Once you’ve set up your journey in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, make sure your journey performs moving forward with monitoring performance functionalities. Want to know how? Read on to learn 4 ways to monitor journey performance in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and ensure success at every step of the customer lifecycle.
So your journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is now live? Great job! You’ve tested your emails, checked that the data flows in and out flawlessly, and aligned your overall journey logic with stakeholders. (You’ve probably enjoyed a cup of coffee watching the records move through journey steps.)
We don’t want to ruin the party, but have you thought about technical monitoring options to make sure your journey performs well moving forward?
When you have invested in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you want to make sure that your investment pays off. In this article, we share a couple of hints on how to make sure your journey life cycle continues to succeed. Get started with these 4 ways to monitor journey performance in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
1. Datorama Reports: Overall Journey Performance At-a-glance
Have you already made yourself familiar with Datorama? Salesforce Datorama offers AI-powered marketing intelligence, like automated reporting tools and dynamic data modeling.
Salesforce Datorama is now accessible directly from your Salesforce Marketing Cloud and requires hardly any configuration effort. At the same time, you get an intuitive and user-friendly interface.
Implementation effort: low
Accessible at:
Analytics Builder >> Datorama Reports >> Email >> Journey Performance by Email
Main features:
- Custom data range
- Filter by journey name
- Filter by journey activity
- Filter by journey version
- Available metrics: Sends, Bounces, Bounce rate, Opens, Open Rate, Clicks, Click Rate, Click to Open Rate, Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe Rate
- Shared by email, available for pdf download
- Can be scheduled
Use cases:
- Ad hoc performance tracking through customizing Datorama Journey Analytics dashboard
- Weekly scheduled report delivered to an email for all / key journey
2. Error Log: Tracking Email Send Errors
Error Log provides valuable insights on potential data issues and email send errors. If your campaign personalization relies on more or less complex Ampscript logic, implementing a custom error log can come in handy.
Before creating the error log functionality, take a moment to review your Ampscript logic and answer to the following questions:
- Identify which missing data points terminate a message from sending. For example, if you are informing a customer about a delivery date, a missing date or time slot might prevent a message from being sent.
- Recognize which cases missing data points block a message from sending and require a fallback solution. A missing first name data would be a good example, as the fallback might include a generic “Hi there” instead.
- For the errors that prevent the communication from being sent, define the error description to store in your error log data extension.
How can error log help?
- Tracks AMPScript errors in all the communication channels
- Offers insights of data quality
- Provides detailed insights of failed sends and reasons at subscriber level
Implementation effort: medium
Required assets to be created:
- Error log data extension
- AMScript logic updates: make sure that “fatal” errors terminate a message from sending, and the information about the specific error, email name, and subscriber key will be stored in your log.
3. Not Sent Tracking Extract
Tracking extracts, along with Salesforce data views, are the source of detailed tracking data related to sent communications. Not Sent Tracking Extract provides subscriber-level reporting on all failed sends for the certain date range, including reason.
While tracking extract’s main purpose is data export to external resources, it also can be used “inside” of Marketing Cloud. It provides certain reports types not available through data views, e.g. Not Sent report.
Implementation effort: low to medium
Required assets to configure:
- Enables tracking extract functionality (free of charge, request to be submitted to support)
- Creates a data extension
- Configures an automation including the following activities: appropriate data extract (Tracking extract > Not Sent), data transfer (move file to SFTP), another data transfer to unzip, and, finally, the import activity connected to the data extension created at step 2
- Depending on your use case, you might want to join the data from tracking extract with data coming from Marketing Cloud data views to get more insights including email name and subscriber email address
4. Spam Complaints Tracking Extract
Spam complaints tracking extract stands out as another way of leveraging tracking extract functionality to monitor technical aspects of your Marketing Cloud journey performance. Spam Complaints report will help you get detailed insights into which subscribers are not happy with your communication efforts. (Of course, we hope you’ll always get 0 records in your Spam Complaints tracking extract!)
Implementation effort: low medium
Required assets to configure:
- Enables tracking extract functionality (free of charge, request to be submitted to support)
- Creates a data extension
- Configures an automation including the following activities: appropriate data extract (Tracking extract > Spam Complaints), data transfer (move file to SFTP), another data transfer to unzip, and, finally, the import activity connected to the data extension created at step 2
- Depending on your use case, you might want to join the data from tracking extract with data coming from data views to get more insights including email name and subscriber email address
Setting up your journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is important, but it’s only half the battle. You can ensure your journey life cycle continues to succeed through technical monitoring.
Track performance with Datorama Salesforce and benefit from automated reporting tools and dynamic data modeling. Functionalities like Set up Error Log, Not Sent Tracking, and Spam Complaints ensure that all messages are sent successfully. Plus, you’ll stay on top of messages that fail to send due to missing data points or spam complaints.
Taking the time to set up these combined technical monitoring features promises your Salesforce journey reaches its full potential with minimal manual effort.
Ready to get started? You can ensure that your Salesforce system reaches its full potential with outsourced Salesforce managed services.
Expert advisory provides you support, as well as training services to help your team get up and running on the platform. Contact LeverUP Salesforce Marketing Cloud Consultant Experts to find out how you can get the most out of the Salesforce platform and reach your goals faster.
