Securing Marketing Cloud Apps hosted on CloudPages

In one of my previous posts, Simple Marketing Cloud App hosted on a CloudPage, I have outlined a solution for creating apps for use in Marketing Cloud and hosting them on CloudPages. While you can choose to hide a CloudPage from being indexed by Google, it can still be accessed by anyone who has the link. … Read more

Masking PII data for display with AMPscript

There are many use cases, especially in the transactional space, where sometimes there is a need to display partially masked data to the end-user – exactly in the same way as you would see it when logging in to Marketing Cloud, when the system tells you which email address it sent the verification code to: … Read more

Using the Wait Until API Event Activity in Journey Builder

The Wait Until API Event Activity is a new Journey Builder activity released as part of the April 2021 Salesforce Marketing Cloud Release. It allows you to create a real-time experience for contacts by allowing an external event to trigger an action mid-journey.

Exception handling in Salesforce Marketing Cloud CloudPages

Errors and exceptions are inevitable, no matter how defensively you code your CloudPage. There is always a possibility of a human error, for example, if the person who creates and sends the email doesn’t pass all the parameters to your CloudPage correctly. There are also things that sometimes cannot be prevented, for example, Marketing Cloud … Read more

Inventory of Data Extensions and their data sources

It’s very likely that at some point in your career you will inherit or take over a Salesforce Marketing Cloud instance that has been set up and used by someone else in the past. In case it hasn’t been well documented, it can be a struggle to understand all the data related processes and clean … Read more

Simple Marketing Cloud App hosted on a CloudPage

DISCLAIMER: The Marketing Cloud App component has been designed for use with externally hosted apps. Use any alternative solutions presented in this article with caution. The settings we are going to use are simplified compared to the ones required by externally hosted apps, so make sure that only designated users have access to the apps … Read more

Add subscribers to a Journey from a CloudPage using Fire Entry Event

Firing an Entry Event is great for injecting contacts into a Salesforce Marketing Cloud journey, especially if you need to be able to inject them from an external system or a website. It’s also useful when you’re creating a custom form on a CloudPage and would like to replicate the behavior of SmartCapture forms, which … Read more

Salesforce-style spinner for use on CloudPages

Spinners are loading indicators that can be shown when retrieving data or performing other operations. We will use a common spinner that Salesforce Lightening users are familiar with – the full documentation can be found here. This spinner is a Lightning component, which means that it cannot be directly used on a CloudPage. My awesome … Read more

Two alternative ways of developing and testing CloudPages

As a Salesforce Marketing Cloud developer, you have certainly been caught up in this loop: Develop the CloudPage > Save and Publish > Wait 2, 3 or even 5 minutes > Check the results. Moreover, if you are not debugging correctly, you can lose a lot of time between looking for the problem and waiting … Read more

Create a CloudPages form with an image/file upload option

The HTML <input> tag specifies an input field where the user can enter data. An input field can vary in many ways, depending on the type attribute. The <input> elements with type=”file” let the user choose one or more files from their device storage. The file can then be manipulated using JavaScript in order to … Read more

Trigger SMS text messages using Server-Side JavaScript

In order to be able to programmatically trigger text messages, you will need to have MobileConnect enabled in Marketing Cloud’s Mobile Studio. You will also need to be able to create an installed package in your Marketing Cloud account to interact with Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs. If you have both in place, we can start … Read more

Loops in AMPscript and Server-Side JavaScript

In programming languages, loops are a basic, yet a very powerful and indispensable concept. They shorten the code and reduce the need to repeat tasks. A loop is a set of instructions to be executed until a certain condition is met. In this article, we will focus on the most fundamental kind of loop, the … Read more

Introduction to Triggered Sends

Understand Triggered Sends in Salesforce Marketing Cloud
A triggered email is a message that Marketing Cloud sends to an individual subscriber in response to a subscriber action. For example, sending a confirmation message after a customer makes a purchase is a triggered email … Read more

Update multiple non-sendable Data Extensions to be sendable

In order to programmatically update the settings of an existing Data Extension, we will interact with Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s SOAP Web Services API using WSProxy. Code snippets in this article will show you how to update a Data Extension, so that a non-sendable Data Extension is turned into a sendable Data Extension, but you can … Read more

Retrieve tracking data since account inception using WSProxy

Whether you’re building a data warehouse or are dealing with a legal compliance issue, access to historical tracking data from your Salesforce Marketing Cloud account using the out-of-the-box features is limited. Data Views are powerful, but only allow you to query for up to six months of subscriber and tracking information. Tracking extracts provide granular … Read more

Retrieve client IP address and geolocation in CloudPages

There are many reasons for checking the client IP address, most common include tracking and personalization. What can you find out about the visitors of a webpage from their IP address? You can identify their ISP, figure out approximately where they’re located and see how often they (or someone else sharing their router) visit your … Read more

Send a triggered email using WSProxy

Triggered sends allow you to automatically send personalized and timely messages to your subscribers. They are sent to an individual subscriber in response to a subscriber action. If you would like to find out more about creating a Triggered Email Message Interaction, check out my other article here. TriggeredSend object The TriggeredSend object represents a … Read more

Find a Data Extension and it’s folder path using SSJS

If you work with a lot of Data Extensions in multiple folders, you know the pain of using the built-in search feature. It only searches the folder that you’re in, with the exclusion of any sub-folders, which is simply impractical. There is a free tool available that enables you to search for data extensions, called … Read more

Unsubscribe and Log an UnsubEvent with a LogUnsubEvent Execute Call

The LogUnsubEvent provides a convenient way of handling unsubscribes when you create your own landing page or profile center functionality. This call allows you to unsubscribe a subscriber and log an UnsubEvent that is tracked against a specific Job, which means that you will be able to track from which email they unsubscribed and see… Read more

Salesforce Marketing Cloud API Authentication using Server-Side JavaScript

In order to interact with Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs you need to create an installed package in your Marketing Cloud account first. Marketing Cloud uses installed packages to help authenticate users and API requests. To create and install packages you must have the Administrator or Marketing Cloud Administrator role assigned to your profile. Marketing Cloud… Read more

Create a Sales Cloud-integrated lead capture form using AMPscript

SmartCapture forms provide a quick, user-friendly way to create simple forms and use them in Salesforce Marketing Cloud journeys, but they are not very versatile and often can create more problems than they actually solve. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a form using HTML and AMPscript and include functions that will… Read more

Send a triggered email using AMPscript

Triggered sends allow you to automatically send personalized and timely messages to your subscribers. They are sent to an individual subscriber in response to a subscriber action. Common use cases include sending welcome emails to new subscribers, service case notifications or post-purchase thank you notes to clients. They can be personalized just as any other… Read more

Create a SmartCapture form prefilled (prepopulated) with Salesforce data

Smart Capture allows you to easily create forms on your Cloud Pages to collect information about your subscribers and then use that data for future sends and campaigns. While creating a Smart Capture form doesn’t require any coding skills and can be done using only the drag-and-drop editor, adding a simple script to your form… Read more

Make a simple API call in Salesforce Marketing Cloud using AMPscript

In this tutorial, I would like to show you how to make a simple API call using the HTTPGet function. In AMPscript, there are three HTTP functions used to interact with third-party APIs (HTTPGet, HTTPPost, HTTPPostTo). The HTTPGet function retrieves content from a publicly accessible URL. In the ampscript.guide, you can see an example of… Read more

Debugging AMPscript

Debugging AMPscript in Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be a pain, as there is no built-in feature that would show script errors in CloudPages. The idea to add a debugging feature to CloudPages has been hanging in the Traiblazer Community’s “Ideas” section for two years now and haven’t yet reached the point threshold set by Salesforce… Read more