We can also access and manipulate our data with Server Side Java Script, an entirely different programmatic language that can be used in emails, landing pages and (very powerfully) with Automation Studio. We also can use our data with the Einstein suite of AI tools to gain incredible new insights and even dynamically choose the right content and send times for our emails.
And then there are the channels. Data can be number in cambodia used in SMS messages, to create advertising audiences, or even to push messages to your business-owned apps.
There may be a steeper learning curve in Marketing Cloud Engage than with other platforms in this space, but let's not beat around the bush, it is the only platform in this space that can realise the full potential of your businesses' key marketing asset - its data.
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Yes, other MAPs support a degree of relational data modelling, but they are all limited. Oracle Eloqua [author note - they may call this something else now], for example, has a relational model, but this is limited to one relationship level. So, if you wanted to link your contact to purchases and then link the purchases to a product database that contained detailed product info, this would not be possible with Eloqua.
3. Data Queries
Structured Query Language (SQL) is both a blessing and a curse for Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
It's not as intuitive, and harder to learn than your typical segmentation tools (and Marketing Cloud still has segment Filters for those who can't SQL, by the way). In fact, for someone not steeped in data science, it can all seem like trying to learn ancient Greek. But where it excels (and why I am a big fan) is at being able to make precise queries that can extract the exact data your marketers need.
What's more, you can actually transform that data into something that is really meaningful for a given marketing journey. You've got a persona you need to target? Use an automation in Marketing Cloud to build a data table that reflects the attributes only relevant to that persona. You have multiple data systems with similar data, but all the labelling is different? Merge that data using SQL and create a table that the final marketing user can use with confidence (they won't even know they are using data from different systems).
It's not easy by any stretch, but all of this is possible and if you have the team members or the support to build these automations, the sky is very much the limit in terms of what you can do. You don't have to use SQL all the time, but it's there and it is the most powerful segment-building tool there is.
4. Programmatic Support
Yes, it's another subject that is a bit technical, but Marketing Cloud Engage provides so much more programmatic support than any competing platform.
What does this mean? It’s a big subject, so I'll just provide one example to illustrate what this means in terms of marketing enablement. Say I wanted to prompt a customer for a review and star rating based on a recent purchase, then attach information on that review to the customer record whilst simultaneously adjusting the aggregate review score for the product… I would have a really tough challenge in most systems.
In MCE, I can create a Cloud page that can host the user interface for the review. When the user clicks from an email and completes the review, we trigger a script that directly inputs the review data to the correct contact and, with some simple coding logic, can update the aggregate score. Other systems, like Adobe's Marketo [author's note: like Eloqua the official name may now be different], have velocity script that is nifty for creating dynamic content in emails (but doesn't work on landing pages), but it is very limited in comparison. I could write a whole blog post and more on this one subject, but I will just leave it at that!