salesforce Mobile
  • AppExchange
  • CRM software
  • Salesforce LIVE
  • Salesforce for startups
  • América Latina (Español)
  • Brasil (Português)
  • Canada (English)
  • Canada (Français)
  • United States (English)

Europe, Middle East, and Africa

  • España (Español)
  • Deutschland (Deutsch)
  • France (Français)
  • Italia (Italiano)
  • Nederland (Nederlands)
  • Sverige (Svenska)
  • United Kingdom (English)
  • All other countries (English)

Asia Pacific

  • Australia (English)
  • India (English)
  • Malaysia (English)
  • ประเทศไทย (ไทย)

© Copyright 2024 Salesforce, Inc. All rights reserved.  Various trademarks held by their respective owners. Salesforce, Inc. Salesforce Tower, 415 Mission Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105, United States

About 10 mins

Learning Objectives

Introduction, what are journeys, the power of journey builder + distributed marketing, preparation is the key to success, get ready in marketing cloud engagement.

  • Challenge +100 points

Understand the Case for Journeys

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Explain what a Marketing Cloud Engagement journey is.
  • Describe how journeys help business users connect with customers.
  • Describe the process for preparing messages and journeys in Marketing Cloud Engagement to use in other clouds through Distributed Marketing.
  • Prepare for rolling out Distributed Marketing.

In Brand Alignment in Distributed Organizations , you learned about distributed organizations and the importance of keeping your brand consistent. You also learned a bit about Distributed Marketing and some of its features. In this module, we dive deeper into how Distributed Marketing works and take you through all the steps to set it up and roll it out to your organization.

In this module, we assume that you’re a Distributed Marketing administrator, and when we refer to admins or administrators, we mean Distributed Marketing administrators. When we refer to users or business users, we mean Distributed Marketing standard users.

Before we get started...

The content in this trail assumes that you already understand some fundamental concepts about Salesforce applications. We recommend completing these Trailhead badges first.

  • Campaign Basics
  • Accounts & Contacts for Lightning Experience
  • Leads & Opportunities for Lightning Experience
  • Manage Campaigns with Journey Builder
  • Create Compelling Content with Content Builder

When you think of journeys, you probably think about traveling from one location to another. Perhaps an exotic vacation to a sandy beach? Or maybe you’re thinking of an inner journey—growing from a child to an adult?

When we talk about journeys in Marketing Cloud Engagement, we’re describing the path that your potential customer takes to become someone who is engaged and committed to your brand. A journey is a customer communication plan that you design. And the tool you use to design this unique path is Journey Builder.

Journey Builder is a campaign planning tool in Marketing Cloud Engagement. You use it to design and automate campaigns that guide customers through their journey with your brand. You begin with a blank canvas (or a template) and set activities that tell Journey Builder how to communicate with customers who are added to the journey. After you configure it, Journey Builder runs responsive campaigns automatically and continuously evaluates your contacts to determine when to move them to the next activity.

A blank canvas in Journey Builder.

Here are a few examples of customer journeys.

  • Invite people to an event.
  • Guide new users through account creation.
  • Welcome new members.
  • Thank customers for purchases.
  • Remind shoppers about abandoned shopping carts.
  • Promote a seasonal campaign.

According to the Salesforce State of Marketing report, of the marketers who have implemented customer journeys, more than two-thirds agree it’s had a positive impact on their business. From decreasing churn rates to contributing to revenue growth, a customer journey strategy is the rising tide lifting all marketers’ boats. 

In Brand Alignment in Distributed Organizations , you learned about the divide between marketers and business users. Combine the power of Journey Builder and Distributed Marketing to close that gap and deliver an impactful experience of your brand to your customers.

Consider this example. An automotive manufacturer has a marketing team who designs the brand and all customer communications—from traditional marketing assets to knowledge articles, relationship-management messages, and more. The company also has a global team of dealers who work tirelessly to build their books of business, drive growth, and delight their buyers. These dealers are the face of the brand to the customer. They know their customers well. The marketing team has the time, skills, and expertise to provide meaningful communications that support the dealers’ success.

Enter Journey Builder and Distributed Marketing.

The marketing team uses Journey Builder in Marketing Cloud Engagement to create a lifecycle of communications, including emails that help new customers get started with their dealer and their recent purchase, remind customers of important events like inventory sales or suggested maintenance, deliver monthly reports, and even wish them a happy birthday.

When they aren’t with their customers, the dealers spend time working in Experience Cloud. They enter information for new leads, add opportunities for existing customers, and make notes of each engagement on contact records. 

With Distributed Marketing, the marketing team connects a Experience Cloud campaign with a Marketing Cloud Engagement journey. Marketers share content that supports best practices using short, simple engagements, multitouch experiences, and more. Then, the dealers simply add their leads and contacts to a relevant campaign at the right time and personalize messages. The communications flow automatically from Journey Builder. The marketing team also creates a library of email templates that dealers use to send messages to leads and contacts from within the lead or contact record. 

Distributed Marketing lets business users do what they do best—focus on building relationships with their customers.

There are many benefits to using Distributed Marketing with Journey Builder. Here are just a few.

  • Maintain brand consistency and compliance by creating on-brand, marketing-approved, legally compliant content and journeys in Marketing Cloud Engagement.
  • Easily add customers to journeys through the cloud your users work in most often.
  • Customize messages quickly and intuitively.
  • Let business users focus on customer relationships.
  • Understand and measure journey engagement and optimize in real time.

Check out this video for a quick refresher about Distributed Marketing.

You’ve started learning about the power of Distributed Marketing and how it combines Marketing Cloud Engagement tools with data from your other clouds. Are you ready to get started? There are a few things to do before you install and set up Distributed Marketing.

Let’s stop and consider how your company will use Distributed Marketing. Before you dive in, use these recommendations to create a plan for your particular use cases.

Identify the players. Distributed Marketing is all about collaboration, so there will be stakeholders, participants, and influencers throughout your organization. A successful Distributed Marketing rollout requires participation from corporate marketing, business users, and your Salesforce administrators. Let’s dig in.

  • Corporate marketing owns the marketing strategy for the brand. Although they’re not involved with Distributed Marketing day-to-day, they do need to support and integrate business user requirements, create a global strategy, and provide standards that all Distributed Marketing content should follow. They primarily work in Marketing Cloud Engagement.
  • Distributed Marketing administrators, or channel marketers, are part of the corporate marketing organization. They act as conduits between marketing initiatives and business users’ needs. They are responsible for connecting Salesforce CRM campaigns to Marketing Cloud Engagement journeys and sharing templates with users. They may also be responsible for building collaborative content in Content Builder. They work primarily in Marketing Cloud Engagement, but also other clouds.
  • Distributed Marketing business users manage leads, contacts, and person accounts. With Distributed Marketing, these users send and personalize messages. Sometimes referred to as standard users, such as financial advisors, auto dealers, and franchise owners, they work in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Financial Services Cloud, or Experience Cloud.
  • Salesforce administrators are responsible for setting up and maintaining your Salesforce environments. They ensure that your organization is set up properly to use Distributed Marketing. They also install the Distributed Marketing managed package, and manage sharing and permissions for business users.

Make sure that you have the right tools. Distributed Marketing requires Marketing Cloud Engagement with Journey Builder enabled. You also need one of the following clouds: Sales, Service, Financial Services (FSC), or Community. (To use Distributed Marketing in Experience Cloud, the Partner Community license is required.)

Review Distributed Marketing requirements. Check out our list of supported clouds, editions, environments, and features .

Check your user permissions. Make sure you have permission in your Salesforce org to download AppExchange packages, customize the application, modify all data, manage authentication providers, assign permission sets, and view setup and configuration.

Distributed Marketing currently uses standard Salesforce objects including Campaigns, Contacts, and Leads. If you use custom objects to track individual records, you might not be able to use Distributed Marketing quite yet. Work with your Salesforce admin or program architect to evaluate your environment.

Here’s where your marketing team can jump in and help. You can wait to configure your Marketing Cloud Engagement journeys after you install Distributed Marketing, but it doesn’t hurt to get a head start. Your marketing team can use these recommendations to get ready for your Distributed Marketing rollout.

  • Plan your customer communication journey.
  • Consider how you’ll personalize messages using customer attributes such as email address and geographic location.
  • Install the Distributed Marketing content blocks into your Marketing Cloud Engagement account. (We cover these steps later in this module.)
  • Design and build your messages in Marketing Cloud Engagement using any of the great tools available in Content Builder and Distributed Marketing content blocks.
  • In Journey Builder, configure journeys that use events with customer data from the clouds your standard Distributed Marketing users are working in.

Get ready! Up next, we take a look at permissions and Distributed Marketing installation.

  • Salesforce Help : Get Started with Journey Builder
  • External Link : State of Marketing Report
  • External Site : Supercharge Productivity for Advisors, Agents and Bankers with Distributed Marketing (signup required)
  • Get personalized recommendations for your career goals
  • Practice your skills with hands-on challenges and quizzes
  • Track and share your progress with employers
  • Connect to mentorship and career opportunities

IMAGES

  1. 5 Essential Customer Journeys in Marketing Cloud ShowerThinking

    customer journey marketing cloud

  2. 3 B2B Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder Designs

    customer journey marketing cloud

  3. Digital Customer Journeys: the ultimate guide to optimising them!

    customer journey marketing cloud

  4. Marketing Cloud

    customer journey marketing cloud

  5. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder: The Essential Guide

    customer journey marketing cloud

  6. Get Started with Marketing Cloud Unit

    customer journey marketing cloud

VIDEO

  1. Marketing to customers

  2. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Specialist Certification Maintenance SU '23 Trailhead

  3. Customer Journey Mapping

  4. Customer Journey: Lowering Cloud Cost & Driving Innovation. Talking w Michael Mathews, CIO at Deluxe

  5. Managing Marketing Information to Gain Customer Insights

  6. Marketing Coordinator : Customer Behavior Insights 11

COMMENTS

  1. CUSTOMER JOURNEYS: How to Keep Customers Connected and ...

    1. Generate awareness. Each customer journey starts with a question, generally revolving around where they can find the best product or service to meet a specific need. Being able to pinpoint when this question tends to arise and where customers are looking for answers can help guide your marketing efforts.

  2. Journeys and Automations in Marketing Cloud Engagement

    Journeys and Messages. Marketing Cloud's Journey Builder is a campaign planning tool that enables you to design and automate campaigns that guide customers through their journey with a brand. Its foundation is the journey, which is the communication plan you design. Canvas activities tell Journey Builder how to communicate to and direct ...

  3. Customer Journey Maps: How to Guide Your Leads to Customers

    Ask about Salesforce products, pricing, implementation, or anything else — our highly trained reps are standing by, ready to help. Contact us. OR CALL 1-800-664-9073. A customer journey map is a diagram of the touchpoints a customer has with your company, detailing how customers interact with your brand.

  4. Customer Journey Mapping Resources

    Learn how to create customer journeys with worksheets, e-books, reports, and examples from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Explore journey strategies, benefits, and best practices for different industries and scenarios.

  5. Get to Know Marketing Cloud Engagement

    Get to Know Marketing Cloud Engagement . Craft 1-to-1 consumer experiences across email, mobile, social, advertising, and the web with Marketing Cloud Engagement. ~1 hr 55 mins.

  6. Salesforce Training

    Discover how to build unique, memorable customer engagements with Marketing Cloud. In this 5-day instructor-led course, you'll learn how to build customer journeys in Marketing Cloud. Our team of experts share best practices related to implementing, monitoring, and analyzing your journeys, preparing you to design personalized journeys and engage with customers in new, exciting ways.

  7. Create Personalized Customer Connections with Marketing Cloud

    In the age of intelligent marketing, customer engagement is not just about marketing. That's why Marketing Cloud Engagement is part of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, the only platform that enables companies to manage customer engagement across the complete journey: marketing, sales, commerce, and service.

  8. PDF Marketing Cloud Journeys and Automations

    Marketing Cloud's Journey Builder is a campaign planning tool that enables you to design and automate campaigns that guide customers through their journey with a brand. Its foundation is the journey, which is the communication plan you design. ... based on email opens because email opens can signal whether a customer or prospect is interested ...

  9. Salesforce: The Customer Company

    With Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Management, you can create and optimize personalized customer journeys across channels and devices. Learn how to use Journey Builder, the powerful tool for marketing orchestration, and explore best practices, examples, and resources for customer journey mapping.

  10. Mapping Out Marketing Cloud Journey Builder (+ Template)

    Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides a plethora of data analytics tools that can feed into your customer journey maps. The high level personas and segments through your journey mapping inventory can, in turn, be used to create more targeted campaigns in Salesforce, improving ROI and customer satisfaction. 3. Real-Time Engagement.

  11. Manage Campaigns with Journey Builder

    Use this powerful Marketing Cloud Engagement tool to automate and optimize customer interactions. Add to Favorites. ... +300 points. Module. Customer Journey Basics. Connect your data, departments, and channels to deliver great 1-to-1 customer experiences. Add to Favorites. Add to Trailmix ~25 mins. Understand the Connected Customer ~5 mins ...

  12. Customer journeys In Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Making a ...

    The stages along the customer journey - awareness, consideration, and conversion - result in customers wanting different information. Without the right data and systems, retailers will have an incredibly difficult time aligning the right content with the right customers. Thankfully, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is built with the customer ...

  13. What are Customer Journeys in Marketing & Sales

    Learn best practices for creating a customer journey in Marketing Cloud. Then hear from TCF Bank, which has gone from traditional campaign thinking to behavioral-based journeys that span the customer lifecycle. Video: Journey Builder 101: How to Plan, Personalize, and Optimize Customer Journeys

  14. Manage Customer Journeys

    Marketing Cloud Journeys and Automations; Manage Customer Journeys. Journey Builder's enables you to efficiently create and track Single Send, Transactional Send, and Multi-Step customer journeys in Marketing Cloud from a unified workspace. Single Send journeys: Automate a single batch message to a target audience.

  15. Customer Journeys in Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Making a More Relevant

    The stages along the customer journey - awareness, consideration, and conversion - result in customers wanting different information. Without the right data and systems, retailers will have an incredibly difficult time aligning the right content with the right customers. Thankfully, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is built with the customer ...

  16. Get Started with Customer Journeys

    High-performing marketing teams are 8.8x more likely than underperformers to strongly agree that they have adopted a customer journey strategy as part of their overall business strategy. ... The Marketing Cloud Engagement is the world's #1 Marketing Platform that enables you to know your consumer, personalize everywhere with AI, and engage ...

  17. Marketing Cloud Platform Overview

    Build and manage personalised customer journeys with Marketing Cloud. Journey Builder Use marketing automation to build customer journeys across email, mobile, advertising, your website, and the internet of things to deliver a seamless experience across marketing, sales, and service.

  18. Get Started with Journey Builder

    To begin using the Journey Builder application, log in with your Marketing Cloud Engagement username and password. If you're not a Marketing Cloud Engagement customer or Journey Builder is not enabled in your account, don't worry. In this and subsequent modules, we show you lots of screenshots and give you step-by-step instructions so you ...

  19. Journey Builder: Personalised Digital Marketing Solutions

    Geofencing Marketing: Find out marketing trends and statistics to help inform your strategy. Customer Journey: Learn more about marketing automation software with Journey Builder. Guide to Social Media Monitoring: Learn all about social listening from Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

  20. Journeys and Messages

    Journey Builder's enables you to efficiently create and track Single Send, Transactional Send, and Multi-Step customer journeys in Marketing Cloud from a unified workspace. Journey Settings. Choose the settings that determine when the contact enters a Marketing Cloud journey and which address Journey Builder uses to message that contact.

  21. Map the Customer Journey and Drive Engagement

    Customer journeys map how your customers use your products and services. Identify what your customers want to accomplish and how they feel at each stage of their experience. When you understand what your users need, you can design a site that helps them accomplish their goals. Tip As you go through this process, define specific outcomes to ...

  22. Creating Successful Customer Journeys

    I help Salesforce customers create strategically sound journeys and transform the way their teams approach the process of creating them. Based on my experience guiding customers across industries, I developed five key steps that will help you transform the way you plan customer journeys, reduce frustration, and start seeing results faster. 1.

  23. Understand the Case for Journeys

    A journey is a customer communication plan that you design. And the tool you use to design this unique path is Journey Builder. Journey Builder is a campaign planning tool in Marketing Cloud Engagement. You use it to design and automate campaigns that guide customers through their journey with your brand.