Table Of ContentAutomating
Salesforce
Marketing Cloud
Reap all the benefits of the SFMC platform
and increase your productivity with the help of
real-world examples
Greg Gifford
Jason Hanshaw
BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI
Automating Salesforce Marketing Cloud
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I dedicate this book to my wonderful wife and spectacular son, who make
my life infinitely better every day. I also dedicate this book to the wonderful
Salesforce Marketing Cloud community, which has helped me grow to
where I am today.
– Greg Gifford
This book is dedicated to my wonderful partner and children, who inspire
me to push the boundaries of what's possible in my career and life. Without
them, none of this would be possible.
– Jason Hanshaw
Contributors
About the authors
Greg Gifford, also known as Gortonington inside the Salesforce Marketing Cloud
community, is a Salesforce MVP, Salesforce Marketing Champion, Trailblazer Community
Group Leader, and a subject matter expert on the platform. As founder and managing
director of HowToSFMC.com, Greg has made a large investment in the community and
has striven to create a nurturing and learning-focused environment. Greg is also the
owner and author of a blog, gortonington.com, where he posts interesting things he
learns about Marketing Cloud or any other helpful tips or advice he can share. Greg is
also very active on Salesforce Stack Exchange and is currently the top Marketing Cloud
contributor of all time there under his alias, Gortonington. Greg is currently employed at
Merkle as the director of SFMC engineering.
Jason Hanshaw is a Salesforce Marketing Cloud engineer with extensive experience in
building solutions for the platform. A former web developer, he brings a background
in web application development to Marketing Cloud in order to build innovative
solutions that extend capabilities and meet complex needs. He is the author of the blog
InvokeCreate.dev where he shares project-based examples for getting the most out of
the platform. Jason is an avid contributor on Stack Exchange and within digital marketing
communities, and is always seeking to grow his knowledge and share his own with others.
About the reviewers
Cameron Robert is a marketing and automation subject matter expert from Australia.
He is a Salesforce Certified Expert, Salesforce Marketing Champion 2020-2021,
Trailblazer Community Group Leader, and a YouTube and blog content creator, as
well as contributing to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud community wherever possible.
Specializing in implementation and enablement, Cameron has helped numerous
businesses adopt Marketing Cloud and realize value from their projects. He is passionate
about helping new users to onboard and unlock the full potential of Salesforce
Marketing Cloud.
Jason Cort is a 4x Salesforce Certified CRM Technology specialist with 12+ years'
experience across multiple platforms. With a primary focus on Salesforce Marketing
Cloud, he has been a Salesforce Marketing Champion since 2020 and is one of the
co-founders of HowToSFMC.com, where the community shares advice and tips for
making the most of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and much more. Jason has presented
webinars covering email deliverability and Salesforce Marketing Cloud functionality and
has delivered presentations at email industry events including Litmus Live. He has worked
in a range of industries, both on the brand side and as a consultant, and is a passionate
advocate of making technology work harder to enable users to work smarter and
more effectively.
Shibu Abraham is a Salesforce MVP and a Marketing Champion. Shibu currently
heads the APAC Salesforce Practice for UST, a Crest Partner of Salesforce. He is also
an Agile Champion and holds numerous certifications from both Salesforce and the
Agile community. He also leads the Marketing Cloud Trailblazer Community Group in
Malaysia. He is a big fan of Lightning Web Components (LWC), marketing automation,
programming in SFMC, and content creation on SFMC topics. He believes in innovation,
continuous learning, and sharing knowledge about Salesforce and promotes various
events for the Salesforce Trailblazer Community.
Table of Contents
Preface
Section 1: Automation Theory and
Automations in SFMC
1
What Is Automation?
Automation theory 4 Data collection 12
Automation definition 6 Information routing 12
Activity tracking 13
Automation opportunities
and pitfalls 6 Implementation best practices 13
Opportunities 7 Starting small 13
Expanded opportunities 8 Understanding the process 14
Pitfalls 9 Sticking to the objective 14
Concepts of automation 10 ABD – Always Be Documenting 15
Infrastructure 10 Documentation best practices 16
Triggers 11
Summary 17
2
SFMC Automation Tools
Salesforce Marketing Cloud 20 Multi-channel marketing 22
The ExactTarget years 20 Cross-channel marketing 23
Salesforce acquisition 21 Marketing Cloud evolves beyond email 24
Multi-channel and Automation tools
cross-channel marketing 21 in Marketing Cloud 25
viii Table of Contents
Marketing Cloud tools 26 Scheduled automations 46
File drop automations 50
Journey Builder overview 27
Automation Studio activities 59
Single Send journeys 27
Transactional Send journeys 28 Comparing Automation
Studio and Journey Builder 60
Multi-Step journeys 28
Journey Builder configuration overview 29 The key differences 60
Journey entry events and activities 35 Which one should I use? 63
Journey Builder considerations With our powers combined 63
and best practices 43 Automation Studio and Journey
Builder interactions 64
Automation Studio overview 45
Summary 66
3
SFMC Automation Best Practices
Best practices 68 Can your solution handle triple
the volume and frequency that's
Establishing a best practice 69
currently expected? 87
Maintaining best practices 70
Is the solution fully planned
Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) 71
out and developmentally sound? 87
Creating high-quality testing 76
Is efficiency greater than
Testing woes in Salesforce
performance? 89
Marketing Cloud 76
Why am I not certain? 90
Creating test versions
Is efficiency better than performance? 91
in your production business unit 77
Creating a sandbox business unit 79 Best practice is not always best 92
Developing and testing outside
Context matters 93
Marketing Cloud 81
Subject matter experts don't
Performance and efficiency know everything 94
in your architecture 83 Do research and testing 96
Will the solution solve the problem? 83 You (your preferences) matter 97
Is the solution your best path
Imposter syndrome 97
forward to meet your needs? 84
Trust yourself 98
Does this solution consider
Your situation matters 98
all future scenarios? 85
Summary 99
Table of Contents ix
Section 2: Optimizing Automation inside
of SFMC
4
Automating Email Sends
Email marketing automation 1:1 messaging 116
overview 104 Batch messaging 120
Real-time versus scheduled 106 Batch or 1:1? Why not both? 124
Real time 106 Analytics-powered insights 124
Scheduled 110
Analytics in Marketing Cloud 124
Real time or scheduled – which
is the right choice? 116 Considerations regarding
email automation 129
1:1 messaging versus
Summary 131
batch sends 116
5
Automating Your ETL and Data
What is ETL? 134 Filter activities and
data segmentation 153
Extract 135
Transform 135 Filters 154
Load 136 Groups 158
How is ETL used? 136 Filtered mobile lists 159
Activities for data in Import data options 160
Automation Studio 137 Export data options 160
SQL Query activities 138 Data extract 161
What is a SQL Query activity? 139 File Transfer activity 161
Uses of the SQL Query activity Tracking extract 162
in automation 140
Summary 163
x Table of Contents
6
The Magic of Script Activities
Technical requirements 166 More capabilities than
we can mention 186
Script activities (SSJS
and AMPscript) 166 WSProxy 186
AMPscript inside of a Script activity 167 A real-life example
implementation 186
Overview of SSJS
in Marketing Cloud 169 Setup 186
Functions 187
What is SFMC SSJS in a nutshell? 170
Global variables 190
Oh, the possibilities! (What allTriggers logic 190
you can do in SSJS) 173 for loop 192
Arrays and objects 174 The upsert 193
Functions in SSJS 182
Summary 194
try…catch in SSJS 184
7
The Power of In-Step APIs
What are APIs? 196 HttpResponse 214
The REST and SOAP APIs 198 HttpGet 215
HttpRequest 216
Authentication 198
The SOAP API in Marketing Cloud 201 Why is this important? 219
The REST API in Marketing Cloud 204
External services 219
SFMC native functions Example 1 220
and WSProxy 209 Example 2 224
Example 3 225
AMPscript 209
Example 4 226
Server-side JavaScript 211
WSProxy 212 Summary 227
Script.Util for the REST API 213
