On-Demand Webinar: Marketing Cloud Demo

Holland Dotts: All right, I think we can go ahead and get started. First off, I wanna thank everybody who's joined us today. Title of this Webinar is Creating a Seamless Customer Experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. And today we're gonna to be looking at a real life solution that we've implemented for one of our partners in the consumer packaged goods vertical. 

First, we'll look at the Customer Facing Side, the experience. And then we're gonna to dive into the nuts and bolts of the technical side and how we were able to create a truly unique message using integration between Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud. 

So first off a little bit about myself. My name is Holland Dotts, I'm a Creative Director and Lead Marketing Automation Consultant at Mountain Point. My background is in Graphic Design and Front End Web Development. So a lot of HTML and CSS and a lot of Photoshop and Illustrator. Long ago, I used to work on Hand Coding Drupal and WordPress themes. And it's been really interesting to see the Web evolve over the years. It's been a little over four years now since I first got my start in the Salesforce ecosystem. First cut my teeth on Pardot and quickly became intrigued by the complexity of all the Salesforce Cloud applications and how they can all work together. And they're becoming such a huge part of the way businesses operate modern day. So I currently hold eight Salesforce certifications, which are a mix of Admin, Consultant and Specialist certs. Started with the marketing side as it was so closely tied to my previous Web experience. But now I'm really enjoying learning about how the other Clouds work together. So how Marketing sales service and communities can all work together to create that seamless customer experience. 

So a little bit about the Client today, they are a 90 year old manufacturer of luxury textiles. They have a wide variety of products for the homes such as bath towels, bedding, table linens. They operate both a B2B and B2C sales model. So, business to business and business direct to consumer. On the B2B side, they supply of big box retailers as well as high end hotels. Today, we're going to be looking at the B2C side. So primarily people that place orders through their eCommerce website. As far as Salesforce is concerned, those are treated as Person accounts. So if anybody has already worked with Integrating Marketing Clouds Sales Cloud. You know, it's just a little bit trickier than the standard lead and contact objects. Another important note about the client, they run their shop floor operations with a custom iOS Mobile App developed by Mountain Point. So they're using a lot of different Cloud Technologies, Rootstock for their Enterprise Resource Planning, Microsoft Dynamics for financials and so on. And all this data is exposed through the Salesforce platform, giving full transparency of data through all the different applications. So the challenge like a lot of businesses these days, there's been a big push to prioritize focus on the customer, and really work to create more personalized customer experiences. When we began with this initiative, there was meticulous, still relatively new to marketing Cloud. So I would say this was our first complex effort with regards to integration between Salesforce and Marketing Cloud. So our approach was to target a new feature that had been recently added to the eCommerce site. So this is a Custom Monogram feature. We're able to leverage those mobile app equipped shop floor workers in order to do this. So we're basically talking an already highly personalized product. And if you will, we're creating a personalized communication based on that. 

Okay, so I want to give you a little demo of the Front End or Customer Facing Side of this process. And then afterward, I'll show you the final Output. And we're going to circle back and then focus on the technical details of how this solution was put together. Okay, so the client is Matouk and here's their homepage. And I'm just gonna pause here for a minute and fill in the group a bit about how this came full circle. So I had been working with Matouk for about eight months and doing their initial Marketing Cloud setup. So migrating them off their previous Marketing Automation Platform, replacing all the previous functionality that they were used to And also starting to build out some of these more advanced features like personalized Journeys. In that time working with Matouk it was clear that their products were really really high-end, high-quality products, and I thought it would make an excellent gift for my mom. So I decided that I would get her a bathrobe on the Matouk.com. And I thought it would be great to add that custom Monogram feature too so we can navigate to robes here. And before adding the product to the cart, you see there's an “add a Monogram” checkbox. When you click that, it opens up a nice interactive interface. So I had the idea that I thought this was a clever one. I felt like she would really get a kick out of receiving a M-O-M bathrobe, Mom bathrobe. Probably more so than getting your actual initials on it. So that's, that's the approach I took. And you can see this interactive pop up that you're able to select from a number of different Monogram styles. You can choose whether it's a one, two or three letter Monogram. Choose from a number of different colors. And then, depending on the product, you can potentially choose different placement options as well. For the robe, it's just the one spot. So for my order, I chose the three-letter Monogram for M-O-M, select the style that I thought would work the best with those letters and apply that to the product.

And past that, it's all just basic, you know your standard cart, checkout. And once that's all set, I think we're all familiar with the typical process of ordering online. So first you're gonna receive your Order Confirmation Email. And then typically that's followed up with a Shipping Confirmation Email, including a Tracking Number and so on. But it's in between those two emails. We were able to add a really nice touch of personalization to the process. So here is the actual email that I received in my inbox after my order. And I just I really thought this was great. I mean, obviously I was involved in putting this together, so I was on the lookout for the email. But when I imagine a customer who's not expecting this, I would think they would really enjoy receiving this email and getting a sneak peek at their Custom Product. I can't really think of a more personalized email than a photo from the shop floor of your Custom Monogram Product, still in the Monogram Station. So, of course, the email has some links to videos and more information about Monogramming. And this is really a transactional email though as opposed to a marketing email as it's based solely on the ordering of that product. And it's not attempting to cross-sell or upsell, but instead, it just gives the customer a look at their custom product as soon as it's been produced. So, back to the presentation here.

Alright, so now let's look at the technical side of accomplishing this. So first off, I just wanted to give a high-level overview of the Technical Architecture involved with Matouk business operation. So, Spree is their eCommerce solution. They've got EDI for distributors, and all this flows into the Salesforce platform using Jitterbit as the Middleware. It's all exposed and accessible through Matouks custom Salesforce Mobile App. And using that app on a mobile device is part of the daily operation of many of their shop floor workers. So as far as a high-level overview of what was set up to accomplish this project. Orders placed on the eCommerce Site get passed down into the ERP and ultimately generate an Order Object Record within Salesforce. So again, we're using personal accounts for these B2C orders. And by using MC Connect, we're able to pull data from Salesforce into Marketing Cloud in order to use it for more personalized communications. 

Setting up Marketing Cloud Connect requires users on both Salesforce and Marketing Cloud side and for the sake of time, we won't really be looking at that on this Webinar, but it is well documented and I can provide links to resources in the description when the recording is posted. So what I do want to show you is a close look at some of the features that are available once MC Connect is set up, specifically the concept of synchronized objects.

So once you have MC Connect configured and Marketing Cloud is connected with the Salesforce platform, you have the ability to select Salesforce Objects and choose fields on those objects to pull data into the Marketing Cloud. Once in Marketing Cloud, that information is going to live in Data Extensions. So for Data Extensions, you can just you can think of as the Marketing Cloud Equivalent of a Salesforce Object. There's not a standard object model per se like there is in Salesforce. So things are highly configurable and they're all considered Data Extensions. So it's also worth noting that synchronized Salesforce objects are going to retain their Data Model Relationship from Salesforce. So it's not something that you have to recreate in Marketing Cloud. When you select them to sync they, they preserve their relationships. So once this data is pulled in from Salesforce and lives on Data Extension, it's available for use for things like Email Content or Decision Criteria. So whether or not a Contact enters a Journey, or even decision splits within the Journey, you can use them to deliver Dynamic Content. Number of things you can utilize this for once it's a Marketing Cloud. 

So let's look at my actual order within Matouk Salesforce.org. So you can see all the standard billing and shipping information areas. And we can move down to see ,the new section that we've created to keep all of the Monogram Journey Custom Fields together. So there's a checkbox we use as a trigger. And another one as a safety precaution completed box. We have a QR Code on here, file upload, some URL fields and I'll come I'll cover some of these in a little more detail as we look at the Journey Entry Criteria and Email Template. But essentially, we made customizations to the Standard Order option in Salesforce. And with the Marketing Cloud Connect setup, we had all the data flowing that we needed in order to create the email that I showed you earlier. So the way this all works is that there is a physical printout called the Traveler that stays with the product as it moves through the shop floor. And here's an example of the Traveler for my robe order. And you can see the QR Code. So when the shop floor worker at the Monogram station scans the badge with their device, it automatically brings up that particular Order Object Record in Salesforce. The worker is then able to upload the photo to the correct record. So once that is accomplished, we've got some additional automations put in place to solve for the issue of image resizing.

So I imagine all the marketers on the call are aware, the issues that you would run into with trying to use a full resolution image its content on HTML email. So that was one of the first things I considered when we're originally discussing this concept. I knew we were going to have to figure that out, Somehow and of course want to involve what want to make it as minimal of an effort as possible. So actually, my contact in Matouk was able to find a really great solution using Amazon Web services that completely automates this process. So when the full-size photo is uploaded to Salesforce, it automatically goes to AWS as well. And optimized versions become available through a standardized link structure. It actually handles the placement of the logo. So that it adds another touch of branding to the image as well. So again, optimally sized versions of the images of the uploaded image can be accessed through a Standardized Link Structure. So we were able to actually build this link based on a formula field and Salesforce, just because we knew we knew what the structure path was going to be. And we were able to use a formula to pull in the file name from the other field. So all these fields in this Monogram section are kind of working together to provide the information that we need in the Monogram Journey. 

So let's hop over to Marketing Cloud and take a look at how this information is being pulled in through the Marketing Cloud Connect setup. If you navigate to the audience builder and then under that contact builder, and select the data sources tab at the top of the page and select the synchronize tab, you're gonna see a card like this. Now this name that appears is actually the name of your API Connector User, that it's one of the users use for the integration when setting up MC Connect. So you want to click into this card to set up or update synchronize objects. So if MC Connect has just been set up, there won't be any Into the User Attributes right here. And when you click into the card, you won't see any object cards. So you would then just go to the Blue Setup Object button and it gives you the option to browse through all your Salesforce Objects. In order to decide what you would like to be synchronized with the Marketing Cloud. So for this particular project, because we are using person accounts, they're a little bit different, as they're a mix of the standard contact and the Account Object.

In order to create a Marketing Cloud Journey using person accounts, you're gonna want to sync both of those objects to bring over all the necessary fields. And then as you saw, within the Monogram Journey section of the order object we have a number of fields on the order object that we need to have synced as well. So this is a closer look at one of these, what one of these synchronized objects looks like when you click into it. This is the order object with each synchronizes object you're going to have a handful of required fields that must be synced to set up the object. But then you also have the option of adding any additional fields as well. And this is where you gonna find your custom fields that you've created. So you can see the group of optional fields pasted in there because I couldn't fit everything in one slide. And one thing I really wanted to note for everybody just because this was a really big gotcha along this process so hopefully I can save some folks some time and headache.

When setting up synchronized objects, it's really important to set filters. So the reason is because currently every record that is brought into Marketing Cloud through a synchronized object is treated as a contact under all contacts section. This didn't make sense to me at first, especially with some of these orders objects that there's not even spendable information flowing in. But that's how things are currently set up. So the big implication of this is that Marketing Cloud customers could potentially be charged every overage fees if the number of contacts exceeds what's stated in their original contract. So you can sync an object without any filters, but you might find that you've exceeded that limit by quite a bit. So that's definitely a very important detail to be aware of. And you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration by setting up good filters before syncing those objects rather than having to segment and delete those records after the fact.

Currently, you can only filter synchronize objects based on a simple Checkbox field. So in this instance, we have a Checkbox Trigger Set up to kick off the Journey. And we decided that would be a great filter to use for this order object. So here's a look at the Synchronized Account Object. And you can see we've got the person email field under Optional fields which is what we've what we're using for the Recipients Email address. And the other optional field there is used for another Journey that we have set up. And then we've got contact object synced as well. So you can see that we have some filters set up on these objects on accounts. We're using the Is Person Account Field, because we knew we wanted to bring in all person accounts, but not all standard accounts like the ones they're using for their B2B customers. 

Okay, so now let's look The Journey. This is an overview of the Journey, the Journey itself. So you can see the Journey is not very complicated at all actually. We only want the Journey to send one email and most of the complexity is more around the Entry Criteria and the way the email references the Data Extensions. So once the contact enters the Journey they are sent the email and there's another step that makes an update to a field. And it's that completed Checkbox So we'll look into that a little closer here shortly. But that's really it the Journey is done after that. So I wanted to show a closer look at some of these specifics like how we filter, who enters the Journey and how we added in that safety check to prevent accidental sending of duplicate Monogram emails. So this is a close look at the Entry Source, the Entry Criteria. So you'll see that a lot of it's similar to the filters that we have set up on those synchronized objects. As far as the Criteria, here's our main area down here that determines who enters the Journey. So we're looking to Account ID and that is not blank. I haven't been able to find out why WASSET is used. I'm not sure but that's what it means so you set that does not know when you're setting up the Criteria and that's how it looks in the overview. 

Alright, Count ID is not blank. And we want to make sure that the Monogram Journey Entry Trigger is checked or true. And also that the Monogram Journey completed Checkbox is not equal to true. So to tie that together that's the field update step that comes directly after the Journey email is sent. So if you think about this from the beginning when the order object is created, neither one of those boxes are selected. Once the photo is taken and uploaded to the record, Salesforce user checks the Monogram Entry Trigger Checkbox and saves the record and that's what kicks off the Journey. And once the Journey begins, the email is sent and as soon as the email is sent the Update Order Activity checks that Journey Monogram completed Checkbox which is again part of the Entry Criteria. So that's how we're preventing the chance of multiple sets there. And then there's one more component on the Entry Criteria that makes sure that an image has actually been uploaded. Because we definitely don't want to send this Monogram email with an empty image. So that covers our Entry Criteria section below that you'll see our Entry data. This means these data points are available for use by this Journey. So you can that can come in the form of email content or decision splits if this were more complex Journey, some of these fields are not currently being used, but we do have them included in case we want to create a new version of the Journey later that maybe uses the customer name for instance.

You can see the actual Monogram email that I received and that we're only using personalization to display the Monogram image, the Order Number and the Order Date. But we went ahead and laid the groundwork for including more information later if we want without having to reconfigure that Entry source. So now we can look at the actual Email Object within Content Builder. And you can see the Order Numbers here. So these personalization strings are how we reference the data on those Data Extensions that are being pulled into the odd synchronize objects. If you click into this Content Block, you will see what appears to be an empty image block. But when you click into that image you see the details come up around the side, you can see the Personalization String that's being used to reference the image URL formula field for from Salesforce that makes the image appear in the email. So skip back to the Journey Overview. So we covered the Entry Criteria here. Shows the Personalization Strings, pulling the values from the Data Extensions from our synchronized objects. And then we have the Update Order Activity Step. So this is how we're marking that Monogram Journey completed Checkbox once the email sent one to show you what, what that step looks like when you open it up in the Settings. So first, we need to Select our Object so we're selecting the Order Object and then your Action Section. If you decide, you decide if you want to create a new record or update an existing record or find an update. And then on the third step, that's where you're going to select your field. And you can set the value that you want to update that field with. So you can see here we've got the Monogram Journey completed field and we have that Checkbox set to True. And the final section just gives you a summary of your settings for this activity. So pretty straightforward as far as that Object Update Activity goes. I think this was nice detail to add in just as an additional safety precaution.

So I think that covers all the important aspects of how this particular Journey is working. Let's take a look at the Outcomes and the Value this provides. So first of all, you see a happy mom here with her new robe. She loved her gift, which of course is great. But I think the main consideration here is that Matouk has enhanced their customers’ experience with this feature. I think it's a really great concept and any customer who has ordered a custom Monogram, I think we'd be more than happy to receive this email and get a sneak peek at their custom product while it's still in production. I think this is a great way of bringing customers into the manufacturing process, which establishes more of a connection between the customer and the brand. And I think it also reinforces the feeling that the customer purchased a luxury product. I think I think this level of communication and an effort is really making a better connection with the client. In addition to enhancing the customer experience, we've also built out a framework to create more elaborate Journeys down the road.

With MC Connect, and these synchronized objects, the Connect, the connectivity is set up. So whether it's enhancing the Monogram Journey or creating a completely different Journey that makes use of Salesforce data we've we've already got the groundwork laid. So I think this was a big win with regards to improving customer experiences by making a concerted effort to communicate in a more personalized way. As a Consultant, I was really happy to be involved in this process and to bring this feature to life. And as a customer, I was really happy to actually received the email myself. So at this point, we can open things up for any questions. If you do have a question, please submit it through the chat. Also, just so our viewers are aware, we're fortunate to have Stuart Kiely joining us on the Webinar. Stuart is the VP of Digital Strategy, Matouk and he was my main point of contact in creating this Monogram Journey. Okay, great. So we do have a question. Stuart, I'm glad you're on here. I think this one is definitely best suited for you. So Tim would like to know, how difficult was it to implement this into the shop floor process.

Stuart Kiely: The process was actually really surprisingly pretty easy to implement in the shop floor. As Holland mentioned, we have iPod touches deployed throughout the manufacturing facility to handle all of our Work Order Routings and Bookings of labor and those types of things. And so by just including the QR Code on the work order, all we really had to do was train the operators how to, you know, scan the QR Code. Which actually encoded in the QR Code is a is a Deep Link. So it calls open the Salesforce 1 Mobile App and it calls it open focused on the actual Order Record itself. And so the Operator really all I have to do is scan the QR Code. It brings them into the Salesforce 1 Mobile App automatically focused on the Order Object. And then from there, they literally touch the file upload button, and gives the User the option to take a picture. We train them on, you know, the right kind of Aspect Ratio and the lighting and the angle to take the picture of these Monograms. But from there, it's as it's as easy as saving a picture you know, to a Salesforce Object through an iPhone or I'm sorry, an iPod Touch Mobile App. And that's about it. There was very, very little training involved at all.

Holland: Great. All right, thanks Stuart it looks like we have one more that I think is best suited for you as well. This one is from JoniSue. And she would like to know if you could elaborate more on the AWS solution used to resize the images.

Stuart: So in order to minimize actually eliminate any kind of need for a human to resize, you know, or use something like Photoshop to manipulate these images. We kind of pieced together an interesting automation with a couple of, well 1 App exchange partner called S-Link and then another service called imgix, so I'm sorry, I think it's called S3-Link. Yeah, S3-Links by company called Neilon Technologies if you just Google it, or maybe we can provide the link. So S3-Link basically makes any files or attachments from any object in Salesforce immediately accessible to an S3 Buckets. So in essence, we have it configured so that any attachment on this Salesforce order object gets automatically pushed up to an S3 Bucket. And that's important because we need that image to be readable from the outside world in an automated way. And you can't really do that, you know, using the native kind of file attachment object in Salesforce. So basically what happens is the operator takes the image from their iPod Touch, saves it within the Salesforce 1 Mobile App to the order object. As soon as it's uploaded, that file is then copied up to an S3 Bucket with a predictable file path. So the Order Number, and then the File Name kind of are exactly kind of how the URL is structured. So we have predictability and how to like recreate the URL pointing to an S3 Bucket where this image now resides. On top of that, we use a service called imgix I-M-G-I-X.com does really awesome Web-based Photo Processing Software which works in conjunction in conjunction with an S3 Bucket. So basically, then the configuration of imgix we're pointing to the our S3 Bucket, and it allows you to basically set parameters in the URL that do things like resize the image or add the watermark or crop it or add a filter or do anything literally just by sending different URL parameters. So the image is hosted on S3 Bucket. It's like the original image, it's, you know, 10 megabytes large or whatever. And just by way of sending URL parameters through imgix, you can actually generate a URL that has that references an image that, you know, is only whatever, 300 Pixels wide and has this watermark. And that now is pushed into Marketing Cloud so that we're sending an image that's optimized for email. And all this is done completely automated without any human interaction. So the two tools that we use is called S3 Link by Neil Neilon. If you just Google it, you'll find it and then imgix I-M-G-I-X.com is the service that we use to automate the processing of the images.

Holland: Perfect. Well, it looks like that's all the questions we have. I want to thank everybody who joined us today. Really appreciate you jumping in and filling some of those questions too. So I think we're good to go ahead and wrap things up now. If anyone would like to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn. Also, if your company is interested in working with a Salesforce implementation partner whether Marketing Cloud project or any other Salesforce many products, we have a very experienced team of consultants here at Mountain Point, so please don't hesitate to reach out if you would like to start a conversation. Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your time. And hope you found this helpful.