I am returning to my book reviews, and what better way to start then with a book centered around what I currently do. Automating Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as always, I will dive into who this book is for and what I took away from it.

The whole point of Marketing Cloud is getting your marketing campaigns to be as automated as possible. From using Journey Builder and Automation Studio, to defining what are the best practices for the project and the scope of the client.

The parts that were very useful to me are the automation studio and journey builder interactivity. I always saw them as being separate, but there is a lot of power to be said about using them together, not just how I have used them in the past with an API connector through MuleSoft but with an automation file drop to put them into a very intense journey builder campaign. It helps to bring the real-world cases of what vs what depending on the why and how. This is something that isn’t entirely clear when you are going through the admin and developer testing material and I really think this can help you understand the test vs the real-world situations for rest vs soap, script activities and when to use external services.

I think one of the things that I took from this book is that when it comes to planning, the best path forward is the path that is prepared properly and does not rush especially when it comes to future proofing which with marketing cloud cannot be an easy task if you must ramp up your sends due to an explosion in customers. Probably the most technical part of the book is the REST vs SOAP with external services, or even my personal favorite part which was Web Apps and how you can set them up within cloud pages.

Another few great points I took away from this, is about the always be documenting and then always be avoiding making an overly complex system especially when it comes to hand offs and having a system so complex no one can understand it. But I also loved the section and chapters on sometimes changes and unforeseen consequences do happen which is why we must understand how the solution can scale to fit the new needs or playing the expansion by a cost benefit analysis. Also, the testing woes section, that is one area where I have literally hit my head and to read about what I feel when it comes to QA-ing Marketing Cloud. You will probably find yourself saying “yup” and pointing to the page feeling that on.

There was a lot I was taking from this book, being a seasoned Marketing Cloud Developer. This book is highly technical and requires some knowledge of Marketing Cloud. If you are someone who has a certification or who has experience with Marketing Cloud even if it is a little. This book can be very enlightening into what can be done to help automate your Marketing Cloud Org or future proofing it especially with the documentation ideas, the Journey Builder API and the best practices or my personal favorite, web apps. However, if you are thinking about getting into Marketing Cloud this might not be the best book to start with if you are on the beginner’s journey. It has many steps into the technical, and if you are just starting out, I would highly suggest sticking with trailhead first before getting into this book. I tried to touch on a generalized look into this book because there is A LOT within it, and I don’t want to go knee deep and make this blog overly technical or pull away someone from not buying this book. But if you want to buy this book look at the links down below.

Note* I was not paid to review this Marketing Cloud book, I did it of my own accord.