Discover Distributed Marketing and Alerts in Marketing Cloud Next

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you'll be able to:

• Identify the brand consistency and compliance challenges that marketers face.
  
• Explain how Distributed Marketing and Alerts addresses compliance challenges.
  
• Describe the three roles in a Distributed Marketing and Alerts workflow.
  
• List the key components used in a Distributed Marketing and Alerts campaign.
  
• Describe the complete workflow of a Distributed Marketing and Alerts campaign.
  

Too Much Email, Not Enough Brand Control

Every week, hundreds of emails go out from non-marketing users such as financial advisors, insurance agents, and sales representatives. As the marketer responsible for brand communications, you have no visibility into what they’re sending. Some email is on-brand. Others reference expired promotions, use outdated messaging, or miss required compliance language. And by the time you find out, the message has already reached the customer. The stakes are even higher for organizations in regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, where every customer communication must meet strict compliance standards.

The challenge isn't the non-marketing users, it's giving them access to approved content. Without a reliable process, it’s difficult to maintain brand consistency at scale.

That's exactly what Distributed Marketing and Alerts fixes. It gives you the tools to create brand-approved, compliant email templates that non-marketing users can personalize and send.

This module uses sales users as an example of non-marketing users.

Say Hello to Distributed Marketing and Alerts

Distributed Marketing and Alerts helps you share approved email templates with sales users. This ensures brand control while giving sales users the tools they need to send personalized, compliant email. Available as a Marketing Cloud Next add-on, it lets you build email templates in Marketing Cloud Next and lets sales users personalize and send them directly from Salesforce. Sales users always have access to the latest approved template, right when they need it.

As a marketer, here's what that means for you.

• Ensure brand consistency and compliance at scale.
  
• Stay in control of every customer touchpoint, from template to send.
  
• Monitor how your approved templates are being used.
  

Distributed Marketing and Alerts brings together three roles, each with a distinct part to play in ensuring customer communications remain consistent, compliant, and on brand.

Know the Players Behind Every Send

You work closely with admins and sales users to deliver every Distributed Marketing and Alerts campaign. Here's how the three roles work together.

To make all of this work, a Distributed Marketing and Alerts campaign relies on a set of key components.

Key Components at a Glance

These are the building blocks you configure to set up and run a Distributed Marketing and Alerts campaign.

Now that you know the roles and components involved, here's how they all come together.

How Distributed Marketing and Alerts Works

Assuming your admin has completed the initial setup, follow a campaign from creation to delivery to understand how your work as a marketer enables sales users to send approved email.

Create the Email Template

Create and publish a brand-approved email template in the CMS Workspace. Finalize the design elements that must stay consistent, and specify which content sales users can edit before sending.

Create a Campaign and Configure the Flow

To make an approved Distributed Marketing and Alerts email template available to sales users, start by creating a campaign and its associated event-triggered flow.

1. Create your Distributed Marketing and Alerts campaign, and select an Event Flow type. This sets up the campaign framework and defines how the flow is triggered.
   
2. Configure your flow, and select Distributed Marketing and Alerts Message. This connects your flow to the correct event so email is triggered at the right moment.
   
3. Add the Send Email Message element; select a published email template for your sales users to personalize. This is the step where you define which approved template the sales users can access and send. Select the Communication Subscription consent category (such as Promotional) that governs the outgoing message.
   

After you configure each element, review your flow and activate it.

Now sales users handle the rest. From any lead or contact record in Salesforce, sales users select a campaign, personalize the content, and send the email.

After an email is sent, you and the sales users can track results.

You can monitor campaign performance through the Total Email Performance component on a Campaign record in Marketing Cloud Next. This access to Marketing Cloud Next is for marketers only.

Sales users track individual record engagement through the Unified Engagement History dashboard, available on lead, contact, and person account record pages. The Distributed Sends dashboard tracks all individual and bulk email sends.

What’s Next

You now have everything you need to run a distributed email program that stays on-brand. Start by creating your templates in Marketing Cloud Next and setting up the campaign flow using event-triggered flows. Your sales users can then personalize and send email right from their Salesforce record pages. And when the email goes out, Total Email Performance reporting keeps you in the loop.

Marketing stays in control of brand and compliance, sales gets preapproved templates they can personalize, and customers receive email that feels timely, relevant, and on-brand every time.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Distributed Marketing and Alerts
• Salesforce Help: Build a Flow
• Salesforce Help: Monitor Performance for Distributed Marketing Messages