Prepare for a Successful Implementation
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify what makes an implementation successful.
- Evaluate your organization's resources and use cases.
Marketing Cloud Personalization Implementation
Note: Interaction Studio (formerly Evergage) is now known as Marketing Cloud Personalization. The new name reflects our mission and vision for innovation in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement. We wish we could snap our fingers to update the name everywhere, but you can expect to see the previous name in various places until we replace it.
Marketing Cloud Personalization helps you personalize and manage real-time engagements with your customers. The first step to a successful journey is selecting an implementation path that matches your business needs and future goals. But don’t worry—you aren’t alone in this journey! This badge helps you think through the key considerations to make your implementation project successful.
Check out Marketing Cloud Personalization Basics to learn more about Marketing Cloud Personalization capabilities and key concepts.
What Defines Success?
Regardless of the scale of your project, there are a few things you need to do to ensure success.
Identify the right implementation partner.
Look for a partner that has Marketing Cloud Personalization certified team members and follows project management best practices. They should also be committed to your ongoing success once the project is completed and offer support as needed. Ensure your partner conducts a knowledge transfer at the end of your project and provides thorough solution documentation.
Prioritize enablement.
All developers and business users who might use Marketing Cloud Personalization post-project should be included in knowledge transfer sessions provided by your partner. Before ending your project, thoroughly review solution documentation and ensure all your questions are answered.
Confirm that your team is aligned and committed.
To be successful you need to have committed and active team members participating in this project. Your team should include cross-functional members that represent both marketing and technical functions. They should also be expected to complete any self-guided coursework and be involved in enablement sessions.
Evaluate your current campaign workflow and processes.
Before you begin implementation, review how personalization can impact your business. Start by reviewing your processes to see what might need to change to support personalization. And determine what resources you need to support ongoing personalization campaigns.
Anticipate change and focus on business value.
If your current team has experience with an existing process or personalization platform, expect differences. Discuss with your team how to achieve your marketing objectives and business goals using Marketing Cloud Personalization, rather than re-creating an existing solution.
With success criteria in mind, you’re off to a good start. Now let’s review additional planning considerations.
Evaluate Resources and Use Cases
Marketing Cloud Personalization implementation requires developer resources to create site mapping, web content zones, and campaigns. Developers need to manage website components designed to support user interaction tracking and should be proficient in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. Regardless of scale, to effectively manage the solution after implementation, your team should have some access to developer resources.
To minimize scope creep, your requested use cases should be well developed and clear. It should define exactly what you expect your implementation partner to complete. If you need specific content zones to be mapped and made available for personalization, make sure content zones support multiple campaigns targeting different audiences. Plus, if you can only have a few zones created by your partner, select high-value (traffic/engagement) areas of your site to maximize the impact of your personalization.
Next Up: Project Approaches
Now that you have some keys to success, let’s shift our focus to possible ways you can approach your implementation project.