Return Path Platform in SFMC.
Return Path Platform is one of the game changing feature in SFMC Email studio.
It takes the email send capability to the next level.
What is this feature?
This is a Reputation monitoring tool. It considers all the emails as a seeds in Return Path Platform world. The primary focus of this tool is to safeguard the email send-out reputation.
You need to have a ESP connect between SFMC to Return Path tool.
This Email Service Provider will help us to track all the sendout information into advanced level.
I don't see this in my Org?
Login to your Salesforce Marketing Cloud account.
Select your username in the upper right hand corner and choose Setup. A left navigation bar will appear with headings for ADMINISTRATION, PLATFORM TOOLS, and SETTINGS.
Under the PLATFORM TOOLS heading, select Apps and then choose Installed Packages.
Select New, located in the right-hand corner.
Fill in the name and description of your new package. We recommend using a name and description that is meaningful to you.
Select Save.
Select Add Component, located at the bottom of the page.
Choose the API Integration option, located under the Name column. Select Next. Choose Server-to-Server. Select Next.
Check the Read permission check box included under Email options. Select Save. Copy your auto-generated Client ID and Client Secret codes. You will use them to finish integrating with the Return Path Platform.
Launch your Return Path account. Navigate to the upper right hand corner and select the arrow next to your name to navigate to the Return Path Platform's Account settings page.
Within the ESP Connect slide out, select Add New Connect.
Paste your Client ID and Client Secret into the appropriate fields. A best practice is to use your SFMC MID as the connection’s display name. Select Add.
Switch back to the tab or window containing your Salesforce Marketing Cloud account and return to the SETUP left navigation bar.
Under Settings, select Company Settings and then choose Account Settings.
Locate the SOAP Service Endpoint label. The URL to the right of that label should look like this: https://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/Service.asmx
Copy the 28-character string after the forward slashes, before the first period (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), including any special characters such as hyphens. This is your unique, system-generated tenant-specific subdomain, or TSSD. You will use it to finish integrating with the Return Path Platform.
Switch to the tab or window containing your Return Path account. Paste your TSSD into the appropriate field. Select Add. Later after re-logging you will get the Tab
How do I get the email send information into this tool?
As I said earlier you have to seed them while sending the emails as shown below.
Or through Automations:
or through Normal sendouts
Can you show me how does it looks like?
This is the overview page and it has all the KPIs of our email sends
What does this KPIs states?
1. Low performing Campaigns: These shows the Campaigns which has very less inbox placement and its causes. This gets calculated from past 7 days of sendouts.
On clicking of this KPI will redirect to even more details of Campaign data as shown below:
Seeded Campaigns are the one which we intended to measure the percentages.
2.Inbox Placement: This gives types and average number for the different emails sent to Campaigns. Hovering on it gives for which type of email has low placement percentage.
On clicking the KPI gives more details about the SPAMs and other missing information.
3.Sender score: Its a index of key reputation metrics that mailbox providers use to determine the sendouts based on IP address from 0-100.
On Clicking this will take us to the reputation of individual IP address irrespective of Shared or dedicated.You can also download the data into .csv format if needed.
4.Blacklist Activity: On this activity the tool checks all the 29 black listing agencies and updates the feedback in every 3 minutes.
On Clicking this take us to details of each IPs and its detailed information.Also it gives the Removal option with which we can remove our IP if it appears as blacklisted
5.Dynamic Optimization: This will dynamically prioritize the more active or engaged subscribers and also will suppress the inactive subscribers.
I would say 'Alerts' plays an important role in this tool in three ways as shown below:
1.Inbox placement Alerts : We can set this alert if the inbox placement is less that 90%.
2.Smart Alerts: This will alert when we have any infrastructural issues like DKIM, Domain etc..
3.Blacklist Alerts: This will alert when the IP is been blacklisted in case.
One more useful feature called 'Pixel setup':
If we could add the below code snippet to all our emails we could track the Open rates better that SFMC Dashbards.
Once we add this to emails how its been opened in different devices as shown below:
Also we can see how long the emails are kept Open as shown below:
1. Read: If email is opened for more than 3 mins.
2. Skimmed: If email is Opened for less than a min.
3.Abandoned: if emails is Opened for less that 5 secs.
Also Opens are tracked based on locations, So that we can segment accordingly as shown below:
We can also setup the preview as per the devices as shown below:
Also we can setup a preview in SFMC along with SPAM tests for the Subjects.
Any Limits?
1.Yes we can seed only for 10,000 Subscribers but we can increase by raising case.
2. We can setup only to 15 Business Units.
3.We can setup inbox preview for only 100 emails per Business Unit, but can be increased if necessary.