Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a dream tool for any data-hungry marketer and businesses looking to optimise digital marketing efforts and build stronger customer relationships. A profound discovery phase into your current setup must be done for the system to deliver the expected results. What this means, and how it’s done?
According to LeverUP Salesforce Marketing Cloud Architect Ivana Holjevac, the client’s needs, goals, and challenges are identified during the discovery.
“The discovery is more important than implementation,” Ivana says the latter is the easiest part. “But the discovery, i.e. understanding the business needs and finding a suitable solution, is the most difficult and important step!”
An average discovery phase can take around two weeks, depending on the complexity of the business case and the tools currently used. “During these weeks, we deep-dive into the existing set-up, analyse every step made by the client’s team, assess how they gather data, how consent is organised, how they send emails, how they handle unsubscriptions and how their store data,” says Ivana.
Based on all that information, the LeverUP MarTech implementation team prepares a suitable approach for SFMC implementation. It provides suggestions for appropriate next steps, covering the current implementation and options for possible add-ons for the future.
Most crucial discovery steps
1. Identify stakeholders: this may include representatives from various departments such as marketing, sales, customer service, IT, and executive leadership.
“When stakeholders are not identified and involved in decision-making, issues with support for the project, misalignment, and missed opportunities will arise,” says Ivana.
2. Define objectives: Understand the business goals, customer needs, and challenges the SFMC implementation will help solve.
SFMC implementation will solve several challenges businesses have with marketing and customer engagement whether it’s data integration from various sources such as CRM, website, social media, etc., into a single platform, inconsistent messaging across different channels, inefficient campaign management, or lack of personalisation and analytics.
Ivana adds that it’s essential to understand the client’s current needs and suggest how to deliver them in SFMC to ensure they reach their business goals.
3. Assess current processes: we assess the company’s processes and tools to identify gaps or inefficiencies.
Ivana says this will help determine how SFMC can be leveraged to improve current processes and what can be automated.
4. Evaluate data sources: we evaluate the type, quality, and quantity of data that will be used with SFMC and structure it so the client can navigate it later easily.
First, we start with reviewing the customer data model, sources of data, and customer data structure and set up a model based on that, Ivana explains.
“If the client holds everything in Excel (and we have seen this!), building a data model is easy. In that case, we can do it from scratch and correctly. But if the tools used are outdated or data sources are messy, duplicating and disparate, it can be difficult,” she says.
5. Define audience segments: we will determine how data can be leveraged to create targeted and personalized campaigns based on the business goals and customer needs.
“We also review existing email templates and align on what kind of content blocks the client needs or would like to have.”
6. Develop a roadmap: to outline the key milestones, timelines, and deliverables for the SFMC implementation. This will help ensure the implementation is on track and aligned with the overall business strategy.
“The client gets an overview of how, when, and where it will happen. Our suggestions on what to do and how should the implementation processes be organized” says Ivana. When that is done, the implementation can kick off.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the most powerful digital marketing and customer engagement platform currently on the market. Our skilled team can help take your marketing game to a new level. Contact us here.
