Ever wished you could create personalized roadmaps for each of your customers? Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder makes this possible! With Salesforce Journey Builder, you can create these multi-channel journeys visually, using a drag-and-drop interface. While this marketing automation tool has the most advanced features to personalize and automate your marketing at scale, mastering it can be tricky.

This blog dives deep into everything you should know to unlock the full potential of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder. We’ve covered the basics, and advanced techniques, and even provided optimization tips to ensure your journeys perform at their peak.

Our Salesforce Marketing Cloud Consultants are equipped to guide you through the complexities of Journey Builder, offering tailored solutions and best practices to maximize your marketing automation efforts. By leveraging our expertise, you can transform your customer journeys into seamless, impactful experiences that drive engagement and growth.

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder?

Journey Builder is a Salesforce Marketing Cloud feature that allows you to create automated and personalized journeys for individual subscribers.

Whether you want your customers to download the app or you want them to make purchases successfully and frequently, you can quickly create journeys using Journey Builder’s drag-and-drop interface.

With Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder, you can track customer behavior across channels (such as email, Push, and ads), set goals for each customer based on their engagement metrics, nudge them with personalized content, and know if they’ve ejected at a particular step of the journey.

While there’s more to what Journey Builder can do, we leave it to the next sections where we’ll discuss Journey Builder's capabilities in detail.

Mastering the Journey Builder Canvas

The heart of this tool lies in the Journey Builder canvas, where you can visually design interactive roadmaps for your customers. However, before you start building impactful marketing campaigns, consider understanding the canvas layout, its user interface elements, and the functionalities of different journey types in great detail.

Here’s a brief insight into the key elements of the canvas and their user interface (UI) functions:

#1 Journey Title

In the top left corner, you'll find the Journey Title and Description section. It's essential to provide a clear and concise title and description before creating your journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder. This helps you stay organized and easily identify different versions later on.

#2 Entry Source and Canvas Activities

The Entry Source is the starting point or trigger of a customer journey. It tells Journey Builder how a customer enters a specific pre-designed marketing experience you've created.

Here is a list of entry sources in Salesforce Journey Builder: Data Extensions, API events, audiences, CloudPages, Salesforce data, or events.

Types of Entry Sources in Journey Builder (Source: Trailhead)

But how should you choose an entry source? Here’s how:

Need to target based on specific data points? Use Data Extensions.
Integrating external data for triggers? Utilize API Events.
Targeting a predefined customer segment? Choose Audiences.
Triggered by actions on a CloudPage? Select CloudPages.
Leveraging data from Salesforce records or events? Opt for Salesforce Data or Events.

Now let’s shift our focus to Canvas Activities. What is it and what does it include?

Canvas Activities represent specific message actions, decision points, updates, or a combo of these elements to guide a customer journey until it reaches the endpoint or a goal. There are several Canvas Activities in Salesforce Journey Builder such as:

a)Message Activity: Send emails, SMS, push notifications, or other content tailored to your audience.

b) Advertising Activities: Build targeted advertising audiences and run ad campaigns directly within Journey Builder.

c) Flow Control Activities: These activities give you the option of how you want to manage your contact’s experience through the journey. This includes:

i) Wait: Pause interactions for a set time and re-evaluate customer data before proceeding.

ii) Split: Create different paths based on customer behavior randomly or using Einstein AI.

iii) Join: Return customers to their original path after they’ve gone through a split activity

iv) Wait Until: Pause interactions until a specific time or date.

Flow Control Activities in Journey Builder (Source: Trailhead)

d) Customer Updates: This Canvas Activity prompts the Marketing Cloud Engagement system to update contact information in a data extension.

e) Sales & Service Cloud: Interact with Salesforce Sales & Service Cloud data using these activities (requires Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connector).

Sales and Service Cloud Activities (Source: Trailhead)

#3 Journey Canvas

The Journey Canvas is a visual workspace for building customer journeys with drag-and-drop activities.

Think of Journey Canvas as a flowchart for your marketing campaigns, but instead of boxes and arrows, you can use interactive tiles representing various touch points like emails, SMS, or website interactions. By visually crafting these journeys, you can map out the specific interactions customers will experience and ensure they reach your desired outcome.

Creating a Journey in Journey Builder (Source: Trailhead)

#4 Journey Builder Toolbar

After you’ve created a journey, you can manage it through the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder Toolbar. Here is a list of activities one can perform through this component:

Undo, redo, copy, and paste actions
Toggle open or close the sidebar containing canvas activities.
Enable guidance.
Set goals.
Define exit points.
Edit settings.
Save, validate, test, and activate the journey.

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Building Engaging Customer Journeys With Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder

Just like a thrilling adventure story, your customer's experience should be engaging and memorable. That's where journey mapping and customer experience design come in, two of the key factors in building engaging customer journeys.

Let’s first discuss Journey Mapping.

#1 Journey Mapping

Journey mapping involves visualizing the steps a customer takes throughout their interactions with a brand, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. A journey map identifies the following things:

Steps or activities a customer (or user) takes.
Challenges along the way.
Touchpoints and channels - devices and apps- they use to reach your goal.
Feelings, thoughts, and reactions they have throughout the journey.

Here’s a simple journey mapping example:

Journey Mapping Example (Source: Trailhead)

So what happened here?

After signing up (1), the customer reaches out with a query (2). Then, a service agent logs a service request and sends an email confirmation. Simultaneously, the agent reviews the customer’s service history (3), delivers the service (4), and updates the customer’s record, visible on an online portal (5).

Throughout this sequence, multiple interactions must have occurred between the customer and the service representative. The representative may have also collaborated with sales colleagues to gather information on past interactions with the customer or with operations for special pricing approvals, among other tasks. The journey map includes all these details, giving you a snapshot of how the customer is getting affected by your behind-the-scenes moves.

Benefits of Journey Mapping

Now that you’ve an idea about Journey Mapping, let’s quickly check out a few benefits it offers:

Better Teamwork: Breaks down silos across departments, creating a shared customer focus for the same goal - a stellar CX.
Resource Allocation: Identify high-impact touchpoints for strategic resource allocation.
Uncover Pain Points: Find out what’s frustrating your customer and tailor journeys for a smoother CX.
Measure & Optimize: Define goals, track metrics, and continuously improve the customer experience.

#2 Customer Experience (CX) Design

It's time we talk about one of the most important elements in building engaging customer journeys- CX design. So what is it?

CX design isn't a guessing game, it's a roadmap where you first gain a strong understanding of your customers and use that information to shape your brand’s touchpoints. Note that a good CX design changes with it, not the other way around.

After you develop journey maps, you can identify customer pain points and what excites them. Based on this you can change, update, or remove your CX design and see how they now interact with your brand.

Benefits of Customer Experience Design

Happy Customers, Happy Business: By crafting seamless and delightful interactions across all touchpoints, your CX design strategy can help you foster strong customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Say Goodbye to Churn: Frustrated customers don't stick around. CX design helps you identify and eliminate pain points, keeping customers engaged and preventing churn.
Targeted Marketing, Maximum Impact: CX design helps you understand your customer's needs and preferences based on which you can personalize your marketing efforts. Thus by sending the right message to the right person at the right time, you can register maximum customer engagement which will eventually translate into more conversations.
Differentiating Factor: In today's competitive era, only exceptional customer experience can set you apart. CX design can help you stand out from the crowd and attract new customers by delivering positive and memorable experiences.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder Activities

Now that you understand customer journey, journey mapping, and customer experience design, it's time you turn your attention to key Journey Builder activities.

Here’s what you can create within Journey Builder:

Email Sends: Deliver targeted and relevant email communications based on customer actions or segment criteria.
SMS Triggers: Prompt automated SMS messages triggered by specific customer behaviors or milestones.
Landing Pages: Create personalized landing pages tailored to individual customer segments or journey stages to drive engagement and conversions.
Social Media Integration: Utilize social channels to amplify messaging and interact with customers in real time.
Push Notifications: Send timely and personalized push notifications to mobile devices to re-engage users and drive actions.

By leveraging these activities within Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder, you can seamlessly orchestrate multi-channel campaigns that resonate with your audience and drive desired outcomes.

Creating Personalized Customer Journeys with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder

Personalization is a crucial factor that drives customer engagement. Thankfully in Salesforce Journey Builder, there are tools so you can deliver tailored experiences at scale.

a) Dynamic content, for instance, allows you to customize messaging and visuals based on individual preferences, behaviors, or demographics, enhancing relevance and engagement.

b) Audience split is yet another feature that enables the creation of branching paths within a journey, ensuring that each customer receives content and offers that align with their interests and needs.

By harnessing the power of Marketing Cloud personalization tools like dynamic content and audience splits, you can create truly immersive and memorable journeys that drive loyalty, advocacy, and ultimately, business growth.

Enhancing Customer Engagement with Journey Builder Powered by Einstein AI

With Einstein, Salesforce's AI-powered suite, you can excel at journey creation and optimization, taking your Journey Builder capabilities to the moon. Let's explore some of the key Einstein offerings for SFMC Journey Builder and find out what benefits they bring to the table:

#1 Einstein Engagement Scoring: This Einstein feature assigns a score to each subscriber based on their past engagement with your marketing emails and mobile pushes. With Journey Builder, you can utilize these engagement scores to segment your audience and send targeted messages to those most likely to open them.

#2 Einstein Send Time Optimization (Einstein STO): Einstein STO is yet another revolutionary feature that can put your scheduling troubles to rest. It analyzes historical data to determine the best time to send emails to individual subscribers for maximum open rates. SFMC Journey Builder can automatically schedule sends based on these recommendations.

#3 Einstein Engagement Frequency: Want to analyze subscriber behavior to predict how likely they are to unsubscribe from your messages if you send them too frequently? Einstein Engagement frequency is for you. You can use this feature in Journey Builder to regulate the frequency of messages you want to send to different subscriber segments.

Explore in Detail💡

⚡Want to learn more about Marketing Cloud Einstein? Check out the below blog for deeper insight on various Salesforce Marketing Cloud Einstein features.

Advanced Techniques and Strategies

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder is a powerful tool, but to truly captivate your customers, you need to master some advanced techniques. Let's dive into three that will take your marketing campaigns to the next level:

#1: Segmenting Audiences for Targeted Marketing

Imagine throwing darts blindfolded – that's what generic marketing feels like. Journey Builder’s segmentation capabilities let you ditch the blindfold and aim with laser focus! Here's how:

Data Power: Utilize data from various sources like website behavior, purchase history, or CRM information.
Create Segments: Group customers with similar characteristics or interests. Think "Tech Savvy Shoppers" or "First-Time Buyers."
Tailored Journeys: Craft unique journeys for each segment, addressing their specific needs and preferences.

#2: Personalizing Customer Experiences with Dynamic Content

One-size-fits-all marketing is a sure-shot recipe for disengagement. Dynamic content lets you create journeys that feel personal and relevant to each customer. Here’s what you can do with Dynamic Content within SFMC Journey Builder:

Dynamic Text: Use personalization strings like "{{FirstName}}" to greet customers by name or reference past purchases.
Conditional Content: Show or hide content based on customer data. Tech enthusiasts might see advanced product features, while beginners see a user guide.
Product Recommendations: Suggest items based on past purchases or browsing behavior. Imagine recommending hiking boots to someone who recently bought a backpack!

#3: Utilizing Analytics for Continuous Improvement

Data is the fuel that drives marketing success. Journey Builder's analytics can help you track every step of the customer journey:

Track Engagement: See how many customers open emails, click on links, or complete desired actions.
Identify Drop-Off Points: Note down where customers abandon their journey. This is your chance to identify and remove roadblocks.
A/B Testing: Test different versions of emails, landing pages, or CTAs to see what resonates best with your audience.
Optimize for Success: Continuously refine your journeys based on data insights. With each iteration, you'll create a more captivating experience for your customers!
By mastering these advanced techniques, you can transform Journey Builder Salesforce from a mere tool to a superpower.

Optimizing Journey Performance in Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Crafting engaging journeys in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a powerful way to nurture leads and drive conversions. But journeys, like any recipe, can always be tweaked for better results.

Here's how to fine-tune your journeys for peak performance:

Focus on testing and refining various elements of your journeys.
Implement A/B testing to compare different subject lines, messaging, or CTAs to determine what resonates best with your audience.
Leverage journey analytics and reporting within SFMC Journey Builder to track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates and look for opportunities to improve further.

Conclusion

Journey Builder in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a fantastic tool for creating personalized journeys and improving channel engagement. However, remember that marketing is a journey itself – one that requires continuous learning and improvement. Consider testing different elements and analyzing performance metrics, to keep refining your journeys for maximum impact.

Ready to unlock the full potential of SFMC Journey Builder? Onboard Concretio’s certified SFMC consultants to craft high-performing journeys for your audience segments.

FAQs

Journey Builder and Marketing Cloud Automation Studio are both valuable tools in SFMC but cater to different needs. Journey Builder excels at crafting personalized customer journeys across multiple channels, like automated email sequences triggered by customer behavior.
Marketing Cloud Automation Studio, on the other hand, focuses on data management and task automation – the behind-the-scenes engine that keeps your marketing data organized for smooth operation.
Builder journey is a step-by-step process. Start by defining your goal, then map out the customer's touchpoints (emails, landing pages, etc.).
Log in to SFMC and use Journey Builder's drag-and-drop interface to construct your journey, personalizing elements with dynamic content. Set up entry and exit points for contacts, test thoroughly, launch your journey, and analyze its performance for continuous improvement.
Yes, you can integrate social media tools such as Social Studio, Marketing Automation tools such as Automation Studio, and campaigning solutions like Advertising Studio along with Marketing Cloud Journey Builder for a seamless customer experience.
Use Journey Builder analytics to track key metrics like Open Rates (percentage of emails opened), Click-Through Rates (percentage of clicks on links within emails), and Conversion Rates (percentage of desired actions completed), etc.

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Mastering Customer Journeys: A Deep Dive into Marketing Cloud Journey Builder

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder?