The Portmans Retargeting Program was designed to reengage existing customers and increase repeat sales by utilising the Salesforce Journey Builder. The program was designed to run for 10 months with 8 unique emails and 3 tiers of dynamic content. This project required extensive knowledge of Salesforce Data Extensions, Events and AMPScript as well as the ability to problem solve and troubleshoot future issues.

The design of the 8 emails was deliberately templated so each was easily identifiable as part of an on going journey and easily distinguished from the normal marketing emails whilst also remaining on brand. Salesforce Journey Builder emails are meant to be ‘set and forget’ so a major focus of the project was to ensure the emails would remain relevant for an extended period of time without updating them.

A formative issue in this project was ‘what if we do need to update the emails in the future?’. Due to the high level of technical skills required to execute this project there were concerns that the person updating the creative in the future may encounter issues and errors due to their lack of skills in this area. This issue was solved by using dynamic code snippets and data extensions in such a way that the original email simply pulled in the most current data without the need for the original code to be touched. The creative, offers and promocodes could all be changed without having to update the emails or journeys.

The Entry Event for this Journey was set up through Automation Studio and ran on a weekly schedule. Once inside the journey, the customer would continue to receive emails for the full 10 months unless they made a purchase, at which point they would exit and restart the journey from the beginning.

This project was an excellent opportunity to increase my technical skills in, and knowledge of Salesforce and how to work within existing systems to create the required outcome. It also expanded my understanding of customer interactions and differing marketing techniques used by competitors in the industry.

Skills