Marketing Cloud Studios: A 5-Minute Overview

It’s easy to think of Marketing Cloud as one product that will have all your marketing needs covered. In reality, it’s more accurate to describe Marketing Cloud as a collection of studios that can either be used together or used in isolation, depending on your requirements.

Confused?

Don’t be, we’ve got you covered!

In this blog post we’ll cover each of these studios, what they do and why you should consider adding them to your marketing toolkit.

Email Studio

When somebody thinks of Marketing Cloud, Email Studio is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Essentially, Email Studio does what it says on the tin; gives you the tools to set up and send email communications. 

What’s great about Email Studio though, is that it allows you to pull data from various sources to personalise emails based on a subscriber’s engagement with your brand. These could be direct from Salesforce or in external systems that you’re using.

By using this data, you can create incredibly effective campaigns that will support your prospects and customers throughout their journey. We all want our customers to have the best experience with us and providing emails at the right time with the right message is key to that.

Speaking of the right time, Journey Builder is another feature available in Marketing Cloud. This one is not a studio per say and you could argue it’s more sophisticated than Email Studio because it enables you to build awesome journeys for prospects that can be tailored to meet them where they are in their lifecycle, whether it’s pre-purchase, abandoned carts, or welcoming them onboard. 

We have an entire blog about Journey Builder right here.

But back to Email Studio…

Why you should consider Email Studio

• Create emails that change dynamically based on the prospect. Content Blocks allow you to select the content (or automate that selection) to personalise the email based on your customer’s engagement and profile.
• Design emails without the need for code. The drag-and-drop Email Builder allows people without HTML or CSS experience to design fantastic looking emails (of course, if you do know HTML and CSS, you can put your skills to good use too!)

Advertising Studio

Advertising Studio allows you to use all the cool data you have to create highly personalised ads across social, search and display platforms.

Email is a great channel to reach prospects and customers but if that isn’t working or you want to run a multi-channel campaign, you’ll be front of mind when they log in to Facebook and other online channels.

The great feature of Advertising Studio is you can use the existing data that you do have from customer purchase history, email engagement, mobile push and SMS interactions to find lookalike audiences on Facebook, meaning you can use Advertising Studio to support your search for new prospects!

Why you should consider Advertising Studio

• Your audience isn’t just in an email inbox anymore, they are online and within reach using Advertising Studio.
• You’ve already got the data on who your customers are along with their demographics, so use that to find more of the same prospects online.
• Use ads as part of your customer journeys in Journey Builder, providing a customer experience on a wider scale.

Mobile Studio

With Mobile Studio, you can reach your prospects and customers on their mobile devices, using SMS / MMS messaging, push notifications and group messages.

There’s a lot more to Mobile Studio than just messaging though.

You can take it to the next level by sending geofenced messages that send promotions to your customers when they are entering or exiting a certain geographical area, along with sending password resets, alerts and shipping updates too.

If you have your own app on the App Store or Google Play Store, then this is another channel to take advantage of. You can now send push notifications and messages via the app to encourage users to increase their usage of the app, or to drive in-app purchases.

Why should you consider Mobile Studio

• This one studio alone opens up a number of channels such as SMS and your own applications, on the one device your prospects carry around with them all the time.
• Use the analytics within Mobile Studio to build a better picture of your prospect’s profile, such as location and the device they use.

Social Studio

Social Studio is insanely powerful!

With this in your marketing locker, you can go far beyond just simply posting and monitoring interactions with your social posts, you can see things like general sentiment (are people speaking positively about your brand or not? Hopefully they are!) and top keywords being used when people are talking about your brand.

Drill right down to post level and see every comment linked to your organisation by listening for mentions across your social media channels and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

Posts and comments can also be used to create and work within Cases, if you’re using Service Cloud, which is incredibly powerful. Companies solving issues quickly and going the extra mile to keep customers happy is a fast way to build trust… why not pick this up on social media and let the world see that you provide a top level of service?

Why should you consider Social Studio

• More and more conversations are happening on social media. Social Studio allows you to be present in those conversations and use this to your advantage.
• Publish, monitor and interact with your audience from one, single interface.
• Gather market intelligence from real-time, real life conversations and tie this to your engagements.

Data Studio

Data Studio is the leading data sharing platform on the market. What Data Studio allows you to do is discover new audiences by working with data creators. You can also generate revenue from the data you have by working with data buyers.

The platform is incredibly transparent. Sellers of data know who is buying the data, why they are buying and even the length of time that the data is available for use. In the era of GDPR, this is paramount for all businesses.

Why you should consider Data Studio

• Finding new audiences is half the battle. Use Data Studio to help you find these audiences quickly.
• Have full confidence in the data you are getting. It’s the only platform that has direct data deals with large retailers.
• Use your data as a source of revenue. Not only will you have control over who you work with but data sharing can be private with trusted partners.

Interaction Studio

Last but certainly not least is Interaction Studio, which is all about delivering personalised experiences in real-time, across marketing channels.

In a single view, you can get deep insights into your prospects' behaviour, characteristics, interests and how they interact with you, allowing you to provide a richer customer experience unique to that person.

This single view (or profile) gives you insight into their preferred marketing channels, content types, keywords they search for and product types. Which is super powerful when combined with Journey Builder.

Working in unison, prospects will automatically shift into other journeys. And why not use Journey Builder to deliver that promotion or all important message through their preferred channel? Customers can be on the same journey but their experience is different based on their own behaviour.

Very powerful!

Why you should consider Interaction Studio

• Providing the right message, at the right time, on the right channel is a battle that faces every marketer. Take the guesswork out of it and have Interaction Studio tell you all you need to know.
• Link up with Journey Builder to automate the flow and delivery of messages, alerts and offers.
• Build up a profile of each of your prospects that goes far beyond purchase history and clicks. Use this to ensure your marketing efforts will hit home.

Marketing Cloud is an incredibly powerful platform that can get complicated but it doesn't have to be. At MarCloud, our team of Marketing Cloud experts can help you implement a platform that will provide the foundation for marketing success.

For more information on how MarCloud can help, contact us here. We’d love to chat!