Salesforce Marketing Cloud July 2020 Release: Your guide to all the important features – Part 2

This is part 2 of the article on Marketing Cloud July 2020 Release and in continuation with Part 1, which can be referred here. 

We have covered the following features in part 1 of the article:  

• Micro-level user Permissions in Journey Builder
• Transactional Send Email Journeys in Journey Builder
• Single Send SMS Journeys in Journey Builder
• Identifying and deleting a contact in Journey Builder
• Interactive Email forms to have pre-populated data 
• Multi-Factor authentication 
• Discontinuation of Use of Internet Explorer 11 for Marketing Cloud

We will cover the rest of the important features of the July 2020 release in this blog.

Einstein Send Time Optimization to increase push notifications engagements

With the latest release, marketers can apply the Send time optimization [STO] capabilities to the MobilePush feature. This capability will help marketers to assess the past engagement of the subscriber with MobilePush. The past engagement pattern is defined as the time & day at which the subscriber is most likely to open the push notification. This pattern is used for sending the push notifications at the appropriate time to gain maximum exposure from the subscriber.  

Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) dashboard will show the likelihood of notification to be opened. ETO activity can easily be located in the Journey builder module.

This action can be achieved by inserting an Einstein STO activity in the Journey builder canvas right before a Push Notification activity. Also, activation of Einstein STO for email as well as push notification can be achieved by visiting the Einstein section of the Setup.

Real-time Contacts details in the Journeys

Currently, it is not possible to view a contact‘s exact location in a Journey builder and hence marketers are unable to get the real-time status of the contact. With the advent of this new feature, in the  Journey Builder’s Einstein STO (Send Time Optimization) activity, marketers can view the contacts progression through the journey. 

This feature enables to view the contacts who are waiting to pass through activity or have passed through the activity on an hourly basis.  

This helps the marketers to analyse the counts for the last 30 days and this requires no configuration as it is available out of the box and can be seen by clicking on the respective activity.

Details of Einstein Messaging Insights Model

Einstein Messaging Insights model card provides details of how the model is used within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This will be helpful in understanding the factors involved in coming up with insights which include inputs to the model, its applications, and ethical considerations.   

Interactive Email Form to have pre-populated text blocks 

Interactive email forms are used to capture the subscriber data in a hassle-free manner. If Salesforce email specialists have the existing data of the subscriber, they can pre-populate the data and showcase it in the Interactive forms. 

This functionality will be really helpful in the scenarios where a subscriber needs to update their existing details. Subscriber will just have to update or reconfirm the details instead of typing the whole text. 

Values that can be added in the form of hard-coded values, a personalization string, or AMPscript.

Alert Manager Notifications 

Previously, for errors occurring due to the failed sends, marketing cloud would attempt to resend the email thrice and if it failed the third time, then support contacted the account administrator. Also, the Alert Manager would let admin enter emails to receive critical system alerts. 

With this release, emails can be sent to the nominated Admin for email send and triggered send errors. 

If there are errors due to system issue or limitation, the system will alert the nominated admins about the issue in Salesforce Email Studio, Automation Studio, or Journey Builder 

To add the nominated Administrators, marketers should add their details in Setup–>Setting–>Company 

New permission sets for Interaction Studio

Interaction studio, previously known as Evergage, is a Salesforce Marketing cloud real-time personalization and interaction management solution backed by AI capabilities. Interaction Studio helps marketers to gain a complete view of their subscribers. It can help marketers to inject real-time personalization based on the actions taken by the subscribers.

Permission related to interaction studio can be activated by visiting Setup within Salesforce Marketing Cloud. 

Wrap up

In this blog, we have covered six important Salesforce Marketing Cloud features from the upcoming Marketing Cloud July 2020 release. We hope these will help marketers to maximize the Salesforce Marketing Cloud usage.

For the complete list of Salesforce Marketing Cloud features of July 2020 release and their details, please refer to the link below.