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5 Tips for a Seamless Transition to Marketing Cloud

Published Date
Author Lillie Dorsey

IGT (International Gaming Technology) is the global leader in gaming. As a B2B organization, IGT was looking to develop a more scalable customer engagement program with the goal of enabling its teams across the globe to engage with their customers in a more personalized way—all while operating from the same platform, maintaining compliance, and preserving the IGT brand.

After evaluating various ESPs, they identified Salesforce Marketing Cloud as a robust option that gave them the ability to scale their marketing efforts and continue to grow into the platform.

Nikki Cooper, who oversees global marketing operations and sales enablement for IGT, was the project leader as they migrated from their former ESP to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). Nikki partnered with Lev for implementation and was able to help lead the IGT and Lev teams through a seamless transition as they implemented SFMC and rolled it out to their global marketing team. Here are Nikki’s five tips for how she was able to execute a smooth rollout and effectively manage the change:
 

  1. Prep, prep, prep! First, and perhaps most importantly, is to understand what you’re getting into. Standing up a new marketing platform is no small undertaking. It requires a lot of work internally, a strong understanding of how the new platform aligns to your goals, and ideally—a great partner to help you navigate the project. 

    I did a lot of pre-work with data clean-up, identifying what assets needed to be included in the transition, defining our minimal viable product (a.k.a. what data and assets we needed to go live), extracting key data from our legacy ESP, reviewing content, setting up new filters for our contact database to help create more targeted lists, and gathering internal requirements from a variety of stakeholders across the globe. I wanted to approach this transition as the opportunity for a "fresh start,” and take new approaches to what wasn’t working before, while doing my best to preserve what was working.
     
  2. Communication is key. From the start, we were able to work with Salesforce and Lev to set clear (and realistic) expectations and ensure alignment amongst all our regional teams. I was diligent to ensure our global marketing teams were all on the same page as we began implementation, and that we were all working towards the same outcome. I also made sure that I was providing each team what they needed to be effective in their roles with minimal disruption as we migrated to SFMC. 
     
  3. Define what you're looking for. Speaking of ensuring the IGT team, Salesforce, and Lev were all working towards the same outcome: I was clear from the start on how we intended to use SFMC, the Salesforce team was able to demonstrate how their product was going to meet our needs, and the Lev team was able to ensure Salesforce’s product functionality was properly implemented to achieve our goals. 

    I was able to orchestrate this by meeting extensively with internal stakeholders across the world to gather each region’s specific requirements. Everything from contact management, audience segmentation, and process documentation was addressed and resolved with the help of Lev.  I always had a clear picture of the end-goal in mind, and even though I had to pivot a few times—due to internal team changes and challenges from COVID-19—having a plan in place meant I was able to quickly adapt and keep everyone aligned by having defined outcomes in mind.
     
  4. One thing at a time. Rather than trying to boil the ocean by going all in with several tools at once, we decided to focus solely on implementing Marketing Cloud and cleanly integrating it with Salesforce CRM.  We didn’t want to lose control by trying to grow our tech stack at an unscalable pace.  We’re focused on maximizing our use of SFMC and getting everything up and running before we start evaluating other tools.
     
  5. Training + enablement is critical for quick adoption. Oftentimes, training and enablement is the first thing to be cut when dealing with budget constraints, but we made sure to prioritize training so that our team was able to get up and running quickly and smoothly on the platform. I spent a lot of time making sure every team and internal stakeholder felt fully prepared to leverage the capabilities of SFMC and had the training and support they needed, from a CRM-perspective, to effectively manage their contacts and campaigns.