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Salesforce Marketing Cloud (earlier known as ExactTarget) is a digital marketing automation and analytics software for email, mobile, social and online marketing. It is a very powerful yet a complex tool with many features, user benefits and hence a business subscribing that requires substantial investment. It will be a wasted effort, if one does not know how to setup, implement and use it.  Here are some thoughts that might help the beginners to make most of their investment in this tool.

1. Take help from a Salesforce Partner company
Although Salesforce offers free Developer Orgs for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, there could be gaps in required skills, experience possessed by the existing IT resources resulting in a prolonged and difficult learning curve. Taking help from a Salesforce Partner company that has required expertise/experience can help avoid errors. They know how to guide clients through every step, from strategy, implementation to successful execution.

2. Set realistic functionality goals.
Marketing Cloud is a complex solution made up of various features such as Journey Builder, Email Studio, Salesforce DMP, Social Studio, Advertising Studio and Mobile Studio. Implementing all of them at once can be a difficult task and would be expensive.Hence, it is advisable to identify which features to focus on first.

Starting with Journey Builder (that allows to easily and visually automate multiple marketing channels in a single place, such as email and SMS) for marketing automation is a very common choice for many businesses. Other features can be added later as required.

3. Set realistic time expectations
A business should understand that a marketing cloud implementation is necessarily a well-planned, well documented process which needs to be well-executed. It means that it can’t be rushed as it would lead to errors. It is also important to consider the time required to train the team that will use this tool.

4. Define target audience and gather their authentic data
A business should define its target audience for the marketing campaign to be executed. Accurate data of the target audience is essential to target effective online marketing campaigns. For this, identifying and collecting consistent data from authentic resources is required.

5. Use your existing knowledge and experience of previous campaigns
It can help to understand scope for improvement in the email drafts/information/content used in the past and understand what your target audience wants. This information can help to set achievable marketing goals.

6. Beware of IP warming
IP warming is the process of gradually increasing the volume of emails sent (starting with, say only 500 emails per day) with a dedicated IP address according to a predetermined schedule. One should monitor performance using bounce logs and return path platform to see how ISPs (Internet Service Providers) react. It helps to establish a reputation with them as a legitimate email sender and not as a spammer.

7. Establish a clear nomenclature and documentation process for the content
It is important to organize the folders and content within Marketing Cloud by using well defined and easy nomenclature.Initially, it may look like an unnecessary task, but as the content starts to pile up in an Org, naming conventions can prove to be extremely helpful.

Aress Software is a Salesforce Partner company with a team of Salesforce developers and administrators that can guide in your Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation. Please see https://www.cloudaress.com/Case-Studies to review some of the case studies of Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation projects we have delivered. Please write to me at amol.gavai@aress.com to know more.