Email Marketing Integration

🚨 The MCP Server for Marketing Cloud Engagement is now GA Salesforce just announced general availability of its native MCP server for Marketing Cloud Engagement. This means AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or Gemini can now connect directly to SFMC and operate on data extensions, journeys, and automations, no code, no UI required. 🤔 Quick context: what's different from a regular API connection? A traditional API integration is hand-built: a developer picks specific endpoints, writes the code to call them, and hardcodes how the data maps back and forth. Every new use case means more custom code. MCP flips that. It's a standard "menu" that describes what a system can do, in a format any AI agent can read and use on its own, without a developer wiring each action by hand. Same underlying Marketing Cloud APIs, but now an AI assistant can discover and operate them directly from a plain-language request. What you'll learn: ✅ What MCP is and why Salesforce is rolling it out across every cloud ✅ How agent permissions are scoped (installed package + user) ✅ How to connect your AI assistant to the MCE MCP server ✅ What you can delegate today ✅ What safety guardrails exist to avoid costly mistakes What can you already do with this? ◆ Create a data extension by describing it in plain English ◆ Launch a welcome journey without touching Journey Builder ◆ Build a multi-email nurture sequence with a single prompt ◆ Add Einstein Send Time Optimization to a journey step ◆ Propagate a new field to every dependent data extension, with a dry-run preview before anything changes Important: The agent can only do what the intersection of the installed package's scopes and the user's own permissions allows. Destructive operations (delete, send) are flagged, but the agent can still execute them if it has permission, so review those scopes carefully before connecting anything to production. I tested this myself on a sandbox: set up the installed package, connected it to Claude, and had it look up and write a record to a real data extension in under 10 minutes. It works exactly as advertised. Key areas: ◆ Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement ◆ Model Context Protocol (MCP) ◆ Marketing automation ◆ OAuth / permission governance ◆ Applied AI for marketing #MarketingCloud #MCP #SalesforceAI #Agentforce #MarketingAutomation #SFMC #AMPscript #EmailMarketing #Salesforce #MarketingChampion #MarketingChampions

Most brands focus on Canvas, segments, and email templates. But some of the highest-ROI capabilities in Braze get completely overlooked. Here are 3 features most teams aren't using (but should be): 1️⃣ Zero Copy Sync What it does: Lets you trigger Canvases with real-time data from your warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, etc.) without actually writing that data to Braze user profiles. Why it matters: You get the personalization without copying data. You're accessing account balances, inventory levels, or order details exactly when you need them—not storing them permanently. Real-world use: A financial services company triggers balance alert campaigns by syncing account data directly from their warehouse. Users get personalized messages with their current balance, available credit, or spending insights—all without inflating their Braze data point usage. The data stays in the warehouse, but the messaging feels completely personal. 2️⃣ Message Extras What it does: Adds hidden metadata to your outbound messages that downstream systems can read and act on. Why it matters: You can send one highly dynamic message with unlimited rendered versions because you're tracking at an individual level what each person actually received. Your CRM, analytics platform, or custom integrations get context about exactly which variant, offer, or personalized content each user saw—not just that they received "Campaign X." Real-world use: A retailer uses Message Extras to pass campaign metadata to their customer service platform. When a customer calls about a promotion they received via email, the service rep instantly sees which campaign triggered the message, what specific offer variation that individual received, and where the customer is in their lifecycle journey—no manual lookup required. One campaign, thousands of personalized versions, all individually trackable. 3️⃣ Data Transformations What it does: Turns incoming webhooks from external platforms into clean Braze data using JavaScript code—essentially building real-time integrations without middleware or engineering dependencies. Why it matters: You can connect any platform that sends webhooks (Typeform, Zendesk, survey tools, support tickets, payment processors) directly to Braze and transform that data on the fly. This eliminates CSV uploads, manual API calls, and expensive third-party integration tools. Marketers control the integration logic. Real-world use: An online grocer receives customer order preferences and NPS scores from external systems via webhook. Data Transformations automatically converts this incoming data into custom attributes and events in Braze, enabling them to trigger personalized "time to order" reminders based on each customer's preferred ordering cadence. The pattern here? These features solve operational problems that slow teams down. They're not flashy, but they're the difference between spending your time building campaigns versus fixing data.

Is your email strategy a chaotic mess? 🤔 I've seen it too many times, companies sending emails from multiple systems or sources with zero coordination. Marketing emails from one platform. Transactional emails from another. Product notifications from somewhere else entirely. And nobody has a complete picture of what's happening. The result? Customers getting bombarded with mixed messages. Deliverability issues that nobody can solve. And zero visibility into what's actually working. But here's the thing: Your email ecosystem is probably your most valuable customer touchpoint. Yet it's often the most neglected part of your tech stack. The real problem? Most companies have never mapped their entire email architecture. They're flying blind and it's costing them millions in lost revenue and damaged customer relationships. So what's the fix? It starts with a comprehensive 4-layer mapping approach: ✅ Layer 1: Foundation Mapping Identify EVERY system sending emails (marketing, product, support, outreach, etc.) Document ownership, purpose, and infrastructure ✅ Layer 2: Customer Journey Mapping Visualize touchpoints across the entire lifecycle + map triggers, logic, copy, and metrics for each email ✅ Layer 3: Performance Audit Benchmark deliverability health across all providers Measure engagement and attribution metrics ✅ Layer 4: Strategic Architecture Consolidate platforms and simplify infrastructure Introduce AI workflows and fix compliance gaps I've seen companies double their email ROI just by getting visibility into their email ecosystem. And guess what? The companies that master this don't just improve performance - they transform email from a tactical channel into a strategic asset. Your email architecture isn't just a technical concern. It's a business imperative. Map it. Optimize it. And watch your customer experience and engagement soar. What's the most chaotic part of your company's email ecosystem? I'd love to hear in the comments 👇

Here’s a riddle for you: What’s (often) the cheapest form of marketing, yet the one that most businesses don’t take advantage of? (Automation Tip Tuesday 👇) If you guessed customer retention, you’re right. Take Promoessence’s story. They’re the guys you call when you need branded merch and promo items done right. With their large network of leads and an endless cycle of trade shows and events, customer retention is the cheapest form of marketing they can utilize. They reached out to us, wondering if they could integrate their Pipedrive lead database with their new Intuit Mailchimp email nurture campaign. We set them up with a seamless Zapier integration. Zapier sends their leads from Pipedrive to MailChimp. (This can be triggered as new leads are added to Pipedrive, as deals change, or as leads match a filter in Pipedrive.) We walked them through various Pipedrive-MailChimp integration options, from simple ones that segment and tag Pipedrive leads to complex versions that match different subscribers with different campaigns. Their leads are automatically subscribed and unsubscribed in Mailchimp based on changes in Pipedrive. And vice versa — information in Pipedrive is updated based on subscriber activity in MailChimp. They can now hyper-target their email campaigns to perfectly suit the subscriber — with zero extra manual effort. ➡️ Location-based campaigns. ➡️ Deal-stage-based campaigns. ➡️ Level-of-warmth-based campaigns. Boom 💥 *Details changed to protect client confidentiality. Dealing with a lead database and an email campaign that need integration?  There’s a solution for every platform. (And we’re here to help you find it!) -- Hi, I’m Nathan Weill, a business process automation expert. ⚡️ These tips I share every Tuesday are drawn from real-world projects we've worked on with our clients at Flow Digital. We help businesses unlock the power of automation with customized solutions so they can run better, faster and smarter — and we can help you too! #automationtiptuesday #processautomation #softwareintegration

Custom Object Integration in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (#Pardot) is a powerful yet underutilized (in my opinion!) feature of the platform. It enables you to build better segments that utilize more than the standard fields. It really opens up a lot of possibility. However... the fields you have access to in the Custom Object Integration are Read-Only. They are unavailable for use in emails and landing pages as merge fields for personalization. That's a gap that's been around for a while. When I've asked people at #Salesforce about this gap, lately their response has been "well, you can do that in Data Cloud." Now with the introduction of Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced, I thought that this is a good time to see if it is indeed possible. I'll be honest - it took a little while to figure this out. Huge thanks to Andrew Kazmierczak, Claudia Hoops ☁️ and François Perret for helping me get past the road blocks I kept hitting. In the example below, I demonstrate how to take a field from a Custom Object related to a Lead via look-up, bring it into Data Cloud, apply it to a Data Graph, and use it as a merge field in an email. Step 1: Create the custom object and relate it to the Lead Step 2: Create a Data Stream in Data Cloud to collect the data Step 3: Map the Custom Object Data Stream into the DMO Lead Object (including the field on the Custom Object you need) Step 4: Create a new Data Graph and drill down into the Unified Individual until you get to the Lead, then ensure the field you need has the box checked. Step 5: Safe the Data Graph and go into Setup and then Marketing Cloud then Reporting and Optimization, then Customer Engagement. Scroll down to the Data Graph and select the Data Graph that you just built that you know includes the field you need. Step 6: Create the email and then create a text block. In the text block, click the brackets icon and then click Select Data Graph Attribute. Step 7: Locate the field you mapped and exposed in the Data Graph using the same layers as when you created it. Step 8: Click the field and then set the rules for when it should show, and what the fall-back value is. Step 9: Click "Done" and the merge field should be there in a box with API ID that you gave it. Whew! Is it a lot of steps? Yes. Is it kind of complicated? Also yes. But for companies that need the ability to write custom object values in their marketing emails, this is the way forward for the time being.

Last week I was talking to the founder of a baseball apparel brand, who was doing north of $1m PER EMAIL CAMPAIGN; which was both a reminder to me, and at large, to make sure not to sleep on email. If you’re in the world of e-commerce / consumer you know the stat that email is your “highest ROI channel,” yet it still surprises me how many brands are wildly under-optimized on their email and SMS channels. As someone who has gone through the often painstaking effort of setting up various flows and send logic (if a customer abandons cart, send this email after X hours), I get it. It can seem overwhelming and a near full-time job to just get email working. One of the challenges of a catch-all email provider (think Mailchimp) is that it’s great at sending email, but not optimized for the needs of an e-commerce brand. That’s where I like a platform like Omnisend. Here are a few things they do that make it easier for you to get running on both email and SMS: - Pre-built flows: you don’t need to design these from scratch as they have flows, templates and logic to work from. - Smart segmentation: Not everyone on your list should get the same email. You’ve got people who’ve bought once, people who buy every month, and people who haven’t opened an email in a year. With Omnisend, you can build segments based on behavior (opened, clicked, purchased), location, spend, and more, so you’re sending the right message to the right group. I made the mistake of blasting campaigns to my entire list early on…which was not helpful. - SMS fully integrated: so you can send email + sms campaigns seamlessly, without switching providers - Popups and exit intent: if you’re spending to drive traffic to your site, you’re hurting yourself by not capturing and building as big an email list as you can. Doing so requires testing a bunch of different styles and offers (immediate popup, exit intent, sticky) as well as different offers. Once again having one click ways to test this out is awesome. Also their pricing is better than what some other providers offer and they have an industry-leading $68 ROI. #marketing #emailmarketing #omnisendpartner