Salesforce CloudPages: Unlock Digital Marketing Success

Introduction 

Building high-converting landing pages is part of running excellent digital marketing campaigns, and Marketing Cloud Engagement enables you to do this with its product ‘CloudPages’.

It’s a drag-and-drop interface that allows you to choose from templated layouts or a blank page, and easily insert content blocks including:

• Text
• Image
• Button
• Free form
• Smart Capture form
• Dynamic content via AMPscript
• Custom HTML
• HTML
• Social Follow
• Social Share

You can create individual pages or an entire microsite, grouping similar pages into ‘Collections’ for easy management.

When comparing the CloudPages builder with external CMS and landing page builder tools, you may be tempted to go with a shiny third-party platform instead. If you do, you’re going to make life so much harder for yourself.

Key Features of Salesforce CloudPages

1. Dynamic Content Creation:

CloudPages allows marketers to create highly personalized and dynamic content that can change based on the viewer’s profile or behavior. This enables more targeted and relevant messaging, which can enhance user engagement and conversion rates.

2. Seamless Integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud:

CloudPages is fully integrated with other Salesforce Marketing Cloud products, such as Email Studio, Journey Builder, and Mobile Studio. This integration facilitates a seamless, multi-channel marketing strategy and consistent customer experience.

3. Data Capture and Lead Generation:

You can create forms and landing pages to capture visitor information directly within CloudPages. This data can be automatically synced with Salesforce CRM, enabling more effective lead nurturing and conversion strategies.

4. Responsive and Mobile-Optimize:

CloudPages supports responsive design, ensuring that your content looks great on any device, including mobile phones and tablets. This is crucial for reaching and engaging users on the go.

5. A/B Testing and Optimization:

Marketers can perform A/B tests on landing pages and other content to determine what resonates best with their audience. This feature helps in continuously optimizing content for better performance and higher conversion rates.

6. Built-In Analytics and Reporting:

CloudPages provides built-in analytics tools that allow marketers to track and measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as page views, clicks, conversion rates, and more. This data is essential for evaluating the success of your campaigns and making data-driven decisions.

7. Custom URL and Domain Management:

You can manage custom URLs and domains within CloudPages, ensuring that all your web content aligns with your brand’s identity and provides a consistent user experience.

8. Drag-and-Drop Editor:

The platform offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor that simplifies the process of creating and managing content. This feature is particularly useful for marketers without extensive technical or coding skills.

CloudPages vs. third-party landing page tools

CloudPages is part of the Salesforce product suite which means you benefit from having a central place for all of your marketing assets. Any data collected can be shared between all of your Salesforce clouds i.e. Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, etc.

On the other hand, third-party pages will not integrate out-of-the-box with Marketing Cloud, which means:

• you’ll need to either build an API integration (if possible) or manually export and import data from your landing page forms into your Data Extensions – which is cumbersome and risky from a compliance perspective!
• you cannot use data from Salesforce or Marketing Cloud to pre-fill capture forms.
• you cannot use dynamic content to personalize pages to suit the viewer.
• you cannot trigger marketing activities in real-time based on form submissions i.e. using Journey Builder.
• you will not be able to use Interactive Email Forms, which allow you to start the form fill-out process directly from an email.

With CloudPages, you can do all of the above. The user experience can be truly seamless in that:

• prospects view and convert on your page using a CloudPages capture form.
• their data is instantly added or updated in the relevant Data Extension.
• they can be immediately added to a Journey Builder flow of your choosing.
• they receive tailored, relevant marketing communications right away, striking while the iron is hot.

   

How to create a landing page

The steps for creating a landing page in Marketing Cloud are:

1. Navigate to Web Studio > Cloud Pages from the main dashboard.
2. Create a new ‘Collection’.
3. Within this Collection, click ‘Create’ and select ‘Landing Page’.
4. Page Properties – name and add a description for your page (you can always edit this later).
5. Select the domain your page should use from the URL dropdown.
6. Select the checkbox for ‘HTTPS connection only’ to ensure your page is served securely.
7. Choose ‘Content Builder’ and hit ‘Next’.
8. Select the layout you’d like to start with.
9. Click ‘Create’.

At this stage, you’ll find yourself in the page editor, where you can use the Blocks on the left-hand side to build your page content. There are four tabs available:

• Blocks – drag-and-drop onto the canvas as you need.
• Content – make edits to the block content, settings, and HTML.
• Layout – change the layout selection if required.
• Design – set or change styles for the entire page.
• At the top-right of the page, you’ll notice a toggle for ‘Layout/Code View’ and you can use this to change the editor view if you prefer to work with code.

You can preview your page at any time using the ‘Desktop/Mobile’ toggle and be sure to ‘Save’ until you’re fully happy and ready to ‘Publish/Schedule’. As the latter suggests, you can schedule the landing page to be published on a set date and time.

How can Marketing Cloud help you?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps businesses of all sizes to build and execute successful marketing campaigns. Whether you’re just getting started with marketing automation or you want to ensure that your campaigns are optimized for success, Marketing Cloud will help you get results. It’s easy to use and can be customized for any industry or use case.

With the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you have access to:

• Marketing automation that helps you send personalized emails, drip campaigns, SMS messages, and more.
• Analytics dashboards that give you insights into your customer data so you can make better decisions about your marketing strategy.
• Behavior tracking capabilities which can adjust your company’s marketing output in real time to meet the changing needs or wishes of your customer.

Summary 

Salesforce CloudPages is a powerful tool for digital marketers, offering a versatile platform for creating engaging and personalized web content. By following best practices and integrating CloudPages into a comprehensive marketing strategy, businesses can maximize their digital marketing success.