sfmc
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.
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.
Adam Spriggs recently posted a very helpful Salesforce Marketing Cloud tip to his blog, which you’ll find here. In it, he guides you through how to use AMPscript to implement a “two click unsubscribe” process. Why would you want to do that? To keep bots and email security filters from accidentally unsubscribing subscribers without their knowledge, of course. It happens, and it’s a very good thing to protect against. I have long advocated that every “one click unsub” process should actually be a “two click unsub” process, to minimize false positive unsubscribes.
CloudKettle’s Eliot Harper is back! Last time, I linked to him talking about Global Unsubscribe handling in SFMC. This time, his topic is Marketing Cloud’s one-click unsubscribe functionality. If you know me, you know I tell people that one click unsub functionality can be inherently susceptible to bot clicks causing false unsubscribes — and Eliot suggests a configuration modification to help mitigate that problem! It’s not the way that I would have done it, but that’s definitely fine by me. He’s aware of the problem, he’s explaining the problem clearly, and he’s offering up a unique solution, and I’ll trust his logic here. Good thinking, good sir!Find the video here and don’t forget to check out his whole series!
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!
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.