Get ready for a major leap forward in marketing automation! The Spring ’24 Marketing Cloud Engagement Release delivers a wave of powerful enhancements, transforming how businesses create personalized experiences and drive results. In this post, we’ll examine the most important upgrades and improvements that are expected to drastically alter how businesses use the Marketing Cloud.

The Spring ’24 Marketing Cloud Engagement release occurs February 16, 2024 through March 8, 2024. Some features are made available to your instance within a week of the release.

A. Automation Studio

1. Configuration for importing blank files in Automation Studio:

   You can now configure how blank files are handled for each import activity. Choose to skip the import, overwrite existing data, or end the automation when a blank file is encountered during import.

   

2. General Enhancements in the Automation Studio:

   We’ve improved automation performance and made a few other updates. Scheduled automations are 62% more on time.
   You can now view the customer key in the data extension storage CSV file. Use the Customer Key column to search for automated scripts that use a specific customer key.
   The content type is recognized when you transfer unencrypted files to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage.
   New file drop API validation prevents you from mistakenly creating unmonitored folders.
   See who last paused an automation in the automation’s summary.

   

B. Journey Builder

1. Activity ID in the journey History Dashboard:

   The Journey History dashboard now includes the Activity ID. Easily identify specific activities of the same type on the Journey History dashboard using the new Activity ID. For example, if you have two Wait By Duration activities, each one has a unique Activity ID to distinguish them from each other.

   

2. Pause and Resume Multiple Journeys from the Journey Dashboard:

   Manage your journeys more easily from the Journey dashboard. You can select up to 10 journeys at one time and pause or resume the current version or all versions. You can still pause and resume journeys and versions from the canvas or the version dashboard.

   

3. Send a Larger Volume of Emails with High-Throughput Sending:

   To increase sending throughput by two times or more, select High-Throughput Sending for Journey Builder Emails in the Journey Settings panel.
   Note: This feature will be available after March 18, 2024.

4. Improve Journey Performance with Recommendations

   During journey validation, Journey Builder proactively surfaces configuration recommendations that can impact performance. The recommendations don’t prevent you from activating your journey. The recommendations include

   1. canvas activity count
   2. reused entry definition count
   3. Wait by Duration activity when used with the Engagement Split activity
   4. back-to-back Decision Split activities
   5. Salesforce Data Entry object count.

5. Track URL Interactions in Engagement Split Activities

   When using the Engagement Split activity to track links clicked in an email, you can now enter any URL to track for path evaluation. Previously, you could only select the URLs fetched from the email content, but some configurations weren’t returned.

6. Transfer a WhatsApp Conversation from Marketing Cloud to Service Cloud with Journey Builder

   You can transfer a WhatsApp conversation from a Marketing Cloud Engagement interaction to a Service Cloud interaction. Place the WhatsApp Session Transfer activity after a Wait Until Chat Response or an Inbound Chat activity.
   The information passed as part of the transfer includes conversation history, journey data, the recipient’s WhatsApp number, and the cross-cloud WhatsApp phone number.

C. Content Builder & Cloud Pages

1. CloudPages Collections Are Now Called Folders

   Using the same framework featured in Content Builder, you can move CloudPages from one Folder to another, as well as nest Folders within one another. The updated user interface makes it easier to manage your Folders and their respective CloudPages assets.

2. Restore Deleted Content in CloudPages

   You can now restore items sent to the CloudPages Recycle Bin without calling Support. Using the CloudPages recycle bin requires Delete permission, and only the user who owns the content can recycle it.

D. For Developer: New REST- APIs for Marketing Cloud

1. Create Single-Use Data Extension Imports

   Use a new REST API route to create a single-use data extension import without an import definition. You can use an existing file transfer location or a pre-signed URL to access data stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. Want to know more…Click Here

2. REST- API Endpoints are support for Automation Studio

   Supported these REST API endpoints.

   Automations

   • GET /automation/v1/automations—Retrieve all existing automations.
   • GET /automation/v1/automations/{id}—Retrieve details about a specific automation.
   • POST /automation/v1/automations/{id}/actions/runallonce—Queue an automation to run one time.
   • GET /automation/v1/folders—Retrieve Automation Studio folders.

   Activities

   • GET /automation/v1/scripts—Retrieve all script activities.
   • POST /automation/v1/scripts/{ssjsid}/start—Queue a script activity to run one time.
   • POST /automation/v1/automations/trigger—Start an automation using a trigger start source.
   • GET /automation/v1/automations/trigger/status/{requestid}—Check the status of a trigger API.
   • GET /automation/v1/filetransfers—Retrieve all file transfer activities.
   • POST /automation/v1/filetransfers—Create a file transfer activity.
   • DELETE /automation/v1/filetransfers/{filetransferid}—Delete a file transfer activity.
   • GET /automation/v1/filetransfers/{filetransferid}—Retrieve the details of a file transfer activity.
   • PATCH /automation/v1/filetransfers/{filetransferid}—Update a file transfer activity.
   • POST /automation/v1/filetransfers/{filetransferid}/start—Queue a file transfer activity to run one time.

   Custom Object Data

   • GET /data/v1/customobjectdata/{id}/rowset—Retrieve custom object data based on an ID.
   • GET /data/v1/customobjectdata/key/{key}/rowset—Retrieve custom object data based on a customer key.
   • GET /data/v1/customobjectdata/token/{token}/rowset—Retrieve custom object data based on a request token.

3. AMPscript RetrieveSalesforceObjects() Function Rowset Limit

   The AMPscript RetrieveSalesforceObjects() function returns data from Salesforce objects based on criteria that you specify. To maximize performance, the rowset that this function generates is now limited to 1,000 rows. Previously, there was no limit to the size of the rowset.

   Note: This change becomes active in the Summer ’24 release.

E. Einstein and Analytics

Einstein Probabilistic Opens is now called Einstein Metrics Guard. Intelligence Reports now supports WhatsApp, including new dimensions and measurements, and 5 predefined dashboards. You can now use generative AI to build targeted audience segments in Data Cloud for Marketing with Einstein Segment Creation.

1. Einstein Segment Creation

   

2. Enhance Your Intelligence Reports with WhatsApp Dashboards

   View your WhatsApp data (also available in pivot tables) and see which messages were more successful, which campaigns performed better, and how your customers engaged with your WhatsApp messages.

   

F. Data Management

1. Contacts Data Retention Policy Has Changed

   To improve performance, data extensions with the “All records and data extensions” retention policy are no longer linked to the Contact model in Data Designer.
   Your existing data extensions remain linked to the Contact model unless you unlink them. You can’t relink after they’re unlinked. You can’t delete data extensions linked to the Contact model in Contact Builder or by using APIs.

   

2. Data Extension Field Limits

   To improve performance when using sendable data extensions in new and existing sends and journeys, the length of the field chosen in the send relationships is now limited to 254 characters. This limit is enforced in new and updated data extensions with the Summer ’24 release.

Wrapping up

The Salesforce Engagement Spring’24 Release is brimming with improvements and new tools that will definitely revolutionise how businesses use the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Keeping up with the most recent Salesforce marketing upgrades, releases, and innovations is essential as businesses work to offer individualised and compelling digital experiences