Salesforce Marketing Cloud October 2021 Release Highlights

Salesforce has recently finished rolling out its October updates to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and there are lots of new updates to be excited about. The one I'm most excited about is the ability to add Interaction Studio activities and decision splits within Journey Builder. This is the first out-of-the-box integration from Journey Builder to Interaction Studio and allows User Attributes, Actions, and Segment information to be leveraged within journeys.

Classic Web & Mobile Analytics is Officially Retired

For customers that relied on this tool to calculate web-behavior based triggers such as Abandoned Cart, those features are now available within the Behavioral Triggers application. More info on Behavioral Triggers can be found here.The replacement to the data export functions is passing to Einstein Recommendation Integrations which are now available within Contact Builder, which when configured will provide its information automatically within data extensions in your account.To integrate your web analytics, use the Google Analytics Integration for Marketing Cloud. 

Optimize Einstein Engagement Scoring with New Thresholds

Einstein used to use Industry Averages in order to calculate engagement for your subscribers. That power is now in your hands to configure so you can make your own determinations on threshold levels for each KPI including: Click Likelihood, Open Likelihood, Subscriber Retention, and Web Conversion. Visit this new tool available in your Setup tab. 

Easily Add an Automatic Fallback for Interactive Email Forms

Previously requiring custom development, Interactive Email Forms now allow you to set an automatic Fallback condition for any email clients that cannot display interactive forms, which can drastically improve your time to market on new interactive elements in your emails. Typically, the fallback is a button with a link to a public Cloud Page form. 

Orchestrate Journeys Based on User Behaviors with Mobile App Events

After you and your development team set up the initial integration with Marketing Cloud's Events with your mobile app, you'll then be able to leverage that data within Journey Builder, allowing decision splits and other activities based on data within the event stream. 

View Your Journey History and Analytics on the Redesigned Interface

The Journey Builder team has given the History view a design refresh, and you can better visualize specific journey events across time. Use it to isolate issues with errors, determine dates of large entries, and more.Pro tip: Currently, Marketing Cloud doesn't automatically refresh the results based on filter selections. Make your filter selections, and then re-select the Time Range in the upper right to refresh the History results.

Expand the Supported Use Cases for Marketing Cloud Package Manager

Avoid creating duplicates by selecting the "Use Existing Item" option when deploying a package. This is especially useful when pushing large packages with several sets of dependencies. 

Connect Google Advertising Leads in Salesforce

Coming in November, a new Marketing Cloud AppExchange application will now allow you to import 1st party data collected by interactive ads that are made with Google. This application for Lead Capture replaces the previous Lead Capture application. Read the full release notes here.If you'd like to attend the webinar where the product team will review all the newly-added features, tune into the October 2021 Marketing Cloud Release New Feature Overview on October 28, 2021 at 12:00PM EDT at https://sfdc.co/MCNewFeature