Distributed Marketing Options in Marketing Cloud and Salesforce
What is Distributed Marketing?
Distributed marketing is a collaborative approach to marketing where marketing responsibilities are shared across an organization and its subsidiaries. The model provides a main organization with the ability to create policies and procedures that guide the distribution of content across channels. Those processes provide regional outlets with the ability to contextualize branded content for their target audience.
Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud provides two different solutions that meet distributed marketing needs, each offering different levels of oversight for the overarching brand. One solution involves using Marketing Cloud Business Units and the other involves the Distributed Marketing application. The goal here is to provide differences in functionality and overall control so that you can decide the solution that is best for your organization.
Marketing Cloud Business Units
Out-of-the-box Marketing Cloud is a single business unit, and you can add additional business units where subsidiaries can receive content, shared data extensions, and more, and make them their own.
With multiple business units in Marketing Cloud, an organization like the NBA can have its marketing team create all of its branded content in the parent business unit and readily share it with child business units configured for its franchises. A franchise like the Boston Celtics can have their marketing team receive content and email templates from the NBA, update it with their brand, and send it to their subscribers. If the NBA wants ultimate sign-off on the content that the Celtics are sending then they could set up an approval process that involves the Celtics submitting emails for approval before they can be sent. If they wanted, the NBA could even control who the Celtics are sending to by providing shared data extensions.
The Marketing Cloud business unit distributed marketing approach provides the governing organization with oversight while also providing the subsidiaries with plenty of flexibility to control their own destiny.
Distributing Marketing Application
The Distributed Marketing application is installed in Salesforce and provides a more rigid solution where the parent organization delivers an email template and designates specific areas where updates can be made. The marketing team works out of Marketing Cloud building email templates with special distributed marketing content blocks that provide editable regions. Those email templates are loaded into Journeys to be accessed in Salesforce.
A national nonprofit organization with volunteers running their regional marketing efforts can have the volunteers sign into Salesforce where they can quickly access their Content Marketplace where they only see the content that is available for their region.
The volunteer makes the selection and is taken to a Campaign where Campaign Members have been added by the central marketing team so the volunteers don’t have to select who to send to. The volunteer can then open the email and update the subject line, add copy in editable rich text blocks, or select from up to 15 images provided by the marketing team in an editable image block or upload their own. Having personalized the message being sent to their regional members who they personally know, within minutes they click send.
For a marketing novice, the distributed marketing app provides a simple and straightforward solution with branded content and a personal touch.
Which solution is right for you?
The decision between the Marketing Cloud business units and the Distributed Marketing application solution rests on branding. Customers can lose trust in your brand if you don’t have consistency and without that consistency, they’re less likely to remember your brand. The
Marketing Cloud business units option is more flexible and the approval process provides oversight making this a great solution for organizations with marketing teams across business units. The Distributed Marketing application is a great choice for marketing teams that are working with novices and trust their words more than their graphic design skills. Ultimately, the choice between Marketing Cloud business units and the Distributed Marketing application solutions depends on how much control you need to maintain your brand.
Want to discuss in greater detail which solution best fits your needs? Reach out to me on Twitter @LiamBayer or in the Salesforce Trailblazer Community.
