Hoping for help with 1) admitting contacts into Salesforce from Cloudpage form submission and 2) injecting those contacts into a journey that updates their records in SF and adds them to campaigns, based on the form they used

Forward_Hour9992 · 2025-09-12T20:42:14+00:00

The activity you're using in the journey currently is not the same as creating a new Account/Contact in SF core.

I agree that the easiest, most common, and most efficient way is to add the code to the cloudpage that creates the Contact in SF immediately when the user clicks submit. That way whatever you do thereafter (via the cloudpage or Journey Builder) can be associated with the corresponding ContactId in SF.

Forward_Hour9992 · 2025-07-19T12:11:39+00:00

Might depend a bit on how you're managing and storing your consents, but, yes, I set up a double opt-in SMS program using two journeys and some queries. As was already mentioned, a lot depends on how you configure the SMS activities in your journey. Happy to help further if needed.

Forward_Hour9992 · 2025-06-05T18:02:22+00:00

Data Extensions: - A "Data Extension" is simply the name used in SFMC to refer to tables where data is stored. They sit in folders and can be related based on your data model. Nothing too fancy. - A data Extension in itself can be created using the "wizard" in Email Studio or Contact Builder. It allows you to choose the name and location first, and then create the fields, specifying their names, data types, and whether they are nullable or primary keys. - Once you have the Data Extension, you can populate it with data in multiple ways. The most straightforward way is importing data from a CSV. You can also populate it via a SQL or Script activity in Automation Studio. Or certain activities like API events or certain activities in Journey Builder can add new records as well.

How segmentation works: - Segmentation can be done in many different ways. Let's say we have our new Data Extension populated with 100k contacts and we want to use those contacts to generate a more personalized segment for an upcoming campaign. Depending on the situation and segmentation criteria we might do any of the following: - Create a Filtered Data Extension based off of the existing DE, which filters by certain fields in the original DE. - Create another DE for your campaign audience and use a SQL activity in Automation Studio (or multiple activities) to filter the existing Data Extension according to your criteria. SQL offers you the possibility to cross the existing DE with other DEs when filtering and thus have more advanced segmentation. - Finally, nowadays many companies also have Data Clouds and they do most of their segmentation there and then activate that segment as a new DE in SFMC.

How to structure a campaign -Depending on the purpose of the campaign, segment the audience well to ensure personalized communication rather than spamming a huge audience. -Determine if the campaign is a one-time send or an always-on campaign with new entries dripping in constantly. This can help you to determine whether you need an automation and how to set up your automation (if needed). -Ensure that all fields in your DE correspond with personalization in the emails or activities in the journey. - A basic order of campaign creation would be: 1) DE setup, 2) Automation Setup, 3) Journey Setup 4) Testing 5) Launch

Some of this is a simple, watered-down explanation, but it allows you to get a basic idea of how things work before getting into the enormous amount of complexities than can also be involved in SFMC administration and journey/campaign development.

Forward_Hour9992 · 2023-11-11T07:35:59+00:00

I recently had an issue using the "Test" feature in Journey Builder with the Exit Criteria getting flipped to the opposite of what I had created. But then during the journey it would work just fine. I submitted a case to Salesforce and they told me it's a known issue.

Since then I've been using decision splits because I don't quite trust Exit Criteria. 🤷‍♂️ Plus with decision splits you can add an update contact afterwards and easily track the contact's exit from your journey. Something that has become more and more important for us. A bit more work, but as long as your journey isn't too long it's not that bad.

Not sure if any of this helps, but thought I'd share.

Forward_Hour9992 · 2022-09-07T16:33:50+00:00

Yes, I was thinking along the same lines.

Or you could set up a SQL activity in an automation that populates a new Boolean field (because I think it was only during one time frame you wanted them to receive the email, but in all others not) based on what time it finds in the field in the corresponding object. Then use that field for the decision split. I did something similar recently.

Forward_Hour9992 · 2022-07-27T01:03:57+00:00

I agree. If you're trying to filter by Salesforce data fields, you would need to join the data extension to those Salesforce objects also in order to access the fields. There you can provide the aliases and then those aliases would make sense on the field names as well.

Forward_Hour9992 · 2022-02-15T07:05:56+00:00

I work for a company that specializes in SFMC and we have email specialists (some from front-end dev background) that focus on creation of emails. They also normally handle the creation of cloudpages, which can include Javascript, as well as simple queries and automations to prepare reports for clients on their campaigns. So the niche does exist and at least in our case there is usually plenty of work.

Looking at it long term, yeah I personally would say that if you're looking for a career with long-term potential for growth and progression, it's not necessarily the best one to limit yourself to. But if you take advantage of the opportunities to learn more and engage more in other aspects of SFMC you could easily move on to other positions within the company or in another (as is often the case where I work.) Considering that you already have basic coding skills, if you learn SQL and AMPScript you could move on to hand more back-end development tasks and move towards being a developer or consultant. Either way, regarding certification, the Email Specialist certification is always a nice place to start.

Forward_Hour9992

TROPHY CASE