Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is here and its infrastructure represents a fundamental shift compared to Account Engagement. While Account Engagement is “near core,” Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is built on the Einstein 1 platform and leverages Data Cloud, Flow, and Einstein capabilities. This signals a shift in the skills that marketers will need in the future. But don’t worry, we’ve curated some resources to help you get a head start.
Is Marketing Cloud Account Engagement being retired?
Absolutely not. This question has come up in just about every social post that I’ve seen and has been addressed in detail in the blogs below by Andrea Tarrell and Erin Duncan, so we’re not going to dig too deeply into it here.
The short reason is that Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is a distinct offering geared toward small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). However, innovations and features from this product will make their way into Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, so there will be a need for marketers to evolve their skills.
- The Marketing Cloud That Broke the Internet (& 5 Key Takeaways)
- Announcing Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
What are these new skills that you keep mentioning?
After playing with Marketing Cloud Growth Edition a bit, three areas really stood out to me.
- Audiences are created using Data Cloud
- Assets are built with Experience Cloud
- Automations (including email series) are powered by Salesforce Flow
While Data Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Flow might sound a little scary, these represent great opportunities for Account Engagement pros to develop new skills. To make things even easier, Salesforce has provided excellent learning resources for all these topics in Trailhead. Let’s get started!
Data Cloud
Data Cloud is a dream come true for marketers. Imagine having all your customer data from different applications centralized in a single location and available when creating your marketing segments. Imagine no more as that’s exactly what Data Cloud delivers.
Marketers need a general understanding of the tool and key terminology. They will also need to be able to utilize Data Cloud to build segments.
Key Data Cloud Terms
- Data Stream: A data source ingested into Data Cloud. Examples include Salesforce CRM and Amazon S3 – and many more.
- Data Lake Object (DLO): A storage container for the data ingested into data streams.
- Data Model Object (DMO): A Data Cloud object created from data streams, insights, and other sources.
- Customer 360 Data Model: Data Cloud’s standard canonical data model. Data ingested into Data Cloud is mapped to DMOs found in the Customer 360 Data Model.
- Starter Data Bundles: A Salesforce-defined data stream that includes mapping to the Data Cloud DMO structure.
Here are some of the sources that can be used as data streams in Data Cloud
Recommended Trailhead Modules
- Data Cloud for Marketing Basics
- Segmentation and Activation
- Create a Data Stream in Data Cloud (I highly recommend this module to get hands-on experience with data cloud)
Here’s an example of how a segment focusing on Sales and Marketing titles based in the United States would look in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition.
Experience Cloud
Assets in Marketing Cloud Growth are built using Experience Cloud. The experience feels similar to the Account Engagement Lighting Builders, but the foundation is different and there are some cool upgrades. I’m a big fan of the campaign-based workflow, the ability to publish/unpublish forms, and the ease with which forms can be styled — without the need for CSS.
Marketing Cloud Growth Email Builder
Marketing Cloud Growth Form Builder
At this time, the best way to prepare for the asset-building experience in Marketing Cloud Growth is to get hands-on with the lightning builders in Account Engagement. If you have not yet enabled them in your org, take a moment to do so using this blog as a guide. You can still access and use the classic builder after the lighting builder is activated, so you are not locked into a single builder.
Recommended Trailhead Modules
- Set Up a Customer Site with Experience Cloud (while not directly related to the Marketing Cloud Growth builders, this is a fun project to learn about Experience Cloud.)
Salesforce Flow
Salesforce Flow is at the heart of Marketing Cloud Growth and represents a great learning opportunity for account engagement pros. Flow has historically been the solution of choice for Salesforce admins when creating declarative automations within Salesforce, but it’s now a marketing tool as well (and you’re going to love it).
Marketing Cloud Growth generates a pre-built flow when assets are created. These are an excellent starting point and can be customized to specify tracking (for emails), subscriptions, and wait step times (in minutes, hours, days, months, or a specific time of day). Branch logic can also be added to further customize the recipient journey and more features are on the roadmap for future releases.
Flow is one of the tools that is best learned by doing. Fortunately, there are plenty of great Trailhead modules, projects, and superbadges on this topic. If you learn better with the help of an instructor, our Salesforce Flow Basics For Marketers Workshop is for you!
Recommend Trailhead Modules
There are also a few posts on the Spot that will guide you, step-by-step, through creating flows that address common marketing needs. These are fun little projects that are highly relevant, so be sure to check them out. As always, practice in your sandbox or Trailhead org.
- How to Automatically Create Campaign Member Statuses in Salesforce
- How to Manage Salesforce Campaign Activation with a Simple Flow
Start building your Marketing Cloud Account Engagement skills for the future
The current release of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is not a replacement for Account Engagement, but it does give us a glimpse into the future. Many innovations and features from Marketing Cloud Growth Edition will make their way into Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, so it’s time to begin evolving your skills in preparation.
