Welcome to the Cloud: Marketing Cloud 101

Speaker 1: Welcome to the In the Clouds Podcast. In the Clouds is a marketing cloud podcast powered by Lev, the most influential marketing- focused Salesforce consultancy in the world. Lev is customer experience obsessed and podcast hosts Bobby Tichy and Cole Fisher have partnered with some of the world's most well- known brands to help them master meaningful one- on- one connections with their customers. In this podcast, they'll combine strategy and deep technical expertise to share best practices, how tos, and real life use cases and solutions for the world's top brands using Salesforce products today.

Bobby Tichy: Welcome to The In the Clouds Podcast. My name is Bobby Tichy and I'm here with my co- host, Cole Fisher, and we were really excited to launch this new podcast. Everything related to Marketing Cloud and for Cole and I's, the majority of our career, we've spent in what used to be ExactTarget and then Salesforce Marketing Cloud as well. And we really are super passionate about the platform and are really interested in diving in and learning more about it and helping others learn more about it as well.

Cole Fisher: Yeah. So this would be a chance just to geek out about what is in Marketing Cloud, the capabilities, success stories, best practices, things like that, but really at a level that even if you're a Marketing Cloud user or prospective user looking at ESPs and digital marketing suites, just things that can be applicable to current day marketing practices and what other people are doing and some ideational along the way.

Bobby Tichy: Yeah, for sure. So we'll really spend our episodes going through, whether it's through Marketing Cloud products and services or talking to Marketing Cloud customers or architects or consultants, understanding how they're using the platform, tips and tricks around the platform, things to know, deep dive solution reviews. We'll also cover event highlights. So with Connections coming up as well as Dreamforce, and then also we'd love to hear from you guys. So as you come up with solutions or even questions, whether they're technical or functional, or just more generic in nature, feel free to reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you. Our inbox is intheclouds, I- N- T- H- E- C- L- O- U- D- S, @ levdigital. com. That's intheclouds@levdigital.com. So as we jump into this, the first thing that we wanted to do is just provide a high level overview of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, all the elements, the history of it, how it came to be, and then we'll really dive into each of these different elements over the course of our future episodes.

Cole Fisher: Yeah, so it all starts with what was formerly ExactTarget. It was an ESP, an email service provider, started in 2000, but actually acquired by Salesforce in 2013, almost six years ago to the day. It's really made up essentially of two main components, studios and builders. Studios are what we think about as essentially channels and builders are what we actually build within those channels. So that's all the messaging that's actually going out. So really, the studios are email studio, and that again is really the ESP that was ExactTarget. This before the acquisition was still one of the biggest and best email service tools out there. With the acquisition came enhancements in mobile, ads and social as well. That's when it really became more of a digital marketing suite across the board, amplified by that Salesforce acquisition.

Bobby Tichy: Yeah, for sure. As we go through each of these, some of them were native to ExactTarget when Salesforce acquired them, like mobile, did have the SMS and a little bit of push capabilities, but as in kudos to Salesforce, as they bought ExactTarget, they really invested and continued to invest heavily in the product. So things like Ad Studio, which is a new feature within the last couple of years, as well as Interaction Studio, the acquisition of Crux as the DMP, now known as Audience Studios there too. Then actually even before the ExactTarget acquisition was social, which was previously Buddy Media and Radian6, for those of you out there who have heard of, or used those tools in the past. That's really what encompasses Social Studio. So like Cole mentioned, the studios are really the channels. The builders are how we orchestrate those channels and just quickly to touch on most popular builder. I would say Journey Builder of being able to orchestrate these cross- channel and omni- channel campaigns across different elements and really hitting people at the right time, at the right place with the right content based on what they're looking or what their preference might be, as far as the channel is concerned.

Cole Fisher: Then we also touch on web and Web Studio, Encompass' Cloud pages and then Personalization Builder as well, which was formerly inaudible intelligence. And this was one of those acquisitions that Salesforce, that ExactTarget, I should say, was actually in before the Salesforce acquisition. They acquired a company called iGoDigital, which was all of the web recommendation, engine, and personalization, so some really exciting capabilities there as well.

Bobby Tichy: As we go through each of these, we'll certainly dive into each of these specifically and go through solution elements and how to go about working with a lot of these different channels and studios and builders, for sure. But we thought it made the most sense, especially as being the bread and butter, to really kick this off and do a series on Email Studio primarily and implementing Marketing Cloud for email. So over the course of the next few episodes, we're going to go through everything from email sending readiness, what are the first steps we need to take when we have the new Marketing Cloud Instance, how do we migrate data and content, IP warming, all those different elements that are really foundational to getting a good start on Email Studio and the email components within Marketing Cloud. So we'll have consultants and architects come on and talk about their experience, best practices, recommendations to their approach, to make sure that we're really understanding things and hopefully sharing some great knowledge of the platform from years of experience.

Cole Fisher: Yeah, and the reason this starts with email is not really just to coincidentally parallel the acquisition of Salesforce of ExactTarget, but really the way that acquisition played out really is illustrative of what the backbone of a digital marketing suite is and that is really with email. We see all these new channels and new opportunities and touchpoints throughout the digital life cycle of a customer and all these new and exciting opportunities to market to them. But even as of I think three or four months ago, the latest studies were still saying that about three quarters of consumers prefer email to be their main marketing channel. That's not due to a lack of change within the industry. That's not due to businesses refusing to evolve or become innovative. It's really the opposite of that. The innovation is occurring within emails. So these things like automations and journeys and how they integrate thoroughly with other touch points in other channels is really the next level of that evolution. But really it all starts with that backbone of email. So that's why we start with email as the main component when we consider implementation in the digital marketing suite in general.

Bobby Tichy: Yeah, for sure. If you think about it, the email is the cornerstone for that. We think about it as there's not order, shipping confirmations that are being sent to your Facebook inbox or things like that. The other element too, is Salesforce sees that as well. One of the are more recent acquisitions within the last year was a company called Rebel, which provides interactive email services within the email. So just as an example, Home Depot will build out surveys within an email, or they've also created checkout processes within an email. So it's not only the gold standard for messaging, but it's also continuing to grow at a great rate. So as we think about that and being the cornerstone for it, the other thing we have to keep in mind too, is just how we are personalizing and recommending and just creating a really good experience for consumers. Because as a consumer, I know a great digital marketing process or just a great experience is actually what I'm trying to say with a company. To give a perfect example is Wayfair, I think, has some of the best customer service I've seen. Anytime that we order anything from Wayfair, and my wife is a property developer, she develops Airbnbs. So as she starts ordering things, they provide her recommendations of," Do you want a business account?" As part of that business account, you actually get a dedicated person that you can communicate with and they'll price match things for you and a big portion, a huge communication channel for them is email. So whether it's a delayed order or a recommendation for something else, they're a great example of how people do it really well, but even still, there's so much room for improvement in a number of different companies that we work with, or just that we get communications from are still, have so much opportunity to improve where they are.

Cole Fisher: Yeah. That's a great example, that Wayfair example, you shared. It's foundational from email, but there's so many other touch points in so much advanced evolution and the way they're communicating with their customers. I haven't shopped a lot on Wayfair myself. A lot of people I know do, but it's just absurd how well- targeted they are, how they hit the touch points at the right time with the right message, how it's all just dynamically done. I'm not saying that because they're a customer of ours or anything like that, they're not for the record. It's just somebody whose marketing you can appreciate. That's the thing that a lot of times we have this misconception that it takes a really, just a marketing mindset or somebody with an MBA or dozens of years of marketing experience to really understand what's good marketing. But the fact of the matter is we are all expert consumers. We all know where friction lies within the buying process. We all understand those pain points in the customer life cycle, because we go through them. So when I've just purchased a product and I had to open up a ticket, a service ticket because I've had a terrible experience, and then I'm still receiving emails for upsell and cross- sell opportunities, or other messages trying to sell to me and ads being bombarded. This is a terrible experience for me. Why do I want more products from you after I'm already right now a opening a service ticket?

Bobby Tichy: Right.

Cole Fisher: So these are the kinds of things that just happen every day. These are everyday consumer experiences that we know are bad, but we just deal with on a day- to- day basis because it's just commonplace.

Bobby Tichy: That's really what we're hoping to help share and shed light on as we go throughout this podcast is what are functional and technical elements of Marketing Cloud that people can implement or consult or architect that can help improve that consumer experience or help improve that employee experience, which is another big element that, as marketers, people really need to think about of how we're retaining and attracting employees as well. So we will definitely have sessions and times where we get way deep in the weeds and we look forward to that because that's really where the solutions come to life and we really put the pen to paper. So the other thing we're going to do at the end of every podcast is a session or category called, Completely Unrelated. So this is where Cole and I will just talk about something that's just on our minds, or it could be related to technology and marketing, or it could be completely off base. The one I was thinking of, and this is related to technology, was around Slack and plug to a company called The Morning Brew. They send out great email newsletters at the beginning of every day, and it's great, witty, comedic writing about business. So it gives you an update of what's going on, what happened the previous day in a very light way, instead of the more serious tone that you might get from other other outlets. So, again, that's The Morning Brew and a huge fan of theirs, and in one of their recent emails, they were talking about Slack and how it kills productivity. Slack, for those of you who don't know, is an instant messenger service that companies use to communicate internally and externally as well with customers or partners, things of that nature. So the thought is that all these notifications coming up, people pinging you all the time with questions or conversation or just things that are completely unrelated, no pun intended there, I'm being completely unrelated. But so I actually just implemented, we were just talking about this before we started talking of, I'm going to check Slack three times a day, in the morning, around lunchtime, and then right before I sign off for the day in the early evening, and I'm really going to try to hold to that. So that way I'm really trying to be as productive as possible and I'm just interested to see how it works.

Cole Fisher: Part of me thinks you're just telling me that so that you can use an excuse to not return my Slack messages.

Bobby Tichy: Do I ever return your Slack messages anyway?

Cole Fisher: This explains it. At least now it's not as obvious.

Bobby Tichy: Cole is the worst Slack messenger in the world.

Cole Fisher: I send wonderful gifs. I don't know what you're talking about, but no, there's something to that. This was in the same study that said that Slack and the open office space were detrimental to productivity. I remember, prior to working at Salesforce, I was actually in an office that commonly had wide open office space, but they used to pump white noise in. They said that made a significant impact on productivity just because it would drown out the noise all around you, but still even then, and I was working 80, 90 plus hours a week at the time. It was just so difficult to get things done. People would just roll up to your desk. inaudible everybody's on their little rolly office chairs. So they don't even have to stand up anymore to go and pester everyone else. So they would just roll right up to your desk and ask questions. It got to the point where I would actually have to book a conference room or go hide to actually get the work done that needed to be done because sometimes it's a distraction and it's not intended to be because it's certainly equipping others to get work done more effectively. But a lot of the work is not getting done. Even when I have Slack open, I always have it open on the side there, even when I'm snoozing it or I'm in the meeting, and I have the notifications muted, I can see them racking up, or I can even sometimes hear them coming in, the notifications. Even that is ominous sidebar looming over my head of what I need to respond to is impacting my attention, my focus right now and what I can get done.

Bobby Tichy: For sure. Yeah. It's one of those things where technology is great and it helps us in a number of different areas and obviously provides a living for us. But at the same time, how much is too much? It was interesting. We were just talking with one of our customers who's in the financial services industry and they had to get a request access just to be able to go to Facebook on their company laptop. This is someone in marketing who needs to run campaigns out of Facebook. My first thought was, it's got to be productivity related. He mentioned it was more governance, data compliance...

Cole Fisher: Yeah, security, yeah.

Bobby Tichy: ...security reasons. Yeah. But I think a small part of me still believes it's probably related to productivity.

Cole Fisher: It's got to be, I mean, I imagine it is difficult to really weigh the output, have solid metrics of what productivity is in some of these workplaces. But I mean, if you just looked at the amount of time spent on Facebook that are not spent building your ad campaigns and whatnot, I got to say most of it's not getting a lot of work done.

Bobby Tichy: Yeah, that's true. What do you have for Completely Unrelated?

Cole Fisher: I would've gone open office space. That's entirely unrelated to the concept we're talking about, but...

Bobby Tichy: Well, what's funny, completely unrelated to any of this, is for those of who you don't know, Cole always matches his shirts, the color of his shirts and the color of his socks. So right now, just to paint this picture, Cole is wearing a pink shirt and pink socks.

Cole Fisher: He's not lying. I think I'm actually quite proud of it. I'm looking down at my socks as if anybody else can see them. I'm quite proud of it. I actually saw a study, totally unrelated now, that said that people who wear eccentric socks generally are more high functioning according to other studies. So they took a study of who was wearing relatively eccentric socks, I don't know really how they define that, versus non- eccentric socks. Then they looked at their functional capabilities, like how they were multitasking and things like that. Apparently, wearing goofy socks and makes one smarter. Of course, it's more of a correlation, not causation thing, but I found that really weird because I struggled to really accept that. I would like to think that about myself, but the fact of matter is there's also this, what they call ego depletion, which is really, I don't really like the term because it sounds like it's egotistical, like it's self- involved or something like that. But what ego depletion really means is our ability to function at a certain level for long periods of time and so like when people cheat on their diets and things like that, or when they said they weren't going to have a drink this week, and then usually it's later on. So it's like late at night, it's where other interferences have worn down on somebody throughout the day and thus depleted their ability to resist temptation or to stick to a regimen or things like that.

Bobby Tichy: Yeah.

Cole Fisher: So there's a lot of studies around our ability to make decisions and how well we make them and the quantity at which we can make those. So that's why they say people like Steve Jobs would wear just a black mock turtleneck and jeans every day is because he didn't want to have to expend decision- making energy on picking out something as trivial as what you're going to wear that day.

Bobby Tichy: Sure.

Cole Fisher: So, theoretically, if you save that energy for making larger strategic decisions throughout the day, then you'll be more impactful. But then again, that flies right in the face of the study that said that eccentric socks alludes to some sort of inaudible high functioning.

Bobby Tichy: Well, I'm wearing Seinfeld socks. So I don't know what that says about me, but we're also in the background, Seinfeld's on mute on the TV. So overall, we obviously know that we're of great taste because Seinfeld's the best show ever made.

Cole Fisher: Fantastic.

Bobby Tichy: So, but anyway, well thank you for listening. Stay tuned for next week as we start the series of how to implement a marketing cloud for email and really diving into the details. See you next time.