Office of Marketing and Communications

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an enterprise marketing automation platform that offers robust ways to personalize, automate, test and optimize email campaigns for The Ohio State University. Audiences cover internal (students, faculty and staff) and external (alumni, donors and friends; recruiting and admissions) communications. SFMC users will find support and training resources here.

The Benefits of Email Automation

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is the university's enterprise marketing automation solution. With the capabilities offered within SFMC, we are enabled to improve our marketing and internal communication efforts through A/B testing, personalization, automated journeys and omnichannel strategies. 

  • Training support and resources including video and live training 
  • Modular design solution for email templates meet Ohio State brand guidelines and accessibility standards 
  • Modular template content sharing tactics for centralized storytelling support 
  • Personalize emails with user-relevant content 
  • Analytics and reporting to measure email success 
  • Improve messaging to encourage opens and clicks with A/B testing tactics 
  • Create automated messages across online channels based on audience behavior such as page views, donation activity, event attendance and responses 

Getting access to SFMC

Beginning fiscal year 2025 (7/1/2024), the cost per license is supported by select central university partners.  There is no cost for individual licenses for most colleges and units. As a best practice for the use of SFMC and email, each college or unit should organize an email support team. Not all use cases need a separate team member executing bulk email sends. 

Many partners utilize shared working spaces within SFMC, mainly due to audience overlap (Advancement, University Community, Recruiting, etc.).  The separate working areas in SFMC are called business units (BU). There is a separate fee to create and maintain a separate working space for a college or unit. The use case determines the need for this type of work area. See more information on business units and their audiences below under "Additional Resources".

When partners are ready to move forward, notify OMC Email Marketing with a list of who will need access, and for what purpose(s). We will schedule a meeting to discuss complex use cases. The Migrate to Salesforce Marketing Cloud page has more detail on moving to SFMC and setting up an email team.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud New User Onboarding

To gain access to the university's instance of SFMC, you must first reach out to the Office of Marketing and Communications Email and Automation Team. After a conversation about the use case, you will be assigned the new user onboarding training in BuckeyeLearn. 

There is SFMC specific training to support the onboarding to the tool and to emphasize Ohio State branded email templates. Most training is assigned by the OMC Email and Automation team within BuckeyeLearn. Training is video-based with the addition of quizzes and an assignment. The certificates from the training will need to be shared with the OMC Email and Automation team via email. At the end of the process a Docusign SFMC user agreement will be signed.

How-To Resources

  • Preflight Email Checklist
    The checklist is a tool for planning bulk email communications. Follow the checklist before sending an email from Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). Every email sent under The Ohio State University umbrella represents the brand.
  • Introduction to Email
    This series of videos is available for users who have access to SFMC but would like to rewatch content from the BuckeyeLearn training.
  • Review New User Onboarding
    This series of videos is available for users who have access to SFMC but would like to rewatch content from the BuckeyeLearn training.
  • Email Overview & Template Building for Salesforce Marketing Cloud
    Review how to navigate SFMC while revisiting important concepts from the Introduction to Email video series. Watch the steps to build an on-brand email template, then learn how to make an email from the template. Also available are resources to help you plan, build, and personalize emails in SFMC.
  • University Community Audience Training for Salesforce Marketing Cloud
    University Community means Ohio State's internal audiences (students, faculty and staff). There are two methods of using internal audience data. This video covers the manual upload and contact matching process for audience lists (DEs).
  • Alumni Donors and Friends Audience Training for Salesforce Marketing Cloud
    There are specific audience details for Alumni, Donors & Friends (ADF) business unit in SFMC. The advancement audience consists of alumni, donor and friends of Ohio State. Only audience data pulled from The Advancement System (TAS) apply here. Advancement creates solicit codes to align each college/unit with their audience requirements. There is no manual uploading or exporting of audience records in SFMC.

Additional Resources

  • Analytics dashboards
    Analyze how email impacts your web traffic using enterprise dashboards. We use Google Analytics events data transformed into custom reports to deliver essential information. The name of your emails in SFMC impacts Google Analytics.
  • Audience targeting
    A guide for SFMC users on how to use targeted and excluded lists
  • Branded email templates
    This page is where you can find the available branded templates and modules. The information can be used to view current branded email templates available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The HTML template code is available for the modules and full templates. This code can be used in other bulk email platforms. Consistent branding in email presents a united brand experience to our constituents. Please reach out to the Email and Automation team with any questions.
  • Brand color palette instructions for all digital applications
    Ohio State's primary color palette - scarlet, gray and white - should be used across touchpoints. Accent colors should not be used for decorative purposes. Additionally, accent colors should not be used as a predominant color or primary way to identify a school, center, institute or department.
  • Bulk email guidelines for Ohio State
    Bulk email recommendations and guidelines for Ohio State from OTDI
  • Business unit details
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud and CRM offer different areas to work within depending on the audience the user would like to communicate with. The term for these areas is business unit. We have created a resource to define the differences in the use cases.
  • Email accessibility guide
    Email accessibility is very important for those using screenreaders and assistive technology to ingest the content. Font size, color combinations, image quality and supportive coding practices are all part of accessibility.
  • Email naming convention (email tagging)
    The naming convention of an email in SFMC is also the UTM code used for tracking links. Properly tagging all email links consistently allows for comprehensive reporting and channel attribution through Google Analytics.
  • Email send shared planning calendar, TeamUp
    TeamUp is the university's enterprise email planning calendar tool. This calendar view provides marketers and leaders a central view of bulk email sends from the university, enabling us to coordinate better send dates and avoid inundating our audiences. Internal and external audience communications should consider whether the message is necessary, informative and combined when possible to prevent inbox fatigue.
  • Guide to personalization
    Personalized details can be added within the content of an email. This data-driven content can be included within subject lines, preheaders or content areas of the email body.
  • Module content sharing
    Campaign sharing and storytelling opportunity. The intent is to simplify storytelling and initiate support for highly visible and/or evergreen campaigns. Modules are be shared within SFMC business units (ie. Alumni Donors & Friends, University Community, etc. as determined by the content.).
  • More information about Salesforce as a platform
    There are more options for use of Salesforce than Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Salesforce is a cloud-based, integrated platform that supports Constituent Relationship Management, Customer Service Management, and Digital Communications and Campaigns.

Make a Request

  • Request a new sender profile
    A sender profile within SFMC specifies the “from” information for a send in a central location. The sender profile contains the name and email address that the message appears to be from in the recipient’s inbox. This detail is considered the envelope to your email.
  • Request an Advancement list
    A list or data extension, is the audience to send the email to in SFMC. This list request process is specifically for emails sent to alumni, donors and friends for solicitation, invitation and alumni communications.
  • Revoke Salesforce access
    Request to remove access to SFMC for licensed users.
  • Email Community of Practice
    Please email the Office of Marketing's Email and Automation team to be added to the Email Community of Practice (ECOP). More details are available on the ECOP webpage.
  • Everest
    Everest is used for email deliverability and sender reputation monitoring, in-depth engagement analytics, list validation and email rendering previews. Send the email and automation team an email with "Everest Access" in the subject line.