Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an incredibly powerful marketing and branding tool utilized by companies to effectively interact with their customers. Its out-of-the-box features like journey builder and email studio help engage customers through various channels, track customers across multiple touchpoints, automate tasks to drive your team’s productivity, and more. While exciting, Marketing Cloud can also feel overwhelming. It is hard to know where to start, in what order, etc.

At AppShark we want to bring full transparency into getting your company’s instance up and running efficiently. In doing so we have laid out a guideline for getting your marketing cloud account off the ground in 30 days. The first blog of this three-part series will cover the basics- getting your instance configured and tailored to your specific business needs. 

There are 5 main components that are crucial in setting up your Salesforce Marketing Cloud instance which are: 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Guide

Also Read: How we Implemented Sales & Marketing Cloud for a legacy brand 

1. Basic User Setup

This component of the Marketing Cloud setup involves deciding who are your company’s key Marketing Cloud players and what kind of roles/ permissions you want to assign. There are an infinite number of users your instance can have and five Marketing Cloud roles to choose from. Once your users have been created, we need to assign them specific roles. Per best practices, it is best to assign roles accurately and not to give too much allowance to too many of your users. It is best to align marketing cloud roles as closely as possible with the user’s job function.

2. Managing Security & Company Settings 

The next step in the marketing cloud setup is configuring company and security settings as per your requirements. First, ensure the information listed about your company is correct under the Account Settings tab. If necessary, make any changes including time zone, company address, Headers, Footers, etc. Next, looking at security settings you want to ensure everything is customized for your liking. Salesforce automatically sets security settings per best practices, but these can be edited to your preferences. Notable security settings in this include session timeout, minimum password lengths, invalid logins before the lockout, identity verification, etc. 

3. Prerequisites for Email Studio

This category of Marketing Cloud setup is about ensuring your Email Studio configurations are made so that when it comes time to start using the module, the foundation is laid. Two of the most important features to set up for an email studio are sender profiles and delivery profiles. Sender profiles include the name and email of a specific person you want to send emails from. This can make email sends feel personalized and tailored since they are emailed directly from a person. Delivery profiles specify the delivery information for a message and is selected when you create a send classification. Once a sender and delivery profile are created, you can create a send classification that includes those two profiles as well as a CAN-SPAM classification. The last step in Email Studio prerequisites includes SAP configuration, if applicable. This account branding tool includes private domain, account branding, dedicated IP, and reply mail management. This is an optional package that Salesforce suggests for specific company needs, including the volume of emails, sends, so it is important to speak with your Salesforce AE if this package is the right fit for you. If you do end up using SAP configuration, keep in mind it can take some time so be sure to get started in this step as quickly as possible. 

4. Profile Management 

Configuring profile management primarily involves the creation of profile attributes as per the requirement of your company. Your company should have a feel ahead of time about what kind of information you are interested in capturing from your subscribers. Standard profile attributes would be first name, last name, email, etc. but any attribute that is relevant to your company can be included! 

5. Organizing Email Sends

The last section in the first part setup series includes managing opt-ins for your email account through publication and suppression lists. Publication lists are a great way to manage how your subscribers receive different categories of email. For example, you can have a list specific to your weekly email blasts or your monthly newsletter, the possibilities are endless. Suppression lists on the other hand are lists of subscribers that you do not want to send your communication. This can include guided sends, user-initiated sends, and triggered email sends. 

This concludes the first of a three-part Marketing Cloud setup series. The next blog will cover Email Studio, Journey Builder, and Reporting so stay tuned! 

About AppShark 

We are a Gold Level Salesforce Implementation and Product Development partner with a client satisfaction rate of 97% on AppExchange. Our team of Salesforce experts comes with a rare distinction of successfully executing more than 500 Salesforce projects right from Implementation, Customization to Integrating the CRM with third-party platforms of their choice.

Looking for help in setting up your Salesforce Marketing Cloud solution, reach out to us at sales@appshark.com or contact us at (214) 269-3461.