Salesforce Marketing Cloud Release April 2019

It is time for another Salesforce Marketing Cloud release in April, so we thought we would highlight some of the best features in the upcoming release. If you want the full April release notes they are available here.

Copy Journeys Between Accounts with Deployment Manager

It is difficult to test a Journey in SFMC due to a lack of release process so you either test in production with dummy data, or Build in a test environment then rebuild in production.  This functionality isn’t going to solve this issue but at least you can easily migrate the canvas. Will be interesting to see how extensive this functionality and if it will migrate data extensions or emails in a journey.

Add Row-Based Data Retention Policies to Existing Data Extensions

This may not seem like a key feature but anyone who has had to add a retention policy after a data extension is in production will know how frustrating this is. No more having to rebuild, set priority and then update all associated activities.

Preview Subscribers in Mobile Channels

Previewing SMS Amp script normally involves a cut and paste into email studio and then previewing, now you can preview direct in content builder.

Before sending, get a subscriber-level preview for mobile channels that use Content Builder to see personalisation and code rendered for that individual. When creating the message in Content Builder or Journey Builder, click Subscriber Preview.

Optimize Email Sends with Einstein Engagement Frequency

One of the most frequent question Marketers ask is ‘How often should we contact our customers’. This new feature will help you identify customers that are over engaged but also identify some hidden opportunities with your customers.

Test Any Data Extension with Journey Testing

As we said above Testing a Journey has always been difficult but now you can test with any Data Extension.

For journeys that use a data extension entry source, save and validate the journey, then click Test. Choose sample contacts to test with from the entry source data extension, decide whether to send test emails, and view the expected path for each sample contact.

Some new Marketing Cloud Trailheads

Salesforce have released some new Marketing Cloud trailheads (as well as the upcoming Marketing Could Developer certificate).  We definitely recommend taking a look at:

• Manage Campaigns with Journey Builder
  Use this powerful Marketing Cloud tool to automate and optimise customer interactions.
• Measure Your Marketing Impact
  Discover how to track end-to-end marketing effectiveness and take action on insights.