We decided to find out what makes a Salesforce Marketing Cloud marketer a real Marketing Champion? To gain some insight, we spoke with Vicki Moritz-Henry, a Salesforce Certified Instructor who was previously a Freelance Consultant for Salesforcemums. Vicki shares her inspiring story about making it as a Marketing Champion with no educational background in marketing! We are sure that her experience will inspire you.
How did you start your journey with SFMC?
I’ll let you in on a secret – I actually didn’t have a background in marketing before starting to learn SFMC. I had a few years of experience on the core Salesforce platform learning different products such as Experience Cloud (Community Cloud back then). I had been leading our Admin courses at Supermums. We wanted to be able to support our trainees as they continued their journeys, and so many had a marketing background, so SFMC seemed the way to go. I’m so glad we did because it has been an amazing journey, and I can now proudly say that we’ve helped grow the SFMC community.
Which feature in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is your favorite and why?
This may be a pretty common answer, but I have to go with Journey Builder here. It’s the tool that makes Marketing Cloud stand out from other marketing automation tools, and there are endless possibilities. You can make such rich and complex journeys to tailor content for your customers on any channel, making it so that no two customers have the exact same experience.
By the way, check out the guide we recently wrote about Journey Builder in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
What was the most exciting SFMC project you worked on?
Does creating and launching the Supermums Marketing Cloud course in partnership with Trailhead Academy count? We were the first course of its kind and a pioneer for using Trailhead Academy Bootcamp content within workforce development programs. Since we started our course, Trailhead Academy has gotten involved with other workforce development programmes. Leading those courses and sharing my love of Marketing Cloud with new talent is one of the highlights of the week. My absolute favorite part is when we get the demo orgs to be able to get some hands-on practice, and I’m able to lead the class through case studies and hands-on exercises. The trainees never cease amazing me!
What was the most challenging campaign in SFMC?
Since I’m mostly involved with courses, I would have to say troubleshooting for the whole class as we’re walking through exercises is the most challenging and, likewise, rewarding part of my day-to-day. We have a few ground rules when doing the exercises, such as ‘No man or woman left behind’, so we make troubleshooting issues into a learning opportunity, and everybody comes out with a bit more knowledge.
What is your advice for people starting with their Salesforce Marketing Cloud career without having experience working in digital?
Be curious! You don’t necessarily need to have experience in digital to work in Marketing Cloud, and I definitely didn’t. But you do need to be curious enough to read up on marketing best practices, tips, and advice. I’ve read quite a few fantastic marketing books in order to have an understanding of the marketing business case in order to best leverage the technical aspect of the tool. Some great ones to start with are Email Marketing Rules by Chad White, anything by Seth Godin, and Building a StoryBrand. Also, follow some of the Marketing Champions on social media as there is a wealth of ideas and blog posts out there to help you develop ideas and campaigns of your own!
As head of training at Supermums, can you describe what you do? And what advice would you give to working mums?
I do a little bit of everything – from launching new programs, teaching Marketing Cloud and the occasional Admin course, and forging new partnerships to leading the Supermums team and contributing to our marketing efforts. I’ll soon be moving on from my current role, but keen to stay involved with Supermums to deliver great Marketing Cloud content and excited about some new opportunities in store!
What are your biggest lessons learned since you started working with SFMC?
The importance of email deliverability and authentic marketing! Email deliverability will help to make sure that your messages get to the customer in the first place, and authentic marketing will help you to keep them. You’ll lose subscribers pretty quickly, or they will become disengaged if you don’t provide high-value content without overwhelming them with too much noise.
We hope that this interview gave you some food for thought. Here at DESelect, we definitely found it insightful our own team consists of professionals coming from different backgrounds who are all on a quest to become better Marketing Cloud experts. Our biggest takeaway from a conversation with Vicki is that you should never be afraid to start learning something new. Even without a background in digital marketing, you can score as a marketing automation professional, like Vicki or many of her students have. Salesforce creates many possibilities for marketers to learn about the platform via Trailhead educational playground, trailblazer communities to talk with like-minded marketers, or subscribing to Salesforce-related blogs, like ours, and always stay updated with Marketing Cloud features.
Make sure to sign up to DESelect to receive more inspiring stories from Salesforce Marketing Cloud champions, SFMC best practices, and DESelect updates!
- How did you start your journey with SFMC?
- Which feature in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is your favorite and why?
- What was the most exciting SFMC project you worked on?
- What was the most challenging campaign in SFMC?
- What is your advice for people starting with their Salesforce Marketing Cloud career without having experience working in digital?
- As head of training at Supermums, can you describe what you do? And what advice would you give to working mums?
- What are your biggest lessons learned since you started working with SFMC?
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