An excellent platform to have in your arsenal of marketing tools is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (Interaction Studio). But getting started with a Marketing Cloud installation can be difficult, especially when Personalization is involved.

Methods for SFMC Personalization Implementation:

It’s simple to get carried away with what a platform like SFMC Personalization, which offers Real-Time Personalization and AI Recommendations, can provide. The most essential thing to remember from this post is to concentrate on what you and your business can do. This is crucial in light of the challenging interdependencies you’ll experience when implementing Personalization.

In summary, the techniques range from future-state implementation (FSI), where use cases are used to drive large-scale transformation, to minimal viable product (MVP), where the objective is to construct a baseline as rapidly as possible and then build upon it in future iterations. For individuals that may fall somewhere between the two approaches, there is also a middle-ground option to establishing an As-Is.

Questions about Marketing Cloud Personalization

Fortunately, by answering a few straightforward discovery questions as outlined by Salesforce in their Implementation of Marketing Cloud Personalization Trailhead, you may quickly determine which approach could be best for your needs.
You can choose which approach will best meet your needs by using some useful questions, such as:

• How frequently does your business update its website?
• Access to developer resources is it simple for you?
• Do you intend to switch from an existing tool?
• Must more platforms be integrated?

You’ll find that:

1. Companies who often update their websites, have easy access to developers, and aren’t switching from an existing customization platform can consider using MVP. To put it another way, it’s a workable strategy for those who may be unfamiliar with real-time customizing.
2. Companies who want to switch from one tool to another, don’t have fast access to developers, and have a few active personalization campaigns ready to move can benefit greatly from using As-Is.
3. For businesses who don’t update their websites as regularly, have limited access to developers, need to link several clouds (such as those for marketing, sales, or service), and have external data sources that need to be merged, FSI is the best choice.

Implementation Roadmap for Personalization in the Marketing Cloud

Obviously, the implementation roadmap will change based on the size of your project and the method you’ve chosen for implementing it. But there are several significant milestones that apply to all implementations, as seen in the figure below, which is based on a typical net-new Personalization implementation with two to three use cases.

The Use Case Discovery and Blueprint Development are the two significant stages from the above graphic that I would concentrate on the most.

Regardless of the implementation strategy, the secret to success is to define a small number of specific use cases before starting the construction. As previously said, it’s simple to become overwhelmed by the extensive capabilities that personalization provides. The best approach to execute a successful deployment and make sure your business gets the most out of the platform is to understand the target goal. Later on, I’ll provide a few illustrations of effective use cases.

The sitemap, which is maybe the most important component of personalization, and the blueprint paper go hand in hand. For each visit, the blueprint aids in defining which page categories are present, what triggers are present on those sites, what data can be scraped, and where it may be sourced (e.g., DOM vs. Data-Layer).

Fortunately, the Salesforce Partner Portal can offer a helpful template to help you with your installation. This template lets you gather all the data required to develop your sitemap and apply Personalization. To make it simpler for the developers creating the sitemap, the template includes everything from page kinds and content zones to events and characteristics, and most crucially, where they can be located on your website.

Use Cases

Use cases, without repeating myself, may make or break a Personalization implementation. Real-Time Web Personalization, often known as Personalization, was the mandate for my first Personalization solution.

The website was stagnant, there were no obvious KPIs, and there was nothing to entice repeat users, rendering any experiences based on prior visits completely meaningless. As a result, until we went back to the drawing board, our incredibly expensive customization engine sat on the shelf.

Defining Your Use Cases

Don’t be hesitant to go detailed with your use cases if you want to avoid making the same error I did. With subsequent iterations, it becomes simpler to build upon known use cases. Consider these factors carefully when you define your use cases:

Objective: What are you attempting to accomplish with your personalization? Is it to raise the average order value? Maybe you want to get more consumers to download your app?

KPIs: How will you assess the effectiveness of your personalization? Does it depend on how many tasks are completed successfully? What order value rise would constitute a successful increase in percentage?

Approach: After you have a clear understanding of your goals, you should think about your method. Is it based on specific sources of visitors (Rule-Based) or on popular items (Recipe-Based)?

Measurement Approach: Creating a personalized experience is useless if there is no way to assess its effectiveness. Think about how a sufficient sample may seem and how long the campaign might endure.

Channels: Will this advertising be centered on the web or mobile devices?

There is no right or incorrect response when it comes to use cases; it all relies on the goals of your business. However, for a normal net-new solution, a few of short use cases, like the ones below, is a fine place to start.

Case Definition Example in Use

 

Keep coming back to your use cases after you’ve identified them as you go through implementation and create your blueprint. The use cases will aid in keeping your implementation focused on the ultimate objective and assist your developers in creating a sitemap that will serve its intended function.

A Successful SFMC Personalization Implementation Requires Planning:

By now, you’ve undoubtedly realized how crucial preparation is to executing Personalization properly. A successful implementation depends on the definition of precise and succinct use cases and the creation of an accurate and thorough blueprint, both of which are milestones during the discovery phase. This holds true regardless of the implementation strategy you select.

As a last point to ponder, don’t overlook your implementation crew. Since marketers are the ones who demand real-time personalization capabilities, personalization solutions frequently start in the marketing department because of the tool that it is. But even massive marketing organizations with broad skill sets won’t be able to offer Personalization on their own.

JavaScript programmers are needed for the Personalization Sitemap. Data architects will be needed to help in building ETLs. CRM administrators are necessary for CRM integration. Although there are pre-made themes, designing experiences may also require HTML and CSS professionals. So take into account early implementation team expansion.

Not only will this guarantee that the necessary resources are accessible to support and comprehend the request, but it may also aid in the definition of more technically sound and pertinent use cases.