Get to Know Marketing App Extensions
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain types of marketing app extensions.
- Describe an external activity.
- Name examples of external actions.
Pardot is now known as Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. We wish we could snap our fingers to update the name everywhere, but you can expect to see the previous name in a few places until we replace it, including in the app itself.
The Marketing Platform Dilemma
Did you know that the average marketer uses more than 12 marketing technology solutions? Your team likely works across multiple platforms every day, manually completing tasks that could be automated with the right integrations.
You might be familiar with native or packaged integrations that connect customer data to prospect records. But let’s take it to the next level with marketing app extensions. These powerful objects offer two extensibility tools that elevate your automations with third-party data and even help you act in external applications.
Activities vs. Actions
Let’s talk about external activities and external actions.
External Activity uses activity data in automations that originates outside of Account Engagement. You control which external activities you want to capture, such as an SMS engagement, webinar attendance, or purchase. Then, set that prospect activity as either a trigger in Engagement Studio, or as criteria in automation rules and segmentation rules.
External Actions initiate actions in third-party apps. For example, an external action can trigger an SMS send or register a customer for an event. External actions are built on the Salesforce invocable action framework, which lets you install commonly used flow actions or develop a custom solution. To trigger an action, use the external action with an Engagement Studio program.
Which Feature Is Right for My Team?
You don’t have to choose! These extensibility features can work together to solve all kinds of business problems. You can use an external activity for one job and an external action for another. Or, combine extensibility features to streamline manual, multiplatform processes into seamless customer journeys for your identified prospects.
Before you create an activity or action type, first create a marketing app extension with a business unit assignment. We recommend that you name the extension after the third-party app you’re connecting to, and use descriptive names for your activity and action types. For example, you might have an extension for Slack and an activity labeled Posted in Channel.
See It in Action
Let’s find out how Northern Trail Outfitters has automated its ecommerce and direct mail marketing efforts with these extensibility features.
Paulo from Marketing has a vision for an upcoming print campaign that guides prospective customers from city bus shelters to the great outdoors. Since the vision requires working in three different systems, he works with Warren from IT to automate as much as possible.
Paulo and Warren use a few tools to prepare for the campaign. They create a campaign record, a marketing form, and two marketing app extensions.
- Extension: EComm
- External Activity: EComm Coupon Used
- Extension: Direct Mail Vendor
- External Action: Add to List
To bring it all together, Paulo builds an Engagement Studio program.
Read Rachel’s experience first. Then review the Behind the Scenes column to see how the tools work together to support each step of her journey.
| Rachel’s Experience | Behind the Scenes |
|---|---|
|
Rachel is waiting for the bus when she sees a Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) poster that includes the coupon code TAKEAHIKE. She heads to the NTO site on her phone and purchases a pair of boots with the coupon code. |
The ecommerce platform tracks the coupon usage as an external activity, EComm Coupon Used. Using the coupon adds Rachel to a list at the beginning of an engagement program. |
|
The confirmation email for her purchase includes a message that asks her to sign up for additional offers by mail. She taps the link to sign up and submits the form. |
A marketing form captures the mailing address fields and tracks the form view and submission. The form submission triggers an external action called Add to List. This action uses Handlebars Merge Language to connect fields, so that it can accurately pass her mailing address information to the mailing house system. |
|
Later, she receives a mailer that lists five great hikes in her area and promotes the #takeahike hashtag to use when she hits the trail. |
All of the marketing assets and customer engagement are related to the Take a Hike campaign, so Paulo can report on its performance and ROI. |
What a trip! Now that you know what external activities and external actions can do, let’s dig into how they work.