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Product Note: Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced are editions of Marketing Cloud Next and have also been referred to as Agentforce Marketing.

Your marketing team just concluded a successful trade show, returning with over 2,500 new leads from booth scans that need to be imported. In this post, we’ll review the options for importing these trade show records into Marketing Cloud Next (aka Growth and Advanced) without creating duplicates and while adding the records to the correct Salesforce campaign.

Marketing Cloud Next – Import Options

The primary methods for importing records into Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced are File Import and the Data Import Wizard.

The Data Import Wizard is a more advanced import tool that supports multiple objects, including Custom Objects. The key benefits of the Data Import Wizard are the ability to set matching criteria (to prevent the creation of duplicates) and the ability to add members to Campaigns during the import.

In short, when choosing between the native import options, you can’t go wrong with the Data Import Wizard.

Importing with Data Import Wizard

1. Create an import template for use with all imports.
   • Be sure to include columns for campaign id and campaign member status.
   • Consider including a “Marketing Consent” field that can be used to selectively create consent records. 
   • Below is an example of my template using data from Mockaroo.

2. Format data into your import template.
3. Import contacts first.
   • From the Marketing App – Select the Contacts tab.
   • Click the “Import” button.
   • Select the “Import, Update, or Export” option.
   • Select Accounts and Contacts” and then the “Update existing records” option.
     • Match Contact by: Email
       • This will be used to find matching contacts to update.
     • Match Account by: Name and Site
       • This setting is used to update the Accounts the updated Contact, but will not create new Accounts because no new Contacts are being created.
     • Leave the “Update existing Account information” box unchecked.
       • This ensures that the import file does not overwrite any account data.

• Select the “Assign contacts to campaigns” option at the bottom of the page – if you would like to add contacts to a campaign.
• Upload the CSV file.
• Complete the field mappings.

• Review the import and click the “Start Import” button.
• This import will add existing contacts to the Salesforce specified Salesforce campaign. 

4. Update and Import leads.
   • Remove the contact records from the original import file.
     • This can be done by reviewing the Bulk Data Load Job detail and removing records that were updated in step 2.
   • From the Marketing App – Select the Leads tab.
   • Click the “Import” button.
   • Select the “Import, Update, or Export” option.
   • Select “Lead” and then the “Add new and update existing records” option.
     • Match Lead by: Email
     • Assign New Leads to this Source: Select the correct lead source
     • Assign All Leads Using this Assignment Rule: Optional
     • Assign leads to campaigns: Check

• Upload the CSV file.
• Complete the field mappings.

• Review the import and click the “Start Import” button.
• This import will update the existing leads and add them to the Salesforce specified Salesforce campaign. It will also create new leads and add them as well.

5. Review campaign members.
   • Once both imports are complete, review and confirm members in the Salesforce campaign.

Don’t Forget About the Consent Imports 

The steps above have successfully updated existing records (contact & leads), created new lead records, and also created/updated campaign member records. That’s a great start, but consent records are also needed to send messages to Unified Individuals from Marketing Cloud Next.

Consent records are channel and subscription specific. If you have 5 subscriptions and send emails and SMS messages, a total of 10 consent imports that need to be completed to opt subscribers into all. The process is straightforward and fast, but requires some extra work.

Consent Imports

• Format the consent import file for each subscription
  • The same file can be used for multiple imports – if the records should be added to all subscriptions.
  • The file must include the email address or phone number and consent date of the record.
  • Ensure the consent date field is formatted correctly.
    • Formatting Marketing Consent Import Files
• Select the “Consent” tab from the Marketing App.
  • Click the “+ Import” button.
• Select the channel, subscription, and consent status in the wizard.

• Click ‘Next’, upload the file and then complete the import.
• Repeat the process for all needed subscriptions across all needed channels.

Whew! That’s a Lot of Work!

1. Data loader does not have deduplication capabilities.
2. Data loader does not have the ability to create/update campaign member records when importing or updating records (contacts or leads).
   

Data Loader also does not address the need to do consent imports.

There is Another Way

Many of my clients attend a large number of trade shows, and our goal is to minimize work and automate where possible.

With this in mind, I developed another process using a custom object and flow. This requires some upfront work but will streamline the process and make things faster in the long run.

The logic of this process could also be adapted to use other tools like LeanData and TractionComplete. Both are designed to match new leads to existing contacts and leads before creating new ones. Additionally, they can both create and update Campaign Member records. Creation of consent records is a potential gap and would need to be tested.

Solution Breakdown

Here’s a summary of how the solution works.

1. Create a custom object for Marketing Imports.
   • Mine is creatively named “Marketing Import” (Data Loader can’t import in the “Prospect” object).
   • Include all fields from your import template as fields on the custom object.
2. Create a record-triggered flow that runs when a new record is created on a “Marketing Import” custom object.
   • The flow performs the following actions:
     • Updates existing contacts.
     • Updates existing leads.
     • Creates new leads.
     • Updates or creates campaign member records.
     • Creates consent records (for new leads).
3. A single file loaded into the “Marketing Import” object (using Data Loader or Datloader.io) triggers the flow and performs all the needed actions. 

Building the Flow

The flow performs three major functions and a bit of clean up on the backend. All functions are completed in separate paths to ensure they take place in the proper sequence and allow time for record creation.

• Path 1 (Run Immediately)
  • Checks for and updates existing contacts and leads. If a matching record is not found, a new lead is created.
  • Compares the contact and lead records to the existing campaign members. If a match is found, the campaign member status is updated. If a match is not found, a new campaign member with the proper campaign member status is created.

• Path 2 (Wait 2 Minutes)
  • Creates consent records. This is a very important step as consent is required to send emails from Marketing Cloud Next.
    • How to Create Marketing Cloud Consent Records with a Record-Triggered Flow

• Path 3 (Wait 5 Minutes)
  • Deletes records that were created on the “Marketing Import” object. The idea here is to not store a large amount of redundant data in Salesforce. Since lead records have been created for the newly imported records, this data is no longer needed.

Complete Flow

Consent Records 

Consent records are a tricky issue. 

If you choose to automatically create consent records, I recommend including a “Marketing Consent” field in your import file. This field will indicate the consent status for each record being imported.

My example flow uses this value to selectively create consent records for new leads upon creation. However, you have options:

• Option 1 – Include this step directly in your import flow.
• Option 2 – Create a separate record-triggered flow. This flow will create consent records when a new lead is created with a “Marketing Consent” value of “Yes/True”. Important: This flow will trigger anytime a new lead is created, not just during marketing imports.

It’s important to note that the neither option updates the consent records of existing leads and contacts. An additional Data Cloud-Triggered flow is required to manage those updates.

Develop and Implement an Import Plan

Importing records into Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced requires upfront planning and internal discussion. The process does not include the automatic matching process that Account Engagement users are accustomed to, necessitating careful data preparation. There are also additional considerations related to consent imports that must be discussed (be sure to include the legal team) and decisions related to who should have permission to import using Import Wizard or Data Loader, since imports will modify data in Salesforce. 

If you’d like support thinking through your data planning, preparation, and importing records into Marketing Cloud Next, reach out to the Sercante team.

Product Note: Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced are editions of Marketing Cloud Next and have also been referred to as Agentforce Marketing.

If you are an Account Engagement User, you’ve likely been hearing for months that Account Engagement Orgs can get free access to Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition with their current contract. There have been numerous webinars, blog posts, and speaking topics exploring the features and functionalities of Growth and Advanced, and encouraging you to get started, but we’ve all been missing one key element. It wasn’t until Sercante’s recent Dreamforce recap webinar that someone said, “The Implementation Guide is 53 pages long, how do we actually get started, and what is required to just test the platform?”

This question struck me as a no-brainer once someone said it out loud. Of course, 53 pages of implementation steps are overwhelming! This new platform is uncharted territory for a lot of Marketing users, so it totally makes sense that users feel a bit nervous and confused about where to start. So, let’s talk through the base implementation you need to just test out the platform and see if it is a good fit. 

Step 1: Data 360

Before you implement Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition, you need Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud). If your org doesn’t already have this tool, you have a couple of options:

1. Salesforce Foundations
   1. Foundations is a $0 SKU that allows you to “access the powerful AI capabilities of Agentforce and discover key features in Agentforce, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Data Cloud — all at no cost”. This SKU includes 250k credits for Data Cloud, more than enough to get started
2. Free Data Cloud SKU
   1. Salesforce also offers a free Data Cloud SKU to help orgs get started. This also includes 250k credits.

Once you have Data 360, set it up by going to Setup > Data Cloud Setup and select Get Started.

This will take 5-15 minutes to run, and your page should auto-refresh once complete. Next, select Assign Permissions. Assign your user both the Data Cloud Architect (fka Data Cloud Admin) and Marketing Cloud Admin permission sets.

Finally, back on the Data Cloud Setup page, select Connect an Org and install the Sales Cloud Standard Data Bundle. 

This is going to ensure Data 360 has access to all the Salesforce Objects you’ll need, we will deploy this Data Bundle in a bit. 

Step 2: Enable Marketing Cloud

Next, we are going to set up Marketing Cloud, navigate to Setup > Assistant Home. The Assistant Home page guides you through the required and recommended tasks as well as gives you an overview of where you are in the setup process. We’re going to jump around a bit, but make sure you come back to this page if you decide to fully deploy Growth or Advanced Edition later. 

Select Go to Basic Settings. The first four tasks should kick off and complete on their own, the only step you’ll need to do is select your data space. Most orgs will just have the “default” data space to work with, at least until the Business Unit feature is available (expected in Spring ‘26). Marketing Cloud will auto-enable once the data space is selected. If it does not, select Enable Marketing Cloud.

Step 3: Data Streams

Next, select Update within the “Install the Marketing Data Kits” section. This will take 5-10 minutes to finish running. Don’t worry if initially some of the data kits fail, just select Refresh or Retry to try them again. Once all the data kits have successfully been installed, we will go into Data 360 to deploy them.

First, we want to take care of the Sales Cloud Data Bundle we installed earlier.  

• Navigate to the App Manager >  Data Cloud > Data Streams
• Select New
• Select Salesforce CRM, then Next
• Select the Sales Standard Data Bundle

• Select Next, then Deploy

Next you’ll deploy the data kits. Use the instructions in the Manually Deploy the Updated Data Streams section here for guidance. You’ll need to do this about 5 or 6 times to ensure all the data kits are deployed.

Step 4: Identity Resolution

Now we’ll set up our Identity Resolution Ruleset. This step will create the Unified Individuals that Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced use (similar to how MCAE uses Prospects). Creating Unified Individuals and running Identity Resolution Rulesets uses Data 360 credits. How many credits depends on:

1. The number of records it is ingesting (likely just your Leads and Contacts, unless you have other data sources connected) 
2. How many rulesets you have per object (I recommend having just one for the Individual Object)
3. How often the ruleset runs

Back on our Setup > Basic Settings page, you should see a Generate Ruleset button in the “Configure Identity Resolution Rulesets” section. Select this and give the system a few minutes to run, a green banner should appear when complete. 

Your new Identity Resolution Ruleset should autopopulate in the Unified Individual Object dropdown. 

If you want to manually build an Identity Ruleset or build a Ruleset for Accounts (Advanced only and needed for Account Scoring), use this help article. 

Step 5: Add Additional Users

Ok we’re done with the highly technical stuff, now let’s add some users and get to the fun features! Your Growth and Advanced users will need a couple of different permissions depending on what they need to do in the system.

Permission Sets

To use Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced users will need either Marketing Cloud Admin or Marketing Cloud Manager. You can also set up your own permission set or even create an Identity License profile for users without an existing Salesforce license. 

If your users need to work with the Data 360 side of things, they will also need a Data 360 permission set. The comparison chart in this help article always helps me pick the right one.

Workspace Contributors

Next, add users as contributors to your “Content Workspace for Marketing Cloud”. This article outlines the steps. The available roles for contributors are:

• Content Admin: Manage users and sharing settings, create and publish all content in a CMS workspace, and assign a default brand to a marketing workspace.
• Content Manager: Create and publish all content in a CMS workspace and assign a default brand to a marketing workspace.
• Content Author: View, edit, and create all content in a CMS workspace. They can’t publish content.

Site Contributors

This is needed if you are going to work with Landing Pages during your testing. This article outlines the steps. The available roles are: 

• Experience Admin: These contributors can do just about everything in an assigned Experience Builder site. They can access Experience Builder, can manage contributors, and publish the site.
• Publisher: These contributors help you build and publish the assigned Experience Builder site. They can access Experience Builder, and they can publish the site. They can’t manage contributors. They have read-only access to the Experience Workspaces Administration | Contributors tab.
• Builder: These contributors help build the assigned Experience Builder site. They can access Experience Builder. They can’t publish the site or manage contributors. They have read-only access to the Experience Workspaces Administration | Contributors tab.
• Viewer: These contributors have read-only access to Experience Builder in an assigned site. They can’t publish the site or manage contributors. They have read-only access to the Experience Workspaces Administration | Contributors tab.

The remaining setup items depend on what you’d like to test out in Growth and Advanced. 

Try out AI Features

There are a lot of Agentforce and Einstein features you can enable within Growth and Advanced. Using these features does consume credits, but I wouldn’t let that stop you from testing and exploring their capabilities. Have a plan around who is testing and what they are testing, so you don’t duplicate work and credit usage. 

Enable Gen AI for Campaign and Content Creation

For the Generative AI features of Growth and Advanced, we will need to enable Einstein and add some topics to the default Agentforce Agent. 

1. Navigate to Setup > Einstein & Agentforce > Agentforce & Gen AI
2. Select Go to Einstein Setup
3. Toggle the switch for Turn on Einstein
4. Back on the Setup > Einstein & Agentforce > Agentforce & Gen AI page, select Go to Agent Studio
5. Toggle the switch for Agentforce to on
6. Wait for your screen to refresh or manually refresh
7. Toggle the switch for Enable the Agentforce (Default) Agent to on
8. Select the dropdown arrow next to your Agent and select Open in Builder
9. Deactivate Agent if already activated
10. Select the New dropdown
11. Select Add from Asset Library
12. Select the Content Creation and Marketing Cloud: Campaign Planning assets
    1. If you are an MCE user, you can also select Journey Decisioning
13. Select Finish
14. Select the dropdown arrow next to your new topics and select View Details
15. Select This Topic’s Actions
16. Ensure the actions outlined in the Enable Marketing-Specific Topics and Standard Actions in Agent Builder section are present. If they are not, use this article to manually add them
17. Once done, Activate your Agent

Note: Any users who need access to use these features will need the “Access Agentforce Default Agent” permission set.

Activate Einstein Segment Creation 

Einstein Segment Creation allows you to use natural language prompts to build segments within Data 360. Use this help article to enable Einstein Segment Creation. You will also likely want to enable:

• Approximate Segment Population
• Navigate the Attribute Library More Intuitively
• Segment Preview

Enable Additional Einstein Features

Einstein Send Time Optimization, Einstein Metrics Guard, Einstein Engagement Frequency, and Einstein Scoring are all just one click each to enable and all the instructions are consolidated in one help article.

Build and Personalize Assets

Enable Personalization to Test Dynamic Content

If you would like to test out Dynamic Content in Growth and Advanced, you will need to enable Personalization and configure your Data Graph. I recommend setting up your Data Graph first, Cate Godley wrote a really great blog post that will walk you through this process. Finally, use the Set Up Personalization steps here to complete the process. 

Configure a Brand

Setting up a Brand in Growth and Advanced will let you auto-style your Marketing Assets and update the branding within Marketing Assets en masse. Check out Ambre Juryea-Amole’s blog post on setting up a brand for guidance on using this feature. A couple of additional features have been added since Ambre wrote her post; we can now configure a Brand Identity and Tone, which will be used by Agentforce when generating content, and assign a default Brand to the CMS workspace. 

Dig Into Reports

Set up Marketing Performance

To dig into campaign metrics and content, install Marketing Performance using this help article. Once installed, you will have a Marketing Performance tab within the Marketing Cloud Growth/Advanced app where you can view campaign, channel, and content insights. 

You can also view an individual’s campaign Performance reports on the left side of the Campaign view. 

Note: Any users who need access to Marketing Performance reports will need the “Tableau Next Included App Business User” permission set.

Connect Analytics

Finally, install the Analytics packages for access to preconfigured dashboards and reports on your Marketing activities. This article walks you through everything you need to do to get Analytics up and running. 

What’s Next?

The above steps are enough to get you started, so you can test Growth and Advanced and determine if you want to use it alongside Account Engagement. Additional implementation steps will really depend on what you want to use Growth and Advanced for, but here are some likely paths forward. 

• Start sending emails
• Build and publish Landing Pages and Forms
• Set up SMS
• Track Activity on External Sites
• Customize and Publish Scoring

If you’d like help implementing or exploring Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced, reach out to the Sercante team!