In the era of intelligent Marketing with the proliferation of technology where modern consumers are offered the widest choice, Marketing Cloud is sometimes named a future-looking service, We continue to closely follow the developments and improvements to  Marketing Cloud and we can safely affirm that this product is becoming better and better. Everyone who has worked with Marketing Cloud for the last couple of years can confirm this. The January 2019 release was not an exception. Here is a hot review of the newest release and performance enhancement information for the Marketing Cloud Platform and the features, tools, and functionality that you will love and want to start implementing for your company or customer.

Content Builder January 2019 Release Notes

Create SMS and MobilePush Messages

We will start with good news – now we can create SMS and Push notification messages directly in the Marketing Cloud Content Builder. Also, Content Builder editor in Journey Builder can now be used to create and send messages. In order to do this, we need to drag the SMS or Push Notification activity to the canvas and click the New Message button. So, there is no need to create SMS messages in MobileConnect messages any more and then Push them in MobilePush. This one is a really convenient update.

You can find more details on how to create an SMS or Push Notification Message in Content Builder here:

https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_ceb_create_sms.htm&type=5#mc_ceb_create_sms

Maintain References in Dynamic Content Blocks

Just a reminder: we can use the Marketing Cloud Content Builder to create dynamic content in order to deliver targeted and more personalized messages to an audience. Dynamic content provides us with the possibility to define and use subscriber attributes or data extension attributes in developing content, making the information received by our customers even more relevant.

Each new and existing dynamic content block will have a new setting which will enable a choice either to reference rule-based content or to use a local copy. Marketing Cloud recommends that we maintain references to content instead of creating local copies, and we can reuse a dynamic content block. This will guarantee that content automatically stays up to date.

Deliver Personalized Messages Based on Weather Conditions

Marketing Cloud Content Builder contains a configurable content block Live Weather. There are no additional costs involved, but two Live Weather blocks count as one supermessage (a unit of customer experience than can be used as an email message, SMS message, MMS message, mobile push message, social mention, web impression, or landing page impression).

Messages will be personalized based on the subscriber’s local weather conditions with Live Weather Block. We can select a rule from a set of existing default rules or create our own custom rule. You can now define images to be displayed on open for each rule, but the conditions for that particular rule are to be met.

In Content Builder, we just need to drag the Live Weather block onto the email and choose the image to display once opened when the criteria for the rule are met.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Brand Tag Change

Starting from March 4, 2019, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud brand tag exacttarget.com will be changed to sfmc-content.com. The hosted public domain for published content will be changed accordingly.

IMPORTANT: To ensure that new Portfolio, Cloud Pages and Content Builder images display correctly in Marketing Cloud email and web content, companies which use Marketing Cloud content should whitelist the sfmc-content.com domain in network’s firewall.

Journey Builder January 2019 Release Notes

Create Emails in Journey Builder

In the October 2018 release, we had an option to make edit and preview emails while further using them in journeys. Marketing Cloud did even more. In this release it gives us the possibility to create new emails and we don’t even need to leave Journey Builder any more. No more switching to the Content Builder and content creation as all tasks (write, edit, preview, and test emails) are available in one place.

We just have to drag the Email activity into Journey, open it for configuration and click the “New Message” button to initiate the Create Email flow:

New Google Analytics 360 and Salesforce DMP Audience Entry Sources

Marketing Cloud added one more entry source to Journey. After this release we can use audiences created in Google Analytics 360 and Salesforce DMP and add them as a data source in our journeys. Also, we can use contact data in the filtering to better target our messages.
https://corevalue.net/production/
This feature will be available to all customers who have the Google Analytics 360 or DMP integrations enabled on their Marketing Cloud account.

SMS and Push Notification Performance Metrics

After this release, we can сlick a Send SMS or Send Push activity in a running or stopped journey and review performance of the SMS and push notifications. We don’t need to open Mobile Studio for that, because we have an option to review all these metrics on the same interface where we created the activity.

Advertising Studio January 2019 Release Notes

Integrate Pinterest into the Customer Journey with Advertising Studio

Advertising studio is an important part of Marketing Сloud, which helps us integrate our digital ads with marketing and CRM data. This can help us reach our customers in a much more precise way, find new perspectives, and re-engage inactive customers on the traveler’s journey. We can create the whole variety of multi-channel campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and mobile.

Starting from January 2019, Marketing Сloud will release one more, now pretty hot, media resource fitting our goals – Pinterest. Being one of the top social media resources for sharing vizuals, it offers every capability for marketing efforts and ads promotions:

Contact Builder January 2019 Release Notes

Disable Contact Events in Contacts Configuration

After this release, Contact Events in Contact Builder will be hidden by default but we can enable the feature if necessary: in Contact Builder we should opt for Contacts Configuration and in the Contact Events section click Enabled.

However, Marketing Cloud claims that this feature is scheduled for retirement and it does not affect Journey Builder events. Instead, we should use a filter or query activities in Automation Studio.

View Contact Delete Requests in the Analytics Dashboard or via REST API Resources

As you remember, in last releases Salesforce offered a feature that permit users to delete contact information from the Marketing Cloud account. After this release, in addition to that feature, we will have the option for a simple review of the statuses of our contact delete requests.

It will help us monitor the requests’ progress through the contact delete process on our account, with data protection and privacy regulations.

Distributed Marketing January 2019 Release Notes

When corporate marketers create branded and cross-channel journeys in Marketing Cloud and they can share this content with different business departments (financial, sales, etc.) afterwards. Business users can view content, personalize it and send it directly from Sales, Service, Financial Services, or the Community Cloud. Distributed Marketing connects corporate marketing, employees, channel partners, and our brand to make corporate marketing more consistent and to deliver brand customer engagement seamlessly. This is a managed package, installed in your Sales, Service, Financial Services, or Community Cloud environments and is also a collection of content blocks, installed in the Marketing Cloud environment.

Use Business Units with Distributed Marketing

We can use Marketing Cloud business units for logical division of content by categories, brands, type of business or region. We can as well use Distributed Marketing to support unique groups of business users. After this release, we can also use sharing rules to manage business unit access per-user, or provide access to all distributed marketing business users to the content from any new business unit.

For instance, if a user is granted access to a campaign which uses journey for content delivery. Suppose that journey exists in a business unit that the user doesn’t have access to – as a result, the user can’t view or send content from that campaign. Similarly, users in Sales, Financial or Service Cloud can’t see Quick Send messages from business units they do not have access to.

Add Images and Text Blocks to Distributed Marketing Content

Salesforce added and presented one more option for better personalization of messages when sending emails in campaigns and Quick Sends – possibility to add image blocks to Marketing Cloud content. Adding contextual pieces and images, offers, pictures and other types of images or texts lets business users be more flexible in personalizing content and increase consumer engagement with targeted content:

To add an image to the Distributed Marketing Content we need to drag a Distributed Marketing image block onto the email templates, define a unique Selection Name, ALT text, and the first image in the block. We can define up to 12 images per block area:

In order to enable business users to enter the text, drag a Distributed Marketing text block onto an email template. Then we can modify, preview, and send the text block to the subscriber or distributed groups in their own Distributed Marketing experience. Moreover, we can now add areas for users to type their own text.

So, our users don’t need to login into Marketing Cloud. They can select a relevant message and add text or image, which is the most attractive for the customer from the Sales Cloud or Financial Services. It will look like this:

Email Studio January 2019 Release Notes

Record Count Column Is Now Field Count

Marketing Cloud made changes in the Contact Builder to improve performance making it more convenient. Now, Field Count column in the Email Studio Data Extensions grid will replace the Record Count field. The Record Count field will be available in the Property and Records tab.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Classic Content End of Support Plan Moved to 2020

Salesforce states that starting from 2020 the support for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud classic content in Email Studio will be stopped. It means that we can still edit and send existing Salesforce Classic emails, but we won’t be able to create new emails in the Marketing Cloud classic content. It’s not much of an issue though, as Marketing Cloud provides us with a great cross-channel content management tool – Content Builder.

Uploading Using a URL Is No Longer Available in the Enhanced Portfolio

The option to upload via the URL from the Enhanced Portfolio does not exist any more. That is in order to upload content, we should drag or browse for files.

Verification From Addresses during Domain Registration

From addresses which are used in your Marketing Cloud account should be verified. Marketing Cloud itself recommends using authenticated domains via a Sender Authentication Package or Private Domain. Domain Registration process verifies those addresses of a domain that are not part of the recommended authenticated domain and identifies the sender as a part of the verification process.

Previously, in order to verify From addresses for any Marketing Cloud account, we had to send an individual verification email to all From addresses.

After January 2019 release, we can register a non-authenticated domain and validate the its ownership. After that,  all email addresses from registered domains will be verified without sending an email to those addresses.

Google Analytics 360 Integration January 2019 Release Notes

Link Your Marketing Cloud Enterprise Account to Google Analytics 360

Marketing Cloud provides us with the opportunity to link a Marketing Cloud account with a Google Analytics 360 account and use all best practices for implementing Google’s analytics tools.

Before we would create a link for each business unit, but after this release we can link our Marketing Cloud enterprise account to a Google Analytics 360 user account and all child business units inherit the link.

You can link and unlink Google Analytics 360 and Marketing Cloud accounts only at the enterprise level. At at the child account level, we can only view link status and linked account information.

NOTE: If you have already linked Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360 accounts, you should relink accounts at the enterprise level. If you have multiple Google Analytics 360 accounts linked to different business units, you should consolidate all those accounts into a single Google Analytics 360 account.

Capture Online Behavior by Linking to Google Analytics 360 Audience Activation

Marketing Cloud allows for the creation of static IDs between Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360, and the ability to link them. This is really interesting feature which opens the possibility to build audiences based on Google Analytics data and capture customer behavior and activities, e.g abandon cart, goal non-completes, page exits, browse abandons, and search abandons.

We can import a list of shared subscribers from Google Analytics 360 into a Marketing Cloud Contact Builder as an audience, synchronize it every 24 hours and share it between business units.

When a subscriber clicks on a link in a message which was sent from Marketing Cloud, Google recognizes the SubscriberID inside the link and binds it to the Google Analytics client ID. Then Google will capture online activities for this subscriber. We can use this data to create an audience and use it in Journey later.

Marketing Cloud creators shared a promo, so let me explain what it is all about.

To begin with, we should tag the messages in each Journey with the Google Analytics tags in order to start a collecting campaign and Journey information:

On the Google Analytics 360 side we then create an appropriate link configuration:

When a subscriber clicks on a link in a message which was sent from Marketing Cloud, Google recognizes the SubscriberID inside the link and binds it to the Google Analytics client ID. Then, Google will capture online activities for this subscriber for reporting or audience creation.

Also, we have to authorize Marketing Cloud as a destination for Google audiences. So, we need to create an audience based on collected data in Google Analytics 360, and to recognize the match of the customer between the two systems:

As a result, there is an audience of users spending time browsing pages with our previously created link.

The obtained collected list of users that were previously engaged through journey and an email tagged with a Google code could be used to re-engage with a personalized targeted message. For that reason we should use a Google Analytics 360 entry source in the Journey builder:

Marketing Cloud Connect January 2019 Release Notes

Marketing Cloud Connect Package Is Upgraded Automatically

Making sure that the customers’ accounts are updated with the most recent features and bug fixes, Marketing Cloud will automatically update the Marketing Cloud Connect managed package in the customer production org to the previously released version before each new release. Non-production organizations will be upgraded to the newest version. So, this approach lets us proceed a full cycle for testing of the new package before the out production org is automatically updated.

Mobile Studio January 2019 Release Notes

MobileConnect January 2019 Release Notes

Create MobileConnect Journey Builder Messages in Content Builder

As mentioned above, now we can create SMS messages in the Content Builder editor without leaving Journey Builder and use this content in other sends. Also, we can build SMS messages in Content Builder and then pull them into an activity in Journey Builder. There is no need to create or configure Journey Builder SMS content in MobileConnect any more.

More Information with MobileConnect Data Views

That is a piece of great news!

Now we will have two new data views: _smsmessagetracking and _SMSSubscriptionLog.

We will have more detailed and tracking information regarding our message sends and subscription data. We can still create custom SQL queries and use them in reporting. Thank you, Salesforce!

GroupConnect January 2019 Release Notes

Personalize Chat Messages with AMPscript

With the present release we can send personalized messages on the LINE chat messaging platform.There is an ability to use AMPscript functions in the JSON body of our send requests when using the Marketing Cloud GroupConnect Chat Messaging API. The AMPscript will be parsed and translated when the message is sent.

Chat Messaging API Line Contacts

Now when sending LINE messages with the help of Chat Messaging API, all users who are not contacts in Marketing Cloud will be automatically added as LINE contacts. Previously, users were not automatically added to Marketing Cloud and we had no option for storing the contacts. The new release enables GroupConnect to check if the LINE ID in the API send belongs to a contact. If an existing contact doesn’t have that LINE ID, GroupConnect will create a contact in Marketing Cloud.

MobilePush January 2019 Release Notes

Send MobilePush Inbox Messages in Journey Builder

All Inbox messages are available in the list of messages in our Journey Builder activity. We can select a pertinent message from the list and send it to an Inbox activity. We just need to drag the Inbox activity onto the journey canvas and choose the MobilePush Inbox message.

Replace Inbox Messages in MobilePush

Previously, when sending a message to a device multiple times with the help of Automation Studio or an API-triggered send, the newest version used to replace the message in the inbox.

Now we can choose the option of adding a message to the appin box and this will keep the earlier message.

It means we can replace a previously sent message or add a new one in Marketing Cloud MobilePush.

Delete MobilePush Apps

This release allows us to manage the deletion of unused apps directly in Marketing Cloud MobilePush. We don’t need to create a support ticket. In order to do this we should navigate to the Administration tab in MobilePush and choose to delete app.

Add Personalization to Push Notifications

Again, Marketing Cloud makes outbound push notifications more personalized. We should use a subscriber key in push notifications in Marketing Cloud MobilePush. By including %%_subscriberkey%% in the message body, we can get subscriber data into the push notification.

Push Notification Metrics in Journey Builder

Now we can review, send and open performance analytics data for our push notification activity without leaving Journey Builder. Just click on the appropriate Push notification activity in active journey:

Personalization Builder January 2019 Release Notes

Dynamically Map Contact Attributes with Rules

Marketing Cloud now allows you to create rules for dynamically mapping a custom contact attribute to a catalog attribute. We can create only one rule to cover each use case that matches the contact attribute.

Open the Email Recommendations or Web Recommendations Rule Manager tab in Marketing Cloud Personalization Builder in order to do this. Then, choose either the exclude or include filter and select the catalog field name in the rule editor. Afterwards, add a value set Same As Contact Attribute and define the name of the custom contact attribute.

Social Studio January 2019 Release Notes

Filter by Facebook Recommendations in Social Studio

We can filter posts in the Engage columns in Marketing Cloud Social Studio through a variety of items. Filtering can be based on media type, social account, language, region, keyword, status, priority, assignment, etc. In addition to these criteria, with the January 2019 Release, we have a new one at our disposal – filtering by recommendations. We can apply filtering and show only Facebook posts with recommendations, no recommendations, or both.

Target Facebook Posts Based on Interests

In Marketing Cloud Social Studio we can target Facebook news feed posts by age ranges, gender, location, and interests. Using our selected criteria when publishing posts, we can use branded content for the right audience and get a higher percent of customer engagement. We can enter up to 16 interests. Of course, entering more than 16 is possible, but the Facebook interface keeps only 16 interests.

View and Engage with Instagram Customer Replies in Social Studio

Instagram reply is now available in Social Studio and we can view and engage our customers with our replies; additionally, we can apply filtering based on the replies if it’s necessary. Also, Marketing Cloud enhanced the appearance of the Instagram replies in the conversation view of the post. It is now possible to review the history of posts and better understand the context of a conversation in the Marketing Cloud Social Studio Engage column.

View Instagram Tagged Content in Social Studio

In order to get a better understanding of our customers’ interests and concerns, we’re able to see all the images or videos where we’ve been tagged, but we can’t be tagged in the text of a post. We can review photo tags in the Engage column and create Analyze dashboards for monitoring the performance of our Instagram Business account.

View Instagram Stories in Social Studio

Instagram Stories are now available in the Social Studio calendar. The Instagram stories of the accounts that are part of your Social Studio, will now automatically appear in the calendar. Also, we can monitor the performance metrics for Instagram stories and define their effectiveness.

Marketing Cloud Platform January 2019 Release Notes

Improved Marketing Cloud Table of Contents on Salesforce Help

Marketing Cloud creators made changes in documentation and cleaned up the Marketing Cloud table of contents. So, now we can open directly the necessary product areas on the redesigned Salesforce Help home page.

Send Transactional Messages with a New API

Transactional messaging is immediate, automated, and non-promotional messaging, e.g, order confirmation messages or password reset email messages. We can now send personalized  transactional messages to our customers via the new Marketing Cloud Transactional Messaging REST API. Then we capture the status of the sent-by-configuring Marketing Cloud event notification service so it notifies us of the results in real time. This feature is applicable to all Marketing Cloud REST API users.

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