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Lake and Mountain
  • Emails & Forms, New Features

Building Better Form Flows with The New Agentforce Marketing Flow Template

Agentforce Marketing Form Flows can take time to add all of the elements needed, such as autoresponders, lead notifications, and whatnot. Let’s use a handy Marketing Cloud flow template to solve a few problems with one simple subflow!

Product Note: In previous blog posts, Agentforce Marketing has also been referred to or known as Marketing Cloud on Core and Marketing Cloud Next. This product may have also been referred to under its Edition names, Marketing Cloud Growth and Marketing Cloud Advanced.

What Problem Are We Solving?

When someone fills out a form we need a scaleable, reusable way to determine if the person filling out the form is an existing Lead and/or Contact in Salesforce. If you include an email component to your form flow, such as an autoresponse email, then the first node in your form flow must be a create element. This makes it arduous to check for existing records and send an autoresponder in the same flow. 

Form Triggered Flows

When creating a new form in Agentforce Marketing you may have received the error message below warning you that a form triggered flow must begin with a Create Record. 

Error message that warns you that a form triggered flow must begin with a Create Record.

This can be frustrating because sometimes you want to first check if there is an existing record that matches what was just entered in the form, then decide if you should create or update a record.

Now you can!

Introducing: Upsert a Record for a Person (Flow Template)

This handy flow template makes life easier. It is also the ONLY exception to the rule above about starting with a Create Element. You can also start your form flow with a subflow that uses the “Upsert a Record for a Person” template, which is very useful.

The main benefit of creating a subflow is that you can call the same subflow from multiple form flows, no reinventing the wheel needed to scale. This new flow will handle the following:

  • Check if a Contact exists > Update if found
  • If no Contact exists, check if a Lead exists > Update if found
  • If no Lead exists, create a new Lead

Optionally we can also add email alerts, add to campaign elements, and more. 

Let’s Build the Flow

  1. In the Marketing App, select the Flows tab
  2. Click New 
  3. In the search window, search for “Person”
  4. Select the template Upsert a Record for a Person
When building a flow you need to select the template "Upsert a Record for a Person."

Your flow should open to the following canvas layout.

This image shows what your flow should look like when you open it.

The flow is autolaunched because we’ll call it from another flow (our form triggered flow).

  1. Click Next
  2. Name the flow “Look for Existing Contact/Lead”
  3. Click Create

This flow will ingest data from your form triggered flow and return a recordId. For this to work, we need to first create the variables in the subflow so that we can send the necessary data. 

  1. Within the flow builder, select the Toolbox
    1. You should see three variables: company, lastName, recordId. These are the default variables because they’re technically all that’s required to create a record. You certainly will need more than this.

Important: when you add a new variable, like firstName, for example, you’ll need to make sure the checkbox for “Available for Input” is checked. This insures that any new variables you add will be able to accept the data from the form flow that this new flow is connected to. You’ll notice the three default variables already have that option checked.

This image shows that when you're in the flow builder, select the Toolbox and you'll see three variables: company, lastName, and recordld. These are the default variables.

Next we will create any necessary variables. Any data that your form is going to capture should be a variable for this flow to ingest. For example, firstName, phone, favoriteCandy, whatever!

  1. Within the Toolbox, select New Resource
  2. Select the Resource Type Variable
  3. Enter your API Name, well use email for our example
  4. Select your Data Type, this will typically be Text
  5. Select Done
This image shows that when creating a new resource you will see these prompts: resource type variable, API name, data type.
  1. Repeat for any additional variables 

Customize the Sub Flow

Now that the basic setup of the sub flow is done we can configure the elements to suit our needs.

  1. Start by selecting the Get Contact element.
    1. By default the template only looks for lastName to determine if a matching Contact exists. We’ll switch this out for a more reliable unique identifier, email address.
In this photo we see the "get records" section and when selecting "Get Contact" element it automatically looks for lastName but we want to change to email address.
  1. Select + Add Condition
  2. Enter the Record Field Email equals variable Email
When in "get records" this image shows how to make the Record Field Email equal the variable Email.
  1. Select the trash can icon next to the Last Name condition to remove it

Important: When mapping the fields remember your variables represent the inbound data from your form, the field represents the object’s fields in Salesforce.

5.  Once complete, you should be mapping (at least) the Email field with the email variable you created. 

2. Next selecting the Decision element. 

  1. The Decision element will determine if there is an existing Contact found. Name the element “Does Contact Exists?”.
  2. Under Outcomes, let’s name the first outcome “Yes”. 
  3. For the Yes outcome, your Resource should be the Contact ID from the Get Contact element. So if the Get Contact found a Contact, there will be a Contact ID present.
  4. Map the Get Contact > Contact ID with the Operator “Is Null” which should equal False.
Shows outcome details and mapping the Get Contact > Contact ID with the Operator “Is Null” which should equal False.

If a contact is found the Contact ID will not be null.

  1. For the default outcome, simply name it No. There is no criteria needed because either the new record is a contact or it’s not.

3. If it’s NOT a contact.

If your new record is not a Contact you’ll see by how the template is laid out, it will go down the right hand path and hit another set of checks to look for an existing Lead.

A. Configure your Get Lead node the same way you did with your Get Contact, mapping your Lead Email field with the email variable. This means it will look for any lead records that match that email address.

B. Configure the Decision element in the same way you did the Contact Decision element. You want to determine if it found a Lead ID from the Get Lead node above.

This shows outcome details and determines if it found a Lead ID from the Get Lead node.

Finally, we’re either creating or updating records.

On the left path, where a record will travel if a matching contact record is found, we’ll update the existing Contact with the details from our variables. Remember, the variables represent the data that the person entered into the form. Map the variables to the appropriate Contact fields to update the values.

Important: As of this writing, if a variable has a null value because the form field was optional, and the person did not fill in the field, that null value will overwrite the value on the contact record! For example, if your phone field is optional and a person doesn’t fill that out and their existing contact record does have a phone number, it will be overwritten with a null value and you will lose that data. If you would like to prevent this from happening, see Solution #2 of this blog post for a workaround. 

On the right path, records that are not existing contacts will travel to check for an existing Lead. If a Lead is found, you’ll configure the Update Lead node and map your lead fields with the variables.

If a lead is not found, you’ll create a new lead. Configure the Create Lead node, mapping your variables to the lead fields.

Very important last step for this flow:

For each update or create element at the end of the branches you must check the box for “Manually assign variables (advanced)” and store the variable in your recordId variable. If you don’t do this the flow won’t send the recordId back to your original form flow.

Setting field values for the lead. Make sure to check "Manually assign variables."

Once all the elements are configured and you’re sure that each exit point (create or update element) will store the recordId, you’re done with this flow and can save and activate. The flow must be activated before returning to your form flow.

Wait a minute, doesn’t the Create Records element include a check for matching records?

Yes, it does! That will work for your forms but you first need to know if the person filling out the form is a lead or contact. This subflow is the only way to first determine if the person filling out the form is an existing contact, lead or brand new. 

Let’s go back to our form flow

Now that we’re back in our original form triggered flow, we have much less work to do to create an effective way to check for existing records before we decide if we want to create a lead or contact, or update an existing record. 

When you start your form flow, instead of using a Create element, add your subflow.

  1. Delete the default “Create Lead” element that’s usually added
  2. Click the plus icon to add an element directly after your start
  3. Select the Interaction element “Subflow”
  4. One the right hand menu of flows, search for the flow you just created. You may have called it “Look for Existing Records” or something similar.
  5. Configuring the subflow node is important. You’ll see a toggle next to each variable you created in the subflow. This allows you to map your Form Fields directly to your variables in the subflow.
  6. Click the toggle and map all of the fields from your form.

Note: you do NOT need to map all of the fields, only the ones you want to use to create or update records in your subflow. You may include extra variables in your subflow to make it scaleable. For example, your subflow may include “favoriteColor” but you may not collect this data in all of your forms. That’s ok, you can toggle it on any of the forms you collect that data.

A workflow diagram with blocks for form submissions.

Using the recordId that was found in the subflow

What’s really nice about this subflow is that your form receives back a recordId for the record that was either found and updated, or the newly created record. There is no 24 hour wait. If you want to take additional steps in your form flow, like adding people to a campaign you’re going to need that recordId. 

Final thoughts

Creating and calling a subflow might seem intimidating to newer platform users, but if you take the time to configure it you will have an invaluable, reusable resource. In simplest terms you’re bypassing Data 360’s 24 hour wait period for checking a form submission for existing records and you’re receiving back (almost instantly) the recordId of the existing record or newly created record. This opens up all sorts of options in your form flow and makes them much easier to scale.

I also encourage you to have the subflow do as much work as possible. The more you have your subflow do, the less work your individual form flows need to do which means you’re up and running with new forms really quickly. For example, I recently set up a subflow that checks for existing records, adds the person to a campaign based on the UTM value in their form submission and sends the sales team an email alert, all within that subflow. 

One additional added benefit to the subflow strategy is that it’s far easier to deactivate, add-to and debug a regular flow. Form flows are notoriously fickle, so once activated, I like to leave them alone. But the subflow behaves similarly to any other admin flow in Salesforce that can be added to and edited as needed. (eh ahem, in the sandbox, of course). 
Special thanks to our friend, Francois Perret for his terrific article on the subject.

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Motorcycle riding in winter
  • New Features, Release Notes

Exciting Updates for Marketing Cloud Next for Winter ’26

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

Since Marketing Cloud Growth was introduced at the beginning of last year, more and more innovations with the platform have been coming out at a rapid pace by the team at Salesforce. The upcoming Winter 26’ release is no exception to this momentum. Note, the Winter ’26 updates will be available starting September 19th.

TL;DR – What’s the point, what do we love the most?

While the Winter 26’ release brings a ton of new features and enhancements, there are definitely some that stand out to us. Here’s a list of our favorites.

  1. Form fields can be set to “hidden” using a simple checkbox on the configuration screen. 
  2. Form fields can be given a default value, and in addition, you can automatically set that value with a URL parameter. No need for JavaScript!
  3. Form handlers for external website forms.
  4. Reusable content blocks available when creating emails. This release brings some solid enhancements to the Email Builder!
  5. Enhanced reports and dashboards.

The Email Builder, Content & Messaging

Reusable Content Blocks

No more reinventing the wheel each time you create a new email layout! Content Blocks are exactly what the name suggests, bits of content you’ll want to use on multiple email assets. For example, banners, specially formatted footers, terms & conditions text, buttons or any other regular content you use often. Or, any combination of this content. For example, a content block can be an image, accompanying text and a CTA button below it. You’ll find the “content block” option under Layout and can easily drag blocks onto the email canvas.  Content Blocks are stored in your Marketing Workspace along with your other content. 

In addition, you can ramp up your personalization by creating Content Blocks for different audiences and apply variation rules that serve personalized content to the right recipients.

A screenshot of Content Blocks being used in the Email Builder.

Email Templates

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement users will appreciate the addition of email templates! Email Template Campaigns allow your admins or campaign managers to create standardized, branded email campaigns that your marketers can simply use for their own marketing emails. No more cloning old assets. 

Content Builder Agent

With the new Content Builder Agent, users can draft, revise, or optimize content in Marketing Cloud. The new agent helps marketers create assets, like email body copy, subject lines, or SMS messages. Just like other Agents, you help guide the output by providing brand/company information. To get started, from Agent Builder, find and select the new Content Builder Agent template.

Data Sources for Personalization

Within emails, marketers can now use other data sources that feed merge fields, repeaters, and dynamic content. Instead of using a data graph, which is currently how emails are personalized, users can change the data source within the Data Source panel to select different sources for the personalization. 

UI Updates

Users will notice other small UI enhancements to the Email Builder. A few small changes to the names of buttons making the aforementioned personalization experience easier. Furthermore, you can update the Title, API Name, and Description of the email within the Builder instead of needing to click the Settings cog to access those fields. 

Salesforce has cited additional UX enhancements regarding email setup and configuration, including branded link management, DNS entry support, and display names, in addition to bug fixes, but details are limited right now.

Updated Deliverability Dashboard

The Deliverability Dashboard has been enhanced to provide deeper insights for your email campaigns. There are new filters available for “domain” so you can review results by recipient domain, useful when reviewing failure reasons.

A screenshot of a deliverability dashboard.

SMS & WhatsApp Enhancements

Additional countries are available for SMS marketing, but remember each of these countries has their own sender codes, compliance regulations, and multipliers. New regions include Hong Kong, Peru, and Singapore.  WhatsApp reports metrics got a boost and now include click rate and open rate on the Insights dashboard. You can also filter by Sender Display Name. WhatsApp also includes more interactive messaging options in flows, including location sharing, CTA buttons, carousel messages which can integrate with your real-time product catalog. These new features also enable you to trigger flows based on customer responses!

Campaign Creation and Analysis with Agentforce

You’re now able to customize the flow for drafting and creating campaigns and briefs. The underlying flow can be customized by an admin to accommodate business needs. For example, the flow can assign a campaign owner, send notifications to other users, or add business logic like approval steps. Now, your marketing team can simply ask Agentforce to draft a brief or a campaign and adjust as needed. For those marketers who have leaned into the AI capabilities, this is a nice enhancement. 

Marketers can also use Agentforce to see improved campaign performance insights. The Agentforce Action, “Generate Campaign Insights” retrieves performance metrics such as message opens, clicks, or unsubscribes, and generates a summary of key insights. Furthermore, your admin can customize this action in Flow Builder to focus on metrics that are most relevant to your users. These insights turn into action when you use the results to make campaign adjustments, like updating the subject line or changing the time between email sends.

Forms & Landing Pages

Form Field Enhancements

Hidden fields – (yay) are now available! Add fields that you want hidden, such as UTMs or Lead Source, and hide them simply by checking a box. Set a default value (another – yay) with two options: a static value (whatever text you want), or pull from a URL parameter! Can you tell, we’re super excited about these form enhancements?

A screenshot highlighting using the checkboxes to mark hidden fields on a form.

Did somebody say Form Handlers?

Yes, Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced now has form handlers, similar to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, and they are used to capture data from external website forms. You can use them to capture leads, cases, and other records, so they’re more flexible than the form handler that Account Engagement users are used to because the flow can be configured to create different record types, not just Prospects. The form handlers also include a built-in honeypot field for spam protection, custom redirect URLs for successful or failed submissions, and web tracking to monitor user engagement and form performance.

Personalize Landing Pages

You can now personalize your landing pages using merge fields to include a prospect’s name, company, or other data. In addition, you can set up a real-time data graph in Data Cloud. Similar to enhanced personalization in emails, users can select it from the Data Sources panel while editing the landing page.

Landing Page Templates

In addition to Email templates, you can now add landing page templates as well. The Landing Page Builder also includes additional support for HTML tags and elements. 

Other cool stuff

Push Notifications for your Mobile Apps

Engage with your customers using interactive push notifications on their mobile devices. The push types available are one media attachment, customized content, tap actions, Android-specific icons, and interactive buttons. The Carousel push type supports up to 6 swipeable cards, each with media, text, and individual tap actions.

When you add mobile app messaging channels to your campaigns, you’ll see aggregated metrics across all your different messages and campaigns. You can view metrics related to sends, deliveries, views, and interactions related to individual messages or entire campaigns.

Marketing Cloud Next in Sandboxes

You can now set up Marketing Cloud Next in your Sandbox. Create more complex flows and campaigns, test things out, and easily deploy them in production. This feature is available to both Growth and Advanced editions.

Smarter Identity Resolution Rulesets

Enhanced Identity Resolution Rulesets (IRR) help prevent duplicate records. In IRR setup, you’ll notice two additional match rules:

  • Lead to Contact—Prevents duplication when leads become contacts.
  • Device to Known—Matches web visitors to known profiles.

The original ruleset includes Normalized Email only, so if you already have this generated, you can manually edit the ruleset and add these new rules.

Multiple Scoring Models & Frequency Enhancements 

You can now create multiple scoring models (think Scoring Categories in MCAE), which allows you to further customize your scoring model for both People and Accounts. Additionally, you can adjust the frequency that the scoring rules run, saving you data credits on unnecessary processing.

A screenshot showing multiple scoring models.

Reporting and Insights

As reporting and insights are a must in every marketer’s day-to-day, the Salesforce team is focused on creating easier reporting and enhanced filters, and visualizations. We’re happy to see some nice enhancements in this release.

A screenshot of an Engagement Insights report.

Automated Winner Selection for Path Experiment

Path Experiment, available with Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition, allows Marketers to maximize engagement with their audience through testing. This feature allows marketers to test variations within marketing content, in channels, and even in cadence. With the Winter ‘26 release, Marketers can now  configure automated Path Selection directly within the Path Experiment element. This allows the path to pick a winner based on your selected performance metric, such as email clicks, registrations, or purchases. 

A screenshot of the Automated feature being selected for the Configure Path Selection in Path Experiment.

Business Units

Business Units are officially on their way to Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced. This feature is going to have a limited GA during the Winter ‘26 release, but the Product team is making strides to ensure Business Units work out of the box for Marketers. In this initial release, Marketers can associate data spaces to their automations and flows to ensure data is kept secure and separate.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the Winter 26’ release brings some really nice enhancements to Marketing Cloud Next, with a majority of these terrific features being for Growth and Advanced Edition. Marketers using Account Engagement and Engagement should continue to learn more about these new features, so that they can understand how they can consider applying them to their own campaigns and experiences. 

If you’re looking for guidance on how to navigate what’s next for your org with Marketing Cloud Growth/Advanced or Marketing Cloud Next, reach out to the Sercante team. Our experts can help you build a strategy and guide you through the next phase of your journey.

Understanding the Marketing Cloud Convergence Path

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Green illuminated Gangmun Sotdae Bridge at night stock
  • Data Management, New Features

How to Get Your Data AI-Ready: A Step-by-Step Guide for Marketers

As a marketer, you’re eager to use AI for better segmentation, smarter campaigns, or generative content. But a huge piece that can’t be ignored when you’re getting started with AI is getting your data AI-ready.

Up to 87% of AI projects never make it to production, and the top reason is poor data quality (Akaike Technologies, 2025). On the flipside, companies that invest in data quality see a 50% improvement in AI project success (Deloitte AI Institute, 2024).

Meaning your data matters now more than ever. But this isn’t about letting your data hold you back from innovation. It’s about getting a clear, actionable plan for how to improve your data while you get started with AI, so you’re setting yourself up for success and maximizing its value.

Why data quality can’t be an afterthought

AI is only as effective as your business strategy and your data. Data is at the heart of AI, and is used to learn from and gain insights that it uses to perform tasks.

Therefore, when data quality is an issue, that can mean:

  • Incorrect predictions and flawed insights
  • A hit to customer trust when personalization fails
  • Internal teams losing confidence in the tools and systems they’re using

Therefore, taking the time to prioritize your data is worth it to ensure AI is learning from and pulling in accurate insights to power your analytics, workflows, and customer experiences.

Common culprits of bad data (and how to spot them)

Most data issues fall into a few predictable categories. If you’ve ever built a Salesforce report and wondered, “Why does this feel off?”, one of these is probably the reason.

Duplicate records
Multiple versions of the same contact or lead, often with partial or conflicting information. Not only does this skew your reporting, it can lead to awkward missteps in customer communication.

Incomplete data
Records missing key fields like title, lead source, or industry. When critical information isn’t captured or required, it limits your ability to segment, personalize, or even report accurately.

Inaccurate data
Outdated job titles, incorrect email addresses, or other bad intel that throws off targeting and undermines trust.

Inconsistent formatting
Examples: “U.S.” vs. “United States” vs. “USA” in a country field. These inconsistencies might seem small, but they wreak havoc on reporting and automation.

Data silos
On average, companies are juggling data across 367 apps. That can create disconnects between your CRM, marketing automation platform, website, support tools, and more, meaning no single source of truth and missed opportunities for smarter AI use.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “I recognize all of these culprits in our org.” and are feeling overwhelmed, let’s take a deep breath. You don’t need to clean your entire data house in one day.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Get Your Data AI-Ready

You can work in manageable chunks. It all starts with framing the first AI use cases you want to get started with, because this will determine the data you need and thus prioritize where you’ll want to focus for optimizing your data.

Step 1: Identify your AI use cases

Think about: what do you actually want AI to help with? Look at your day-to-day. What’s repetitive and time-consuming? Do you find yourself taking a long time to create campaign briefs, segment audiences, or draft variations of copy to personalize communication?

Once you start creating your list of potential opportunities for AI, start to consider who is involved in the process, what is the goal that AI will help you achieve, and are there any dependencies around it?

As the Sercante team shared during their session, AI Roadmap: The Strategy for Driving Growth with AI, consider the level of effort involved with each use case and the impact on the people involved. You want to aim to prioritize your first use cases that have a relatively low level of effort and a lower impact on your people. This will enable easier pilots and experimentation, so you can see what the initial results are and then make tweaks or scale from there.

Once you know your top 1–2 use cases, you’ll have a clear view of what data will be needed.

Step 2: Perform a data audit

After you understand the data that will be needed, it’s time to audit that data and check for the common culprits. Are there any duplicates, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or just data that is missing? Check for the signs of dirty data across the key objects and fields that will need to be used for your AI use case.

Here is my go-to checklist for an audit that starts to get your data AI-ready:

  • Identify key data objects and fields
  • Define data quality metrics
  • Identify & categorize data issues
  • Document critical data sources and data points
  • Assess field usage
  • Review knowledge sources for accuracy and AI accessibility 
  • Review permissions – who can see what
  • Assign effort levels & quick wins 

Some tools that can help with this process are Data Quality Analysis Dashboards (find it on the AppExchange here), OrgCheck, and other third-party tools on the AppExchange that can assess for data quality and field usage.

Step 3: Establish data standards

Once you uncover the issues, you want to put processes and standards in place to prevent future messes. Documentation that has proven to be effective for teams is creating a data dictionary or a style guide.

Whichever you implement, the data documentation should:

  • Answer who is using this data and what this data is being used for
  • Establish clear rules based on business requirements
  • Define acceptable values, formats, and relationships
  • Foster alignment across teams around the data standards

All teams that are involved in using the data should have an understanding of what the proper usage is and how to maintain clean data now and in the future.

Step 4: Cleanse and normalize the data

Now the cleaning begins. Remember to approach this in manageable chunks. Focus on the data that is needed for your top AI use cases first. The actions you need to take for this step will be determined by what you uncovered in your data audit, but here is a general checklist that you can use as a guide:

  • Clean up / merge duplicates
  • Delete obsolete data
  • Correct missing values, errors, and inconsistencies
  • Perform mass updates
  • Leverage data cleaning tools or scripts
  • Update knowledge sources
  • Don’t forget to back up your data first!

Tools you can use to help with this process are native duplicate management tools or third-party ones on the AppExchange. There are also third-party tools on the AppExchange for data cleaning and data enrichment that I recommend checking out before diving into this step.

If during your data audit you discovered that silos and disparate systems are a huge issue, and you’re wondering if you’d be a good fit for a customer data platform (CDP) like Data Cloud, reach out to the Sercante team. We can help you navigate what to consider and create your strategy for how to approach the technology in a way that sets your team up for success.

For a preview of our approach to systems like Data Cloud, check out our session on demand, A No-Nonsense Guide to Launching Agentforce and Data Cloud.

Step 5: Build systems to prevent future issues

It seems like the work to clean your data is never done, however, you can do your due diligence to put systems and processes in place to prevent major issues in the future that would hinder your team from getting the full value out of AI.

Prevent bad data entry 

Where possible, use picklists to help standardize your data and restrict access to maintain data integrity. Make field requirements for records to be saved with helpful error messages to remind teams of your data standards.

Create data validations or automated updates. For example, setting up a Salesforce Flow that automatically checks the format of an email address when a new Lead is created.

Execute training and create enablement

Make sure that all teams involved with the data are educated on data entry best practices and the importance of data quality. Refer back to your data standards to reinforce the alignment among the teams.

Evaluate data integrations

Remember those data silos? If these continue, data issues will persist and cause your team to continue to do manual cleanup, which is what you’re trying to avoid. 

Look at the systems that are disconnected and see what integrations can be made to automatically keep data synced. This is also where a CDP may be considered.

Establish a regular data audit cadence

You want to prevent your database from reverting to the original state you found it in when you first started your data audit. Therefore, aside from putting these systems in place to prevent future data issues, you’ll also want to set a regular cadence for yourself to check your data for the common culprits to uncover any small issues before they turn into major ones.

Clean data means smarter, more effective AI-driven marketing

Getting your data AI-ready is a critical piece to getting the most value out of AI. It’s not about achieving perfection to the point where it gets in the way of getting started with AI. It’s about creating a foundation through manageable chunks that will enable the AI to effectively deliver for your team and your customers. 

Data quality is essential for any successful AI-driven marketing strategy, and by using this step-by-step guide, you can take practical, ownership-driven steps to collaborate with your Salesforce Administrator, sales, IT, and customer success teams to improve data readiness.

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  • Getting Started, Marketing Cloud, New Features

How to Use AI in Next Gen Marketing Cloud to Elevate Your Campaigns

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

If you’ve ever built a marketing campaign, you know the drill: after agreeing on your brief, you still need to draft emails, nail the design, run approvals, and put it all into motion. That process often takes weeks, or even longer. And while you and your team have your heads down in the mechanics, there’s less bandwidth for the personalization and creative thinking that truly builds connection with your audience and drives growth. Which is why leaning into your tech stack and using the latest solutions, such as Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced, to streamline the campaign creation process, so your team can be freed up to focus more on the human element, is critical to continue to scale and grow in this modern age.

Product experts and Marketing Champions, Erin Duncan and Heather Rinke led a webinar, Elevating Your Campaigns with Next Gen Marketing Cloud, to walk you through how to use Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced to streamline your campaign creation process. In their session, they dive into the platform and take you through step by step from prompt to flow to email creation and Path Experiment configuration. Watch the full webinar on-demand and get the highlights to start exploring how you can lean into the latest tech to scale your marketing efforts and create personalized, seamless cross-channel experiences that build deeper relationships with your audience.

Elevating Your Campaigns with Next Gen Marketing Cloud Watch On Demand

What is Next Gen Marketing Cloud?

Let’s take a step back and level set on what we mean by Next Gen Marketing Cloud. “Next Gen Marketing Cloud” refers to the latest Marketing Cloud platform, Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced. However, at Connections 2025, you may have also heard the term “Marketing Cloud Next”, this is an umbrella term for all of the latest Marketing Cloud offerings and refers to the combined functionality of features from Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced, Marketing Intelligence, Loyalty, and Salesforce Personalization.

Other terms that have been used are Marketing Cloud+ and Account Engagement+. This refers to using the combined features of Marketing Cloud Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced (Marketing Cloud+) and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced (Account Engagement+). 

Marketing Cloud Next is “a strategic reframe of marketing itself”. Its vision is to end “no-reply marketing” and help companies provide a better overall experience for their audience. The Venn diagram below illustrates how these product features work in conjunction with each other and the different product names that may be used when these products are used together.

A Venn Diagram of all the Marketing Cloud product names and how they relate to each other

Using AI to streamline campaign creation in Next Gen Marketing Cloud

Campaigns can take weeks for a marketing team to plan and launch. According to Email Vendor Selection, 35% of marketing teams take up to two weeks just for their email production process and 5% take over a month. Meaning the more that marketers can find ways to help streamline and fast-track the process, the better, which is where the AI features of Next Gen Marketing Cloud can help.

By folding AI into the campaign workflow—from brief to email draft to segmentation—it dramatically shortens campaign turnaround time. That means your team can spend more of that precious time dialing in personalization, tweaking messaging, and creating marketing that feels human—not just efficient.

Starting with a strong campaign prompt

To use the AI features in Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced, start by drafting your campaign. First select Draft with AI, then Create a Brief and provide your prompt, AI will draft your campaign brief in seconds. 

The campaign brief will include your campaign title, description, key messaging, and the target audience. Your campaign brief will only be as good as your prompt, which is why it’s important to make sure you include all the right details.

Best practices for prompts:

  • Be specific about audience, channel, timing, and tone.
  • Use clear, conversational language without unnecessary jargon.
  • Include parameters such as word count, required inclusions/exclusions, and target personas.

Example prompt:

“Create an email campaign inviting marketers who have engaged in the last 12 months to our ‘Elevate Your Campaigns with Next Gen Marketing Cloud’ webinar on July 10th at 1 PM ET. Highlight how attendees will learn to apply AI at each stage of campaign creation.”

Therefore, before you create your prompt, make sure you and your team are aligned on the overall strategy for the campaign so that you can provide a clear detailed prompt.

A GIF of a user walking through how to use the Draft with AI feature to use AI to create your campaign in Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced.

Watch the full Agentforce for Marketing demo

Editing your campaign emails in Next Gen Marketing Cloud

After you review and edit your campaign brief, click Next to view the emails and SMS messages that have been created based on your prompt and campaign brief. 

You can click into each message and edit the subject line, pre-header text, and the body paragraphs to ensure the messaging is exactly the way you want it. You can also provide feedback with a thumbs-up or thumbs down so the system can learn and grow each time it generates content. Again, depending on how well you specified your audience, tone, and channels in the prompt will determine how much editing and tweaking you’ll have to do.

Using Einstein Engagement Frequency to manage audience saturation

After fine-tuning your messages, configure your audience segment. An important piece of creating experiences that build meaningful connections with your audience is not over saturating them, which is where Einstein Engagement Frequency can help. 

Einstein Engagement Frequency helps ensure contacts receive the right amount of communication by analyzing their engagement to generate a personalized engagement frequency score and then classifying their engagement. The classifications are as follows

  • Saturated
  • Almost Saturated
  • On Target
  • Under Saturated

Excluding Saturated contacts helps to ensure that you’re not emailing or messaging your audience too much, and this Einstein feature makes sure the evaluation is done automatically, so you don’t have to spend time tracking this manually.

Testing with Path Experiment

Another way to elevate the campaign experience for your audience is to test different journey options and lean into what is resonating and driving the most engagement.

Path Experiment is available for Marketing Cloud Advanced and expands on traditional A/B testing by allowing up to 10 different paths within a single experiment. You can test variations in content, channels, or cadence to see what produces the strongest engagement.

For example, you could create two paths consisting of an email followed by a wait period and then an SMS message. In the second path, you can add as many variations as you would like, such as adding a testimonial quote to the email, making the wait period longer, or adding a discount code to the SMS message, and then see which path performs the best.

A screenshot of a path experiment in Next Gen Marketing Cloud showing two paths with an original email, 1-day wait period, and an SMS message on the left path with a revised email, a wait period of 1 week, and an SMS message with a discount on the right path.

Engaging your audience with SMS

Next Gen Marketing Cloud supports multiple SMS approaches:

  • Long Code SMS – cost-effective, supports international, suited for smaller sends.
  • Short Code SMS – faster sends for large audiences, higher provisioning cost, and longer provisioning time.
  • Conversational SMS – enables two-way communication using Flow automation or chatbots. Conversational SMS is available for Advanced Edition with the Digital Engagement add on.

This flexibility allows you to select the right SMS format for your organization depending on your needs and strategy. For further guidance on setup, read Erin Duncan’s article on SMS provisioning and Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced, it takes you through all the steps and considerations for success.

The path to start using Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced features

The platform you have now will determine what your next steps might look like to start diving into Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced.

Announced at Connections 2025, Marketing Cloud Engagement customers will get access to Marketing Cloud Growth/Advanced around Dreamforce (October 2025), more details around how and when customers can start diving in further with the platform is coming. Here are the requirements:

The best action to take now is to learn and build your strategy for how your team will start taking advantage of Next Gen Marketing Cloud features once you get access.

The announcement for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement customers getting access to Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced features came back in October 2024. Our experts led a session, Unlocking Next-Gen Marketing: How to Activate New Features Available for Account Engagement Customers, on all the capabilities that marketing teams can start tapping into with Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced. Watch On Demand. 

Here are the requirements to keep in mind:

Elevate your campaigns with Next Gen Marketing Cloud

The AI capabilities in Next Gen Marketing Cloud offer significant efficiency gains for campaign creation. By starting with a clear prompt, using audience saturation data to manage send frequency, testing multiple engagement paths, and incorporating multi-channel outreach, marketers can deliver more relevant, timely, and effective campaigns. Giving your audience personalized, seamless experiences that build deeper connections and ultimately drive growth for your business.

This technology is at our fingertips. It’s up to us to educate ourselves, know what it can do, and start exploring and using it to help us all do what we do best more efficiently and give our customers the engagements they’re expecting. But the path to navigating all of this can be challenging, so if you would like an expert guide to achieve success, reach out to the Sercante team.

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  • Marketing Cloud, New Features, Release Notes, Technology

Salesforce Summer ’25 Highlights: Marketing Cloud

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

The Summer ‘25 release for Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions is here, and it’s packed with updates designed to turbocharge your team’s efforts. Think of it as a toolbox upgrade: we’re talking AI-powered reporting, slick campaign automation, revamped content tools, and stronger consent tracking. Let’s dive into what’s new and how these features can make your work smoother and your customer experiences much more impactful.

Work Smarter with Einstein

With Summer ‘25 Einstein in Marketing Cloud takes a big leap forward, offering marketers real-time insights and more innovative automation options. If you ever wished you had more time to analyze engagement or fine-tune your campaigns, this update is for you!

New Einstein Predictive Features

New Data Cloud reports enable you to dive into Einstein Engagement Frequency (EEF) and Einstein Engagement Scoring (EES) without needing to export or manually assemble data. Marketers can now create reports directly in Data Cloud using the Email Engagement Frequency and Email Engagement Score objects. Whether you’re trying to reduce fatigue by adjusting send frequency or prioritize highly engaged audiences for your next campaign, these reports help you make data-backed decisions faster and with more confidence.

Automate Flows with Einstein

You can now automate journey paths based on predicted engagement using the new Einstein Decision element in Flow. By leveraging scores from Einstein Engagement Scoring and Engagement Frequency, marketers can direct contacts down the most effective path. For example, you can send fewer messages to at-risk audiences or prioritize highly engaged contacts for conversion. Once you create a supporting data graph, just drop the Einstein Decision element into your flow and configure conditions using your data graph’s engagement fields. It’s a powerful way to build smarter, more responsive campaigns that respect your customers’ engagement signals.

Build Data Graphs for Einstein Send Time Optimization

Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) is now more customizable thanks to updates to the underlying data model. After disabling and re-enabling STO in Einstein for Marketing Setup, you can build a custom data graph to personalize send time predictions based on your unique business data. This added flexibility lets you capture the signals that matter most to your audience, helping Einstein determine not just the best time to send, but the best time for your customers.

Use Agentforce to Get Scores for Record IDs

Agentforce users can now tap into deeper insights with the new “Get Score for Record ID” action. This feature retrieves engagement and fit scores for individual leads, contacts, and prospects, enabling marketers and sales representatives to prioritize follow-ups and personalize outreach based on real-time data. You’ll also get account-level scores, including overall and intent scores, for a more complete view of customer readiness. To get started, enable the action in the Agent Actions section of Agentforce within Salesforce Setup.

Campaign Creation Made Easy

This release introduces significant enhancements to how marketers create and manage campaigns in Marketing Cloud, providing greater flexibility and control with fewer clicks.

Explore Campaign Designer (Beta)

Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition is launching new Campaign Designer (beta) functionality, enabling you to generate multi-touch marketing briefs more quickly. All of which is powered by AI and your trusted customer data. This new functionality helps you plan campaigns that span multiple channels and moments, all grounded in the context of your existing data. When reviewing a draft brief, you can select an existing campaign to build from, and use AI to refine messaging and channel selection, making it easier to align teams, drive consistency, and launch with confidence.

Build Your Own Campaign

Looking to start from scratch? With the new “Build Your Own Campaign” option, marketers are no longer tied to quick-start templates. You can now select “Build Your Own: when creating a campaign, choose your flow type, and build as you go. Add message elements directly from the campaign record or dive into Flow Builder to design a more curated customer experience that is tailored to your goals, audiences, and data.

Edit Your Flow from the Campaign

Managing and updating your campaign flow is now easier and more seamless. If your flow includes five or fewer elements, you can add messages and wait steps directly from the campaign record without switching to Flow Builder. You can also configure key message details, like Einstein Send Time Optimization and tracking options, all within the same view, making it easier to keep everything aligned as your campaign evolves.

Streamlined Content Personalization

If content is the heart of your marketing strategy, this release gives you the tools to keep it beating stronger. From fine-tuned control over HTML and data sources to more innovative personalization powered by recommendations and dynamic elements, Summer ’25 is all about helping you create more meaningful, relevant content, without adding complexity to your workflow.

Gain Control of Your Email HTML

Gain complete control over your email design with the new HTML code view. You can now convert existing emails to HTML, make detailed structural or styling edits, and build fully customized, responsive emails all within the editor. Whether you’re troubleshooting, refining layouts, or adding advanced formatting, this feature gives marketers and developers the flexibility to go beyond drag-and-drop.

Review Your Updated Data Sources Tab

Working with dynamic content just got more intuitive. The updated Data Sources tab gives you better visibility and control over the data powering your emails. Now, instead of jumping between tools, you can add, update, and view all available data sources, including your default data graph or unified individual, directly within the email editor. This makes it easier to ensure your personalization is accurate and aligned before hitting publish.

Check Out Repeater for Email

Advanced Edition users can now take email relevance to the next level with Personalization Recommendations and the new Repeater for Email component. This feature lets you dynamically showcase recent purchases, popular products, or personalized content in a consistent card, list, or custom layout. Simply connect the repeater to a data source and utilize merge fields to display product names, images, descriptions, etc. This ensures that every message reflects what matters most to each recipient.

Personalize Links and Images in Every Email

You can now dynamically personalize images and buttons in your emails by using merge fields or dynamic URLs. This allows you to tailor visuals and calls-to-action for each audience segment, creating more relevant and engaging experiences across your campaigns.

Explore New Field Types for Forms

New form field types provide greater precision and flexibility when capturing data. You can now use Date, Date/Time, Time, Number, and Text Area (Long) fields to support more detailed, structured inputs—perfect for scheduling, time-sensitive actions, numerical data, and open-ended responses. The updated Long Text Area also features a larger input box with a draggable corner, providing users with a more seamless experience when submitting longer responses. Whether you’re collecting preferences, running surveys, or managing gated content, these enhancements make your forms smarter and more user-friendly.

Expand Your Brand Identity

The expanded Brand Identity field in Content Builder now gives you up to 1,000 characters to describe your brand’s voice, values, and unique positioning. This added detail helps Agentforce generate AI-powered content that’s more aligned with your brand’s style, whether you’re drafting emails, landing pages, or SMS messages. The result? More consistent, on-brand messaging with less manual editing.

Delete CMS Workspaces

Need to declutter your content library? Content admins can now delete outdated or unused CMS Workspaces to keep things organized. First, remove any sharing relationships and unpublish existing content. This cleanup option makes it easier to manage your content at scale and maintain a more streamlined workspace. (Note: the default Marketing Cloud workspace can’t be deleted.)

Simplify Consent Tracking and Compliance

Consent isn’t just a compliance checkbox, it’s a critical part of building trust with your audience. The Summer ’25 release introduces several updates that enable marketers to collect, manage, and format consent data more effectively across campaigns and systems.

Automate Consent Updates with Flow Actions

Consent management is now more flexible and automated. You can collect and update consent using the new Create Consent flow action in both event-triggered and Data Cloud–triggered flows. For example, when someone clicks a custom link, including a double opt-in email, you can automatically update their consent status to Opted Out or Subscribed, with no manual steps required. This update makes it easier to keep consent data current and automate compliance across your marketing programs.

Improved Consent Imports

Consent imports just got more accurate and easier to manage, especially for mobile messaging. You can now include a country code column when importing SMS or WhatsApp consent data, helping ensure that records are correctly classified by region. This is especially valuable for supporting country-specific compliance requirements. Additionally, updated phone consent formatting guidelines make it easier to standardize values during import, reducing errors and helping you maintain clean, reliable consent records across your messaging channels.

Move Faster with Smarter Marketing Automations

The Summer ’25 release introduces a set of powerful automation enhancements designed to streamline how marketers engage leads and manage campaign activity. These updates bring core actions, such as sending emails, tracking link clicks, and managing prospect lifecycles, closer to your day-to-day workflows, making it easier to move fast, stay organized, and respond to customer behavior in real-time.

Send Emails Directly from Lead and Contact List Views

You can now send marketing emails directly from any list view of Leads or Contacts. Simply click ‘Send Email’, select the ‘Marketing Email’ option, and follow the guided steps to build and send your message. Behind the scenes, Salesforce automatically creates the campaign, flow, and audience segment for you, making it easier than ever to launch quick follow-ups or targeted nurtures with minimal setup.

Attribute Clicks Beyond the Inbox

Looking to understand what happens after someone clicks through your email or ad? With Summer ’25, you can now track links to your external website and attribute that activity back to the source, whether it’s an ad, email, or other campaign asset. This provides you with deeper visibility into off-platform engagement, helping you connect the dots across the customer journey. If you set up external tracking before this release, you’ll need to update your Behavioral Events data stream to start using the enhanced tracking features.

Convert Prospects to Contacts

You can now convert qualified Prospects to Contacts in Marketing Cloud, either manually or by using automated Flows. This enhancement provides you with more control over how and when individuals progress through the sales cycle. Whether you’re ready to hand off a lead to Sales or building an automated nurture, this feature helps streamline the sales process, personalize communication, and drive higher conversion rates by associating each new contact with the correct account at the right time.

Move Faster with Smarter Marketing Automations

Every successful marketing campaign starts with a strong foundation, and that begins with how your platform is set up. In the Summer ’25 release, Marketing Cloud focuses on making setup and configuration simpler, faster, and more intuitive, so teams can spend less time managing infrastructure and more time launching impactful campaigns. Whether you’re provisioning channels, organizing data spaces, or fine-tuning identity resolution, these updates are designed to help you hit the ground running with confidence.

Unified Messaging Data Kit

Setting up messaging channels is now easier than ever. The Unified Messaging data kit installation and update process has been improved, making it faster and more intuitive to get started. Whether you’re enabling new channels or updating existing ones, the streamlined setup reduces manual steps, allowing you to focus on activating your messaging strategy, not troubleshooting the installation.

Improved SMS Provisioning Process

SMS setup is now more guided and error-proof. In Unified Messaging Setup, you’ll find clear, country-specific instructions for requesting SMS codes, registering brands, and provisioning campaigns. These updates help reduce confusion, minimize errors, and speed up approvals. If a request is rejected, you will receive a detailed explanation, allowing you to resolve issues and resubmit with confidence quickly.

Custom Data Spaces Support

New Marketing Cloud customers now have the option to set up a custom data space during initial configuration, bringing more structure and clarity to how marketing data is managed in Data Cloud. This update is beneficial for organizations managing multiple brands, teams, or product lines, as it offers enhanced data security, faster retrieval and processing, and improved overall data quality. Previously, all marketing data defaulted to a single space; however, with Summer ’25, segmentation and governance can begin on your terms, right from day one.

Identity Licenses Now Available

Marketing Cloud now supports Identity Licenses, giving you a more flexible way to add users to your marketing team without assigning full Salesforce licenses. Users with the Identity License can log in via SSO and access most Marketing Cloud features, including campaigns, segments, flows, and shared analytics reports, when granted the Marketing Cloud Manager permission set. This update makes it easier to scale access securely, while keeping centralized control over who can work in your instance. Note: Identity users will not have access to Marketing Cloud setup or Opportunity Influence features.

New Identity Resolution Rules

Salesforce now recommends adding two new custom rules to your Identity Resolution ruleset to enhance the matching and unification of customer records. These rules are designed to improve accuracy during the conversion process and help identify visitors to your tracked external websites. By refining how identities are resolved across systems, you strengthen your data foundation, supporting more personalized marketing and building greater trust with your audience.

The Summer ’25 release for Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions delivers exactly what modern marketing teams need: more speed, smarter automation, and greater personalization, all built on a stronger, more scalable foundation. From Einstein-powered insights and flexible campaign design to enhanced consent tracking and setup improvements, these updates are designed to help you move faster and create more meaningful experiences at every touchpoint.

Ready to see how these features can drive real results for your team? Reach out to the Sercante experts for a Marketing Cloud audit or consultation to assess your current setup and identify opportunities to leverage the latest capabilities. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to optimize what you already have, we’re here to help you make the most of Summer ’25.

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  • Automations, Emails & Forms, Marketing Cloud, New Features, Technology

Step-by-Step Guide: Creating Marketing Cloud on Core Form-Triggered Flows with Autoresponder Emails

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

Marketing Cloud on Core (aka Growth and Advanced Edition) offers simple out-of-the-box form-triggered flows that are great for lead generation and straightforward scenarios, but today we’re going to dive into something more complex! In this post, I’ll walk you through the process of building a flow that checks for existing contacts and leads before creating a new lead, creates consent records, and sends an autoresponder email. Let’s get started.

Setup Notes

All testing was conducted after the Spring ‘25 release in a demo org. The standard lead duplicate rule was active and configured to allow the creation of duplicate records with alerts.

OOTB Form-Triggered Flows

Before we begin customizing the out-of-the-box flow, it’s important to understand the capabilities and limitations of Form-Triggered Flows. This helps guide decisions concerning when customization is necessary.

OOTB Form-Triggered Flow without Lead Matching

This is the most basic flow and is what’s automatically generated when the Signup Form template is selected during the campaign creation process. No modifications were made to the flow, outside of configuring the “CreateConsent” element.

Test Results 

ScenarioResult
Submitted by new personNew Lead Created
Submitted by existing leadNew Lead Created
Submitted by existing contactNew Lead Created

Summary 

In all three test scenarios, a new lead record was created leading to duplicates in Salesforce. 

OOTB Form-Triggered Flow with Lead Matching

In this test, a very slight, but important, modification was made to the flow—the “Check for Matching Records” option was enabled in the “LeadCreation” element.

Test Results 

ScenarioResult
Submitted by new personNew Lead Created
Submitted by existing leadExisting Lead Updated
Submitted by existing contactNew Lead Created


Summary 

This small update made a significant improvement. The flow now prevents the creation of duplicate leads when an existing lead submits the form. However, a new lead record is still being created when an existing contact submits the form.

This occurs because flows are object-specific, and the OOTB flow only references the lead object. It lacks visibility into the contact object, so it creates a new lead if an existing lead is not found. In short, the flow is performing exactly as it’s designed to.

OOTB Form-Triggered Flows Summary

The OOTB Form-Triggered flows support simple use cases, but it’s important to be aware of the potential for duplicate record creation. These flows are intended as a starting point for marketers and should be customized to meet more specific requirements.

Form-Triggered Flows with Autoresponder Emails

Use Case

Your company just released its latest white paper, which is expected to have great appeal to potential and existing customers alike. The marketing team is posting the white paper on the website as a gated asset. In addition to redirecting users to a “Thank You” page, marketing also wants to send an autoresponder email. The autoresponder not only provides the recipient with easy access to the white paper should they want to view it again later but also serves as a way to validate the email address that was provided.

Why do we need to customize the OOTB flow?

Since the white paper will “appeal to potential and existing customers,” we know that the form will be submitted by new visitors, existing leads, and existing contacts. If we simply added a “Send Email Message” element to the OOTB flow, we could send the autoresponder email, but we would create new leads in Salesforce if an existing contact submitted the form.

The flow needs to be customized to check for existing contacts, in addition to existing leads, before creating a new lead and sending the autoresponder email.

The Finished Product

Before we walk through the build of the flow, let’s first take a look at the finished product. Then, we’ll review each element, discuss its function, and why it’s needed.

CreateProspect 

Function: Creates a new record on the prospect object for each form submission.
Reason: Flows using the “Send Email Message” element are required to have a “Create Records” element directly after the Start element. The “Create Records” element must create a record on the Contact, Lead, or Prospect object.

If we created records on the Lead object, we would be in the exact same situation as the OOTB flow: we would create duplicate leads when contacts submitted the form. If we created records on the Contact object, we would bypass the Lead object, and submissions from new visitors would be created as contacts.

The Prospect object was introduced as part of the Spring ‘25 release and is designed to keep unqualified prospects unassigned until they meet your organization’s agreed-upon lead requirements. We can satisfy the flow requirement by creating a record on this object without involving the sales team or triggering automations.

GetContacts 

Function: Retrieves all contacts who match the form submission based on the provided email address and last name.
Reason: Before we can check if a form submission is an existing contact, we must first give the flow visibility into contact records so that we have something to compare against in the “Decision” element.

Contact Match 

Function: This “Decision” element is used to check if the form submission is an existing contact. If a match is found, the existing contact record is updated. If a match is not found, the existing lead record is updated (if one is found), or a new lead record will be created.
Reason: Prevent the creation of duplicate leads when existing contacts submit the form.

UpdateContact 

Function: Update existing contact records based on data included in the form submission.

Reason: Update the contact record with the most current data.

LeadCreation 

Function: Create new lead records or update existing lead records based on data included in the form.

  • Important: Make sure “Check for Matching Records” is enabled. 

Reason: Create/update lead record with the most current data.

CreateConsent 

Function: Creates a consent record based on the contact point for the selected channel and subscription.
Reason: Consent records are required for sending promotional emails from Marketing Cloud on Core.

TransactionalEmail 

Function: Transactional emails are non-promotional, immediate, and automated communications sent in response to a user’s action or interaction.
Reason: In this use case, the transactional email is used to send the ungated link to the white paper for future reference. Transactional emails can be used as long as they contain no promotional elements.

DeleteProspect 

Function: Deletes the prospect record created by the first element.
Reason: This step is optional but recommended. Since a prospect record was created solely to satisfy the requirement of having a “Create Records” element first, deleting the record helps keep the org clean. If you are using the prospect record for purposes beyond fulfilling this requirement, you can skip this step.

Other Use Cases & Next Steps

This structure can be applied and adapted to other use cases where there is a need to send autoresponder emails to leads and contacts without creating duplicate records. Examples include flows that create tasks or campaign member records in addition to sending autoresponders. 

Flows might seem challenging at first, but marketers will love them once they gain more experience. The key takeaway is to get hands-on, test, and don’t hesitate to ask for help if needed. Personally, I can say that I received a lot of support from my friends at Sercante when I was starting out, and I still do today!

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