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Five Actions You Can Take Right Now to Make an Impact in Marketing Cloud

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Did you have a major marketing campaign put on hold? Maybe your entire marketing plan for the year is pushed back indefinitely. In these unprecedented times, it can be hard to know what can—or should—be done to keep moving forward.

Of the many lessons learned over the past few weeks, one takeaway is certainly that digital marketing plays a major role in how businesses go to market. While some bigger initiatives may be paused, for marketers working in Marketing Cloud there are still actionable steps you can take right now to make sure your digital programs are ready when you’re given the green light to move forward. 

Get your content under control
Content is king, but it has the tendency to get out of control fast; especially when it comes to categorizing, tagging, and organizing it. Now is a good time to take stock of your library of content and do manual work needed to get it in order:
  • Tag your content. Make sure each piece of content is tagged properly.
  • Review your tags. Do you need to add, remove, or rethink any of them?
  • Identify dated content. What content in your library has dated benchmarks, out of date positioning, or old branding? Of that content, what could you repurpose or refresh to make it relevant again?
 
Give your data the “spring cleaning” treatment
One thing that can grow quickly and slip your mind is the amount of data extensions you create. Believe it or not, the amount of data extensions you have in your account can cause performance issues. You should always think of your data extensions (DEs) in two ways:
  • Core data sets
  • DE’s for execution
Focus on the latter and go back to DEs that you’ve created over the past several months for standard sends and clean those up. It will make navigating your account stress free, and will improve your account’s overall performance.
 
Pro Tip: if you aren’t using Marketing Cloud’s data retention options, dig in now and implement this best practice going forward. 
 
 
Make the move to Content Builder
With Classic Content set to be retired later this year, now is the perfect time to make the move to Content Builder if you’ve not done so already. With an updated interface, more flexible folder structures, improved search and filter functionality, and more templates at your disposal, making the switch to Content Builder will help you level up your email building game. You can use this time to:
  • Import content from classic email to Content Builder.
  • Establish a new folder structure for assets.
  • Explore new template options.
 
Freshen up your preference center
Preference centers can often suffer from a “set it and forget it” mentality. If you’ve not evaluated your preference center recently, now is a good time to take stock of the user experience with your current setup and what options you’re offering your customers.
 
If you have a fairly simple preference center, consider building out options for your audience to opt down rather than opt out. Depending on your email offerings and cadence, you can offer options to:
  • Scale back on how often they hear from you
  • Select which types of content they receive
  • Select areas of interest they might want to be contacted about
 
Build an engagement model for your customers
You may have a long list of subscribers, but do you know how engaged they really are? Now is the perfect time to find out. By segmenting your subscribers based on engagement, you can target those recipients who are most likely to interact with your emails and give those who aren’t engaged a break. 
 
To help you out, our Director of Project Services (and resident Marketing Cloud genius), Stephen Rosenfeld has put together a query you can modify and use to segment your list into very engaged, moderately engaged, not engaged, and dead. [Download the query here.]
 
 
Even with a lot of questions out in the world and some work put on hold, there are still a few projects you can tackle right now to set you up for digital marketing success. By taking this time to roll up your sleeves and dig into work you might not normally have time for, you’ll be ready to put your best foot forward when the time comes.