Marketing automation can increase productivity by a massive 34% and boost marketing ROI by up to 23%. Unfortunately, most marketers and brands that use Salesforce aren’t getting maximum returns for their investment. In fact, it’s not just Salesforce. According to a recent Incredo report, 85% of brands using marketing automation tools cannot extract maximum value from these tools. This is where the trails below come in handy to boost your Salesforce Marketing Cloud ROI.
The even more interesting part is that more and more marketers are adopting marketing automation. Stats indicate that 86% of companies in the US will have adopted some form of automation by the end of 2020.
5 Trails to Jumpstart Your Productivity and Salesforce Marketing Cloud ROI
Salesforce provides an incredible amount of training resources to help marketers gain the most from the platform, from training to videos and insightful tutorials. This makes it just a tad easier to find your way through the platform. But, as a Marketing Cloud user, we understand that sifting through the massive volume of resources can be a hectic process. So, we’ve done the groundwork for you and identified five valuable trails to get you started. We’ve split them into two categories to make your work even easier. The first category of trails should help you better understand Marketing Cloud, automation strategies, and campaign analytics. The second category, meanwhile, is all about finding quality customer data.Category #1: If You’re Struggling to Leverage True Automation and Process Optimization
The following three trails should help you understand the Marketing Cloud, the automation process, and process optimization.1. Get to Know Marketing Cloud (Length: 1 hour 20 minutes)
This trail is more like an introduction to Marketing Cloud. It’s also an opportunity to explore the products. Some of the products you can explore are social, email, data, and measurement exercises. The idea is to help you appreciate the ins and outs of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. You’ll learn two key things from this trail;- That taking a step back from day to day activities can help you understand how Marketing Cloud should be used.
- A broader understanding of the Marketing Cloud platform. How does it work? What does it comprise? Etc.
2. Marketing Automation Strategies (55 minutes)
Marketers must implement the right processes and utilize the right data to increase productivity and ROI. The Marketing Automation Strategies trail focuses on educating the user on how to leverage first-party data to schedule and trigger automation that impacts marketing productivity and reaches personalized touchpoints. You’ll learn the following three things from the trail;- Why it’s crucial to create cross-channel journeys and how to make the journeys responsive to actions.
- How to automate and schedule communication with the least possible effort to maximize returns.
- The types of journeys you can build and how to build each of them.
3. Journey Campaign Analytics and Optimization (Length: 30 minutes)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud users love the Journey Builder. It optimizes messages in real-time, based on each customer’s unique actions. It’s also excellent at tracking multi-channel journeys and provides detailed analytics for step by step marketing modules. Above all, the Journey Builder is easy to use if you’re familiar with it. It provides a drag-and-drop interface, thus fully automates life cycle campaigns across email, social, and the web. The Journey Campaign Analytics and Optimization trail focuses on helping marketers fully understand the Journey Builder’s workings. You’ll learn two key things;- Quick tips on how and why you need to measure
- What you should do with the data you collect
Category #2: If you’re Struggling to Capture Quality Data
This problem can manifest in several ways. Perhaps you’re missing data sources or struggling to make maximum use of the data you collect. The following trails are designed to help you solve these problems once and for all.4. Google Analytics 360 Integration for Marketing Cloud (length: 3 hours, 10 minutes)
This is the longest of the five trails on this list, and for a good reason – it educates marketers, in detail, about the use of data, which is the core of any Marketing Cloud campaign. The trail will help you learn how to access quality data and walk you through the process of connecting Google Analytics and Marketing Cloud. It will also take you through the step-by-step process of setting up Audience Activations and understanding the Journey Analytics dashboard. Two key takeaways from the trail are as follows;- You learn how to measure your marketing impact outside of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
- In addition to the Marketing Cloud platform basics, you learn how to use data and audiences for improved customer experience and insights.
5. Optimize Data, Audiences, and Digital Advertising (Length: 2 hours, 40 minutes)
Optimization is where successful Marketing Cloud users earn their stripes. If you can achieve a high level of optimization, you’re guaranteed better insight, improved customer relationships, and, ultimately, more leads and sales. This trail focuses on just that – achieving maximum optimization in the three most important areas of any marketing campaign, i.e., data, audiences, and advertising. You can expect to learn the following;- The role of digital advertising in modern marketing and why you need it now more than ever
- How to adopt a consistent approach across your advertising channels
- How to leverage programmatic advertising to fast-track your marketing gains
