The August release does not contain any completely new features but some nice enhancements in several studios that will help marketers in their day-to-day work. This blog will walk you through these features and how they will help you. Let’s have a look at a summary together.
Starting with Marketing Package Manager, a brilliant app that enables marketers to import and export fully configured assets in between Marketing Cloud Instances and Business Units. It was released in April this year but with this release it comes with an updated UI, giving an overview of recent packages, and granular permissions, meaning not all Admins necessarily have access to the app. The issue with Shared and Synced Data Extensions is also fixed.
Self-service of SSL Certificates
Marketing Cloud is taking steps to make onboarding easier, and one of these steps is the addition of a smooth new feature in the setup. They introduce SSL Certificate self-service so that custom domains configured for Sender Authentication Packages (SAP) or private domains configured for Cloud Pages can be secured and administered. This means that rather than having Salesforce Support perform it for you over a six-week period, you can request access to an up-to-date status UI where you can set up SSLs in a maximum of ten days. A feature we at Avaus warmly welcome!
Datorama Brings in New Reporting Tools and Insights for Slack
Datorama Reports for Marketing Cloud gained quite a lot of attention during this release. Pro, Corporate and Enterprise Customers now access Datorama reports, which has been live since January 21. A premium paid version called Datorama Reports Advanced has been live since May 21 and it is especially Advanced that has some new features. Two query functions are added, one drag and drop for non-technical users and an ordinary SQL query builder. On top of this, there is a new tab for easier management of custom calculated dimensions and measurements. Being an Advanced user one has access to the full data set from Email, MobilePush and MobileConnect with access to subscriber-level data that is not accessible in the free version. This combination gives the Marketer extended powers to perform reporting within the application!
A few months back it was revealed that Salesforce and Slack joined forces and we are now seeing the first results of this acquisition. Datorama Reports have an integration to Slack, making it possible to share insights straight into channels. If you have access to the full Datorama Platform then you can even automate insights! We think this will help make data-driven decisions!
Source: Salesforce.com
The New Experience Cloud Pages
Web Studio and Cloud Pages also got a lot of attention as the upgrade Cloud Pages have gone through over the past year is now slowly coming to an end. During the summer name changes were enforced; what was earlier introduced as the New Experience Cloud Pages are just called Cloud Pages and what was earlier called Cloud Pages is now renamed Legacy Cloud Pages. Content created in Classic editor of legacy Cloud pages will be moved to Content Builder during the fall. Important to consider is the switch to Tenant Specific Endpoints in the URLs.
Each tenant will have a unique identifier which will enhance security, improving performance and reliability as it will route directly to the correct instance. Pages published before the release in June 2021 will have to update. They still function via redirect but this redirect capability is a temporary service. It does not affect Private Domains. What is best with the new Cloud Pages you might ask? We would say that there is no publishing delay anymore! Earlier there was a delay but working with Cloud Pages will become much easier with the instant updates.
Integrate Interaction Studio and Experience Cloud
Interaction Studio is Marketing Cloud’s real-time interaction management (RTIM) solution that helps marketers unify the customer experience across all channels. New in this release is Nested segments, which means one can add other segments as rules when building a segment, hence use other audiences to include or exclude in other segments. There is also integration to Experience Cloud available to all Growth and Premium Interaction Studio customers with Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, or Developer Editions of Experience Cloud. This helps capture data of logged-in users and present personalised content, making Experience Cloud even better. It is a great step towards truly working omnichannel and delivering real-time personalised content.
Updated Einstein Features
Einstein, the AI layer added to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, has become easier to navigate past releases. The recently added Overview page and Learning centre have made Einstein more accessible and applicable. Now have AppFacts been added for each model to explain what, how and where to apply for best marketing results. The two features Copy Insights and Email Engagement Scoring (ESS) are developed in this release.
Copy Insights got a makeover with extended information added to help make decisions, Bias Detection added to help avoid unintentional bias. We also learned that this feature is on the roadmap to be extended to several languages. Finally, in Email Engagement Scoring one can now configure the upper and lower thresholds for each Engagement Scoring KPI and adjust how contacts will be categorised as this is no longer hardcoded.
This is the August ’21 release summarised! If you have any questions regarding these new features or need help in configuring your Instance then we, at Avaus are here to help.
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