The 5 Essential Customer Journeys in Marketing Cloud (part 1 of 5)
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2024 6:50 am
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is one of the most complete marketing platforms on the market. It has different modules that cover most of the needs of a modern marketing department, such as Social Studio for social media management, Advertising Studio for advertising campaign management, Mobile Studio for mobile communication or Email Studio for email communication. If you still don't know what Marketing Cloud is or need more information about the platform, I invite you to read the following article that goes into depth: What is Marketing Cloud? The Salesforce Digital Marketing Hub .
The section called Contact Builder is responsible for maintaining the relational data of subscribers. If you want to see a more detailed explanation of Marketing Cloud, I recommend watching my video on YouTube about the different parts that make up the platform.
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Journey Builder is the core of the platform and is where we configure the Journeys we want to establish with subscribers/customers.
What is Journey Builder?
Journey Builder is the part of Marketing Cloud that is used to create customer interaction paths or Customer Journeys. The way to generate these journeys is through visual programming, for this we are going to use the Canvas or application canvas.
journey builder
The canvas is divided into a first vertical column on the left, which are the elements that you can drag and drop into your Journey (marked in the image with the number 1). You will see that there are 5 different categories of elements that you can include in a journey: Entry Sources, Activities, Messages, Flow Control, Customer Updates and Sales & Service Cloud.
journey builder workflow 1
One of the most interesting elements that we can introduce in a Journey are the activities related to Sales Cloud since we can Create/Update Contacts, Opportunities, Leads, Add members to a campaign or Create/Update any type of object in Sales and Service Cloud.
The programming of each Journey is divided into 2 distinct parts: Entry Source are the elements that trigger the Journey (marked as A in the image) and cause us to introduce a user into the flow. On the other hand, there are the elements of the Journey (marked as B) that program the interactions that we are going to carry out with the users.
journey builder workflow 2
In the Journeys that we will see below, you will see how you must establish a series of user input sources in a journey along with more or less complex programming on the steps that we are going to establish with them.
The 5 Essential Journeys
There is plenty of technical information in luxembourg phone number library Salesforce itself that describes this part of the tool, but from a marketing professional's point of view it is necessary to understand how to develop personalized communication programs with customers. One of the easiest ways to learn this is to see how other customers use it.
For this reason, we are going to review 5 cases in which I have worked in different companies within their Marketing Cloud implementation projects. It has been difficult to choose which Journeys would be chosen for this publication given that dozens of different Journeys are implemented over time.
Thinking about which would be the clearest and most didactic way, I present them to you starting with the simplest ones. They are ordered according to the different stages of a supposed conversion funnel. Therefore, I present below the 5 Journeys appropriate for each stage, hoping that they can serve as inspiration for your project.
journey funnel
1. Lead Management Journey (customer acquisition)
Establishing a precise and orderly customer acquisition process is a priority for every marketing team. The example we are going to see below is a simplification implemented for a technology company that offers complex IT security products for its clients in Spain and Latin America.
Various types of lead generation campaigns land on the client's website (organic, paid media and events in particular) since part of the client's products are based on an open source solution. There is a large niche community interested in security solutions.
The acquisition strategy is based on the early identification and qualification of companies interested in the client's product. It is carried out through a Product Demo or a Free Trial. This Journey modality can be extrapolated to different companies that sell products (like this case) or services.
The section called Contact Builder is responsible for maintaining the relational data of subscribers. If you want to see a more detailed explanation of Marketing Cloud, I recommend watching my video on YouTube about the different parts that make up the platform.
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Journey Builder is the core of the platform and is where we configure the Journeys we want to establish with subscribers/customers.
What is Journey Builder?
Journey Builder is the part of Marketing Cloud that is used to create customer interaction paths or Customer Journeys. The way to generate these journeys is through visual programming, for this we are going to use the Canvas or application canvas.
journey builder
The canvas is divided into a first vertical column on the left, which are the elements that you can drag and drop into your Journey (marked in the image with the number 1). You will see that there are 5 different categories of elements that you can include in a journey: Entry Sources, Activities, Messages, Flow Control, Customer Updates and Sales & Service Cloud.
journey builder workflow 1
One of the most interesting elements that we can introduce in a Journey are the activities related to Sales Cloud since we can Create/Update Contacts, Opportunities, Leads, Add members to a campaign or Create/Update any type of object in Sales and Service Cloud.
The programming of each Journey is divided into 2 distinct parts: Entry Source are the elements that trigger the Journey (marked as A in the image) and cause us to introduce a user into the flow. On the other hand, there are the elements of the Journey (marked as B) that program the interactions that we are going to carry out with the users.
journey builder workflow 2
In the Journeys that we will see below, you will see how you must establish a series of user input sources in a journey along with more or less complex programming on the steps that we are going to establish with them.
The 5 Essential Journeys
There is plenty of technical information in luxembourg phone number library Salesforce itself that describes this part of the tool, but from a marketing professional's point of view it is necessary to understand how to develop personalized communication programs with customers. One of the easiest ways to learn this is to see how other customers use it.
For this reason, we are going to review 5 cases in which I have worked in different companies within their Marketing Cloud implementation projects. It has been difficult to choose which Journeys would be chosen for this publication given that dozens of different Journeys are implemented over time.
Thinking about which would be the clearest and most didactic way, I present them to you starting with the simplest ones. They are ordered according to the different stages of a supposed conversion funnel. Therefore, I present below the 5 Journeys appropriate for each stage, hoping that they can serve as inspiration for your project.
journey funnel
1. Lead Management Journey (customer acquisition)
Establishing a precise and orderly customer acquisition process is a priority for every marketing team. The example we are going to see below is a simplification implemented for a technology company that offers complex IT security products for its clients in Spain and Latin America.
Various types of lead generation campaigns land on the client's website (organic, paid media and events in particular) since part of the client's products are based on an open source solution. There is a large niche community interested in security solutions.
The acquisition strategy is based on the early identification and qualification of companies interested in the client's product. It is carried out through a Product Demo or a Free Trial. This Journey modality can be extrapolated to different companies that sell products (like this case) or services.