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Here’s a bonus Salesforce Marketing Cloud tip for those SFMC users out there in Spam Resource land. Wondering how to configure the Reply Mail Management reply handling functionality? If so, very smart SFMC wizard Donna Redmond has got just what you need: a blog post (and a package manager and video) that explain what you can do with this functionality, and how to configure it. Check it out here.
Salesforce Pardot (aka “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement”) is a B2B-focused marketing automation tool meant to help companies nurture leads and build engaged email relationships with their subscribers. If you’re a Pardot user and wondering how do I set myself up for deliverability success? And how do I know ongoing if I’m having deliverability challenges or not? Then this content is perfect for you. In this fifteen minute recorded webinar, I’ll walk you through the deliverability basics when it comes to the Salesforce Pardot platform. Find the recording on Youtube or embedded below, and thanks for watching! For ease of navigation, below I have included all of the different links I referenced in the recorded webinar. Happy surfing! Configure DKIM authentication in Pardot. “Warm up” your IP and domain in Pardot. More on 2024 Yahoo and Gmail sender requirements. Opt-in performs better. Should I use a purchased email list? Pardot Reporting
Just a quick post for today, with a couple of random bits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (aka ExactTarget) info. These have been sitting in my notes for a while, and since I’ve got nothing else Marketing Cloud related to share right now, I figured I’d wrap them up into this tiny little post right here. First, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has an email validation API. Did you know? I didn’t know. Let’s take a look at what the documentation says it can do. The “Validate Email” API has multiple criteria (validators): SyntaxValidator, MXValidator, and ListDetectiveValidator. One assumes syntax validator is a format checker. The reference to List Detective implies that the address is checked to see if its username or domain matches against the List Detective filtering list, meaning that Marketing Cloud would reject import of the address under normal circumstances. The MX Validator, I assume, is some sort of DNS
For those that don’t know, I was director of deliverability for Salesforce Marketing Cloud (previously ExactTarget) from 2006 through 2021. My love of all this email and guiding clients toward deliverability success even predates that — having started my first email sends (and building my first email filters) way back in the late 1990s. But it was during the Salesforce days where I was most able to “spread the word” of deliverability best practices. I’m insanely proud of the client interactions and knowledge share I was able to do while I was there. It pleases me that you can still find remnants of those days online!For example, here’s a link to a recorded session I did for Salesforce’s Trailhead Live in 2019. That’s a few years ago now, but I think this is still a solid overview of deliverability considerations for those using Salesforce Marketing Cloud to send email messaging.
Time for a quick recap! People ask me about this a lot — how does one deal with ghost clicks or bot clicks in Salesforce Pardot (aka “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement”)? These unwanted clicks come from multiple sources, but primarily from email and network security devices and services meant to scan inbound email messages at companies and mailbox providers, looking for malicious links. What can happen is that they can inflate your click rate (an email to 500 people suddenly has 10,000 clicks logged) and besides making your stats wonky, they can interfere with engagement tracking and occasionally unsubscribe recipients accidentally.I’ve had this list of link kicking around for a while now, and I thought it would be good to share it here. Without further ado, here’s my Pardot Bot Click / Bot Prevention reading list:First, learn about “Metrics Guard.”Next, read about “Automatically filtered activity in a Pardot emails.”Then check
Hey, Pardot users! Looking for a recorded webinar that covers on deliverability best practices, how to maximize deliverability success when sending via the Pardot (aka Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) B2B email platform? Well, we’ve got you covered right here at Spam Resource. On August 24, 2022 Ben LaMothe hosted a Tampa Pardot User Group meeting, and invited me to attend. We talked about how best to keep a clean house (meaning clean data) in Pardot, what your options are for data cleanup, as well as touching on deliverability best practices and how to use Pardot’s built-in features to help boost your engagement and, by extension, boost your deliverability success. Check out the recording below, and don’t check out Ben’s Pardot tips and tricks blog at PardotGeeks.com and his recent article for DemandGen on this very topic.
Eliot Harper from CloudKettle has done an amazing thing: Tasked himself with understanding the different types of global unsubscribe handling in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform, and created this fantastic explanation of how these work and what Marketing Cloud users should expect as far as how these will impact who you can or cannot send email messages to via that platform. If you’re an SFMC user or consultant, you’ll know that this is a complex feature that can confuse folks easily. Eliot does a wonderful job of breaking it down and helping to make it easy to grasp. Great job, sir!
Last week it was SFMC Geeks, but today it’s Pardot Geeks! I love it when smart and kind geeks share knowledge to better empower others on how to do the right thing. A few weeks ago, Ben LaMothe (Pardot Solutions Architect at BDO Digital) led a Tampa Pardot User Group meeting on the topic of Email Deliverability Best Practices. He, along with Lori Trzcinksi, Brandon Walton, Stephen Stouffer and Katherine Lehman, share their expertise and experiences relating to best practices around email deliverability. It’s good stuff! Find it here, and be sure to bookmark the Pardot Geeks blog, if you’re a user of Salesforce Pardot and want to learn more about how it all works.
Lesley Higgins (a Marketing Solutions Consultant at NuAge Experts but prefers to refer to herself as a Marketing Cloud Developer) posting over at SFMC Geeks recently shared a valuable tip for Salesforce Marketing Cloud users who might want to override the default bounce processing logic to more quickly suppress certain types of addresses. It’s a good thing to do; getting rid of bad addresses more quickly means subsequent sends are likely to deliver faster and a higher bounce rate can negatively impact your deliverability success (meaning that more quick suppression of bouncing addresses can have a positive impact). Read all about it here.
From The DRIP: More great content from Lucy Mazalon. This time around, she details what Salesforce Pardot does to help users deal with non-human interactions, aka bot and security device clicks and activity. Metrics Guard and Visitor Filters being two key Pardot features that will help you out. And, very importantly, she didn’t forget the two-click unsubscribe — making sure that your unsubscribing user has to click a button or link on the landing page before they are considered unsubscribed. Bots won’t do that; people will. (If your email sending platform doesn’t support two-click unsubscribe, then you need to start asking them why that is. It’s a best practice nowadays.)Read it here.