SFMC Uncovered: Insights by Lakshmi Pavani

📩 Learning 7 - Finding Contacts from a Specific Journey Activity Using the Journey History Download API

Recently, I received a request to identify the subscribers who had passed through a specific activity within a Journey Builder Journey in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). My first instinct was to explore Journey Builder tracking, Data Views, and available reporting options. However, I quickly discovered that retrieving contacts for a

📩 Learning #4 - Salesforce Marketing Cloud -SQL Function "Coalesce"

🔍 What is the COALESCE Function? The COALESCE() function in SQL is used to handle NULL values - in simple terms, it replaces NULL with a fallback value that makes your data usable. 📌 Syntax (ref: w3schools.com): SELECT COALESCE(val1, val2, ..., val_n) * You can use text, numbers, NULL, empty strings,

📩 Learning 6 - Understanding JobIDs in SFMC Journey Email Sends

A simple Query Studio demo turned into a deeper investigation with surprising insights from support and real-world testing If you're using Journey Builder, this one's worth a read.

📩 Learning 5 - SFMC APIs Made Easy: Understanding Postman Calls with a Real-World Example

Introduction When I first encountered Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) API calls, I found myself overwhelmed by technical jargon - authentication tokens, endpoints, payloads - it all sounded so complicated. As someone who tries to simplify concepts, I began looking for a real-world analogy that could help me (and others) relate

📩 Learning 3 - Salesforce Marketing Cloud - Contact Entry on Journey

This week I wanted to share some valuable learnings I gained about Contact Entry settings in Journeys in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This setting determines how many times a contact can enter and receive communications during a journey. Reflection #1: No Re-Entry The contact can only enter the journey once and

📩 Learning 2 - Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS Tracking and Multi-Part Message Insights

This week I wanted to share some valuable learnings I gained from working on our Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS tracking and deliverability. Reflection #1: Did you know that the Ordinal attribute in the _SMSMessageTracking data view can help you count only the first part of a multi-part SMS? When messages

📩 Learning 1 - Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS Send via Journey Insights

This week I wanted to share some valuable learnings I gained from working on our Salesforce Marketing Cloud SMS send activity. Reflection #1: - Did you know that the `WaitByAttribute` attribute is only applicable for Date data type attributes? This got me thinking about how we can simplify our workflow