marketing cloud connect

The April Marketing Cloud Release has gone live! There are so many new features, enhancements and bug fixes, we’re sure you’ll find something to get excited about.

Advertising Studio Release Notes – April 2017

Advertising Audiences

New Features

NEW PRIMARY ADVERTISING STUDIO USER EXPERIENCE

Updates to the User Experience provides a cleaner look & feel, while alerts, notifications and errors, which are now more detailed and specific, are centralised. Advertising Studio now loads much faster and improvements have been made to the design to improve responsiveness and display the most important information about your audiences.

DETAILED ACTIVITY LOGS FOR ALL AUDIENCES

All audiences will have a detailed activity log applied, so you can audit any changes made to it.

SUPPORT FOR SHARED DATA EXTENSIONS

You can now use a Shared Data Extension to advertise to Facebook, Twitter, Google and Instagram, as well as across display advertising.

Performance Enhancements & Bug Fixes

There have been improvements made to improve the speed of the platform with the Contacts API now managing the creation of audiences, improved error messaging and audience update times reflecting the timezone from Marketing Cloud

Audience Builder Release Notes - April 2017

Contact Builder

Improved User Interface for Attribute Sets

Improvements have been made to the User Interface to make the use of attribute sets clearer. In previous versions, the interface was difficult to navigate, resulting in attributes being set incorrectly.

Content Builder Release Notes - April 2017

New Features

Drag-and-Drop Code Snippets in Layout View

You can now drag-and-drop snippets from the Content tab into your template or email. Previously, you could only insert snippets through editing the HTML.

Salesforce Data Extensions and Audiences in Dynamic Content Block

If you're using Marketing Cloud Connect or Audience Builder, you can now use these data sets to create Dynamic Content.

URL Source for Content Blocks

Content Builder now lets you use an external URL for images, rather than having to import images into the Content Library. Additionally, the image won't be imported into the Content Library when using this method.

Subject and Preheader Moved to Top of the Preview Canvas

To align with email and test workflows, the Subject and Preheader fields have been moved to the top of the Preview Canvas, instead of being outside the editor.

Asset Selection for AMPScript Content Builder Functions

You no longer need to know the CustomerKey or ID of assets when using the AMPScript ContentBlockByKey, ContentBlockByID, ContentImageByKey, and ContentImageByID functions. The new look up feature shows the CustomerKey or ID to speed up your output.

Folder Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs will help you navigate through Content Builder, with the folder path appearing in the grid. Clicking on the folders will let you navigate directly to that folder.

Copy Location

You can now copy the location of a piece of content in Content Builder to share it with others or to add a folder path reference to an AMPscript function.

Performance Enhancements and Bug Fixes

Several bug fixes have been applied that improve the mobile responsiveness of templates on Android devices, fixes to the update template process, where content boxes were lost and updates to the grid performance and resolving save issues.

Email Studio Release Notes - April 2017

Email

New Features

URL EXPIRATION AND REDIRECTS

With this release, you'll be able to mange when links in email sends expire and where they redirect to after the expiration date.

Performance Enhancements and Bug Fixes

EMAIL ACTIONS VISIBLE IN CONTENT BUILDER THUMBNAIL VIEW

From the Content Builder grid, you're now able to select all email-related actions. These include Edit, Properties, Send, Preview and Test, Content Detective, Validate, Inbox Preview, Share, Copy Location, Move, Duplicate and Delete.

TEST SEND INCREASED USABILITY

Adding multiple test addresses to the emails in Content Builder has been improved. You just need to seperate the email addresses with a comma to send tests to multiple recipients. To change the addresses, just delete them and in the right one.

SEND FLOW USER ASSISTANCE

A change to the send flow User Interface reminds you that changes to the subject and pre-header only affect the specific email send.

TRACKING ENHANCEMENTS IN CLICK ACTIVITY PAGE

A better representation of the live email is presented in the Click Activity Tracking report. This update removes coding, such as Guide Template Language and AMPscript, from the view and displays the default content blocks. This removes confusion over what was delivered to the inbox and makes it easier to develop insights around click activity.

MANAGE SCHEDULED CONTENT BUILDER SENDS FROM THE TRACKING TAB

Previously, there was no way to access pending sends for emails built in the Content Builder. The Tracking Tab now provides this feature where you will be able to view, pause, resume or cancel scheduled jobs sent through Content Builder.

Campaigns & Approvals

Performance Enhancements & Bug Fixes

CAMPAIGNS

A bug fix has been applied that resolves an issue where the incorrect data was being pulled in multi-campaign email tracking summary report, an issue where users couldn't delete a reviewer from a campaign and an issue where the timezone is incorrect for campaigns created from Calendar menus.

EMAIL CLASSIC APPROVALS

There have been bug fixes applied that fix a conflict with the Timezone set in Marketing Cloud, the Audit History being 6 hours out of time and the Classic Approvals Tab not appearing or showing an incorrect approval status.

Journey Builder Release Notes - April 2017

Automation Studio

New Features

IMPORT ACTIVITY CONFIGURATION ENHANCEMENTS

User feedback indicated that Import Activities were the most widely used function in Automation Studio, but proved difficult to setup. A new Import Activity Wizard has been developed to make the process clearer and faster to complete.

IMPORT STEP IN AUTOMATION STUDIO CONFIGURATION WIZARD

The Import Wizard includes Auto-inserted AMPscript variables used for dynamic filenaming and displays an example filename, to show the expected format of that filename, based on file naming patterns.

STEP-LEVEL ACTIVITY DESTINATION CONTENTION PREVENTION

Previously, it was possible to add two activities, such as an import and a query, that would target the same data extension or destination, producing unexpected outcomes. With this release, when a Query, Import or Filter Activity is added to a step, and shares a destination with another step, an option is presented to add the activity to a new, subsequent step.

VIEW ACTIVITY DETAILS FROM AUTOMATION OVERVIEW

If a step errors, you'll be able to see the error details in Automation Studio. You'll also be able to click into the Activity Wizard to troubleshoot the issue quickly.

AUTOMATION WORKFLOW ENHANCED WITH LIGHTNING

The Lightning look and feel has been applied to Automation Studio, providing consistency across the platform.

Performance Enhancements & Bug Fixes

SALESFORCE DATA EXTENSIONS SUPPORTED IN QUERY AND IMPORT ACTIVITIES

A Salesforce Data Extension can now be set as the destination for Import and Query Activities through Automation Studio.

SALESFORCE IMPORTS ARE VIEW-ONLY FROM ACTIVITIES SECTION

Salesforce Imports are now view-only through Automation Studio to prevent editing Salesforce Imports and affecting the configuration. If Salesforce Imports are required, this can be completed through Synchronised Data Sources.

Journey Builder

New Features

UNDO AND REDO FEATURE ON JOURNEY BUILDER CANVAS

You'll be able to build out Journeys faster with the undo and redo features. You can undo and redo up to 50 actions, provided the actions remain on the Journey screen. Undo and Redo can be applied to:

- Drag activities and entry sources onto canvas
- Configure activities and entry sources
- Move activities on canvas
- Deleting activities and entry sources
- Updating journey name and description
- Updating journey settings

IMPROVED ENTRY SOURCE CONFIGURATION

New Entry Source tiles have been added:

- API Event Tile - replaces the function of the Contact Event
- Salesforce Data Event - is now a standalone data source and no longer requires the selection of the Event entry source. This includes Salesforce Campaign and Salesforce Data Events
- Contact Event - will be retired this year. This function will be replaced with Audiences for scheduled entries or the API for unscheduled entries

EMAIL ACTIVITY HOVER STATISTICS

Hovering over an email will now display statistics around the email activity. You can click the statistics in the box to view more data in a new screen, including the contact key, email address and time stamps for send activity.

HEALTH STATISTICS PANEL

The Health Statistics Panel gives you greater insight into how your Journey is running. The panel shows:

- Goals - shows the goal description and the goal attainment percentage
- Journey Counts - the number of contacts currently in the Journey
- Alerts - Count of all contacts past due a wait activity

This data updates once every sixty minutes.

ADDITIONAL ENTRY RESULTS DATA VISIBILITY

More data has been added to the Entry Results page, including:

- Schedule details in Next Run and Last Run
- Data Extension Used
- Contacts Pending Evaluation - the number of records entering the Journey in the next run
- Queue Processing - the number of records being processed to enter the journey. This is currently in Beta

ENHANCED AUDIENCE EVALUATION OPTIONS

The Journey Builder Wizard now lets you evaluate all records in the source data extension, or you can evaluate the new records in the source for each scheduled run.

Performance Enhancements & Bug Fixes

JOURNEY DATA VERSUS CONTACT DATA

Consistency in language has been applied to Journey Data and Contact Data. Journey Data refers to data attributes that remain unchanged throughout the Journey, while Contact Data uses the Contact Model to capture the most current information.

This affects:

- Decision Split
- Goals
- Salesforce Activities
- Wait Until (Beta)

SCHEDULE, STATUS, AND DEEP LINK ON JOURNEY BUILDER CANVAS TO ASSOCIATED AUTOMATION

You'll now see the Automation Status on the Summary Tile, giving you insight into any issues with automating your audience for the Journey.

MOBILECONNECT AUDIENCE REPLACES MOBILE STUDIO AUDIENCE

The name MobileConnect is now used as the audience to avoid confusion Mobile Push audiences.

Marketing Cloud Einstein Release Notes - April 2017

Einstein Recommendations

Performance Enhancements and Bug Fixes

PREDICTIVE WEB: RECOMMENDATION API PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS

Modifications to the API show a 10% - 15% improvement in response times when retrieving recommendations. If larger than average recommendations are used, the improvement is slightly higher.

PREDICTIVE WEB AND EMAIL: RECOMMENDATION RULES PROCESSING PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS

If you're using Rule Manager for business rules, improvements have been made to the minimise the response time for a recommendation to be returned.

PREDICTIVE WEB AND EMAIL: TRIGGERED CATALOG NOTIFICATIONS

When using automatic catalog uploads, success and failure notifications are sent immediately after processing. Manually uploaded catalogs will no longer see a prompt to sign up for notifications.

Mobile Studio Release Notes - April 2017

GroupConnect

Performance Enhancements and Bug Fixes

IMPROVEMENTS TO GROUPCONNECT REPORTS

Messages sent to LINE now have two reports, LINE Outbound Message Report and LINE Triggered Sends Summary Report. The two reports give a greater insight into communications on LINE, improving the accuracy and speed of reporting.

MobileConnect

EDITOR UPDATES

A new editor checks your message for GSM characters, identifying which messages need to be split into 70 or 160 maximum character messages. If you're using AMPscript, you can expand the screen size to improve your view.

PREVIEW UPDATE

Enhancements to the Preview show the message as it appears including the From Name, message splitting and concatenation.

MMS EDITOR AND PREVIEW UPDATES

The Lock Screen has been removed and MMS will now display as it would to the recipient.

Performance Enhancements & Bug Fixes

MobilePush

INTERNATIONALISATION IMPROVEMENTS

Enhancements have been made to make MobilePush easier to navigate for localised languages, such as German and Japanese.

Mobile Journey Builder for Apps SDK

ANDROID - VERSION 4.9.0

This release sees a number of improvements for Android, with a change to how the Device ID is handled to ensure it is unique, updated encryption SDK to resolve issues with Android Marshmallow and improved SDK Initialisation Time.

IOS - VERSION 4.8.0

Changes for iOS have been implemented including CloudPage inbox data sources ensuring that the inbox refreshes for the lifetime of the data source, correcting an issue that generated warnings in Swift projects around nullability annotations, update to push tokens to ensure that new or refreshed tokens are sent back to Marketing Cloud and an improvement to the SDK behaviour across multiple connections concurrently, improving thread safety.

Platform Release Notes - April 2017

App Centre

New Features

ALL APP CENTER API INTEGRATIONS AND PACKAGES NOW VIEWABLE INSIDE OF INSTALLED PACKAGES

Administrators can now see which API Integrations and Packages they have installed across Business Units in Installed Packages. You may need to switch on access to Installed Packages under Administration to see it, but once you do, the name and description for each API Integration and Package will appear.

A PERMISSION NOW GOVERNS THE CREATION OF API INTEGRATIONS, PACKAGES, OR MOBILEPUSH APPS VIA APP CENTER

To create new API Integrations, Packages or MobilePush Apps, a user will need to have the Installed Packages under Administration applied. Additionally, a user with the Administrator MobilePush permission under General can create MobilePush apps.

API INTEGRATIONS OR PACKAGES CREATED WITHIN YOUR ORGANISATION CAN NOW BE DELETED OR UNINSTALLED VIA INSTALLED PACKAGES

Administrators that have access across all Business Units can now uninstall and delete API Integrations and Packages, even from other sources such as HubExchange. The user will need to have Administer permission for Installed Packages under Administration applied.

Messaging

New Features

DEEP LINKING SUPPORT FOR IOS

Recipients on iOS devices can be linked directly into an Application via a URL. To support this, Marketing Cloud creates a link between the app and the domain used, directing the recipient to the most appropriate place in the app.

This is available only for iOS and requires Marketing Cloud Sender Authentication Package, SSL Certificate for click domain and changes to the iOS application.

Web Studio Notes - April 2017

CloudPages

New Features

RESPONSIVE LANDING PAGES WITH CUSTOMIZED MAX WIDTH

Use a drop-down to set the max width of a CloudPage, preventing the content skewing on large monitors. The default width is 1280px.

Performance Enhancements & Bug Fixes

STYLING IMPROVEMENTS TO MAINTAIN SETTINGS

You now have the ability to switch between the User Interface and a Design view to maintain the look and feel of content blocks.

What’s your favourite new feature? Let us know if the comments.

Salesforce have just announced their January release for Marketing Cloud. Here are the features that we like the most. Let us know what you’re most excited about in the comments!

Analytics Builder

We’ve seen that there some changes to reports, making it easier to filter by Campaign for Mobile Push and Mobile Connect.

Automation Studio

There’s lots of new stuff in Automation Studio, starting with a brand new User Interface. All of the functions are the same, so you won’t need to spend time learning how to use it again.

The new Activities tab is awesome and we’re super keen to start using it for our customers! It gives you a deconstructed view, showing each of the activities used by all your Automations, grouped by the activity type. The new Activities tab lets you edit Query Activities WITH syntax highlighting, showing you where the in the query the error occurred and what the error is. Speeding up the ability to write SQL and place it into an Automations is what we love!

Just on Query Activities, there’s now a limit of twenty in a single step of an Automation. We don’t see this as impacting on existing automations or limiting options for the future, as additional steps can be added to keep within the limit.

Changes have also been made to the error messages in Automation Studio. FTP Errors have been improved a little, so if you hover over them, you’ll see the cause. We’d love to see this improved so that the error is shown straight away and the FTP errors shown the Activities tab, like the Query Activity errors are.

Cloud Pages

If you’re collecting data on Social Networks, or just need a quick form in a Landing Page, Cloud Pages now as the option to add a date picker as well as update a List and a Data Extension at the same time.

Contact Builder

Looking at Contact Builder, there’s been a change to permissions. Now, the user will either have access to Contact Builder or not have access. This takes away potential issues of users with access to data incorrectly updating the Contact model and affecting areas of Marketing Cloud such as Journey Builder.

The Channel Address order is being phased out, which may impact Journeys later down the track. Any new Journeys should avoid using Channel Address.

There’s also been improvement to Data Extension searches on Contact Builder and the Contact Count Report has been released, giving you visibility of your overall Contacts in Marketing Cloud.

Content Builder

Content Builder updates include new templates and improvements to existing templates, making them render better in Outlook email clients. The Email Preview has also been improved, which now shows all available Templates and Data Extensions, instead of limiting them to just twenty-five. A bug, where test sends sent out multiple copies, has been fixed too.

Email Studio (Content Builder)

If you’re using Dynamic Content, you’re gonna love this! Rule Name customisation makes managing Dynamic Content a lot easier, while Impression Region Names makes reporting on eDMs that use Dynamic Content a whole heap easier. These changes are only available for new email content, though.

Email Studio

URL Expiration is here! This means that you’ll be able to expire URLs used in your eDMs and redirect them to another page. This saves resources managing webpages beyond their lifecycle and lets you focus traffic where you want it to go. You can set the time period for expiration from sixty days.

A couple of other changes to the way Conversions are tracked (moved from Email Address to Subscriber ID), Publication Lists can be moved to a different Business Unit and you can now dedupe a Data Filter in a Guided Send!

Journey Builder

Lots of changes to Journey Builder and some of you may need to check if there are changes that you need to make to existing Journeys. Let us know if we can help you out.

The biggest change is that Event Data, which is a snapshot of the Event Data Extension at the time the Contact enters the Journey, is now used for Personalisation across ALL new Journeys and new Versions. If there’s a Query Activity that updates the Event Data Extension, then you’ll need to check Interactions to make sure that it doesn’t rely on any changes for personalisation to work properly.

Triggered emails can’t be re-published in Journey Builder, which means you can’t make changes to email creative in a live Journey. You’ll need to create a new draft to use updated creative.

There’s a new History tab that’s going to help you check over Journeys, with a search feature to find exactly what you want to review.

One thing we really love is the change to Goal Configuration. They’re no longer Events / Entry Events and only require a Content filter to define. Not only is this going to make Goal Configuration much easier to build out, the logical approach makes it simple to explain the concept and process to other stakeholders.

There’s a massive change to Marketing Cloud Connect, where Sales and Service Cloud objects can be updated from a Journey, WITHOUT needing to know the data relationships. This gives you the opportunity to truly unite data across clouds, benefiting you with confidence in data and your customer with improved service accuracy and speed.

Mobile Connect

An enhancement to the SMS Blackout has been added, preventing you from sending SMS during the blackout period. You’ll need to be careful when you send though, as sends don’t pause when the blackout period starts.

Importing mobile numbers has also been updated, so if you add a positive sign (+) before the number, it will no longer be validated against the country that you specify in the country code. Any customers that were setup on Mobile Connect by Amicus Digital should be OK, as we remove the positive (+) sign as part of our implementations.

Predictive Intelligence

Predictive Intelligence is now called Einstein!

The big change here, apart from the name, is that you can prevent recommendations from using the system default recommendations. This could result in no recommendations being displayed, so you’ll need to assess how you want to use this feature.

Catalog import failures now have an email notification, so make sure that you add in your address if you’re using this.

And they were just our favourite new features! There are heaps more, which you can find in the Marketing Cloud documentation.