SAP Community - SAP Marketing Cloud

Check Out our Latest SAP Marketing Cloud Email Videos

2024-01-09T16:48:05+01:00

We are excited to announce the release of our latest videos:

Access the short, self-contained enablement videos to help you expand your knowledge of SAP Marketing Cloud's Content Studio, available on openSAP Microlearning and YouTube.

As of Release 1911, the Content Studio app contains a new editor, which you can use to create and design emails and email templates. As a marketing expert, this editor enables you to easily design emails without having any HTML experience. The flexible modern content editor is a very intuitive tool for creating powerful marketing emails. With its drag& drop functions, you can easily create layouts. For the layout design also use reusable blocks and conditions through to sending test mails.
Up to Release 2308, the content types were called Email Lite and Email Template Lite. Now, they are called Email and Email Template, in distinction to the legacy content types Email (Legacy Editor) and Email Template (Legacy Editor).

Video - Creating a Personalized Email in Content Studio

This video Creating a Personalized Email in Content Studio in SAP Marketing Cloud shows you:

The basic functions of the Toolbox in Content Studio.
The column-based responsive layout.
How to insert reusable blocks to your content.
How to add personalization attributes, images, and hyperlinks.
How to change colors and size in emails.

Video - Using Previews for Your Email

Wouldn't you like to see how your email is displayed to your customers and how it looks on various devices before you send it out?

In this video Using Previews for Your Email in SAP Marketing Cloud, we’ll walk you through how to ensure that your email is displayed correctly using Previews.

Video - Using Conditions for Emails in Content Studio

Watch this video Using Conditions in Emails in Content Studio of SAP Marketing Cloud to learn how to leverage conditions to personalize your emails.

For further info, see our Application Help

Don’t miss out! Check out our new videos today.

Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Kunal Bansal

2024-01-31T11:50:30.216000+01:00

More about Kunal in SAP Community

Location (City, Country): Bangalore, India
Occupation: Advisory Architect, IBM

Kunal, tell us about yourself.
Who are you, what do you like to do, what is important to you?

I'm Kunal, an SAP Alumni and currently working as an Advisory Architect at IBM with over 12 years of experience, specializing in SAP CX Suites. Leading implementation projects, I contribute to RFPs, solutioning, and asset-building, collaborating closely with clients and business stakeholders. Outside work, I find joy in feeding stray-dogs, swimming, and playing badminton, dedicating my weekends to online-mentoring for underprivileged students from remote villages.

What is your area of expertise?
What does a usual day at work look like for you?

I specialize in SAP Emarsys, CDC, CDP, SMC, C4C, CRM and Qualtrics, holding a pivotal role as an Architect leading CX implementation projects. My day involves architecture discussions, technical advisory, engaging with global stakeholders, managing project rollouts, and driving successful SAP implementations, along with mentoring, coaching and active contributions to the SAP community.

What inspired you to become an SAP Champion in SAP Community?

As an SAP alumnus in client-facing roles, my genuine passion for contributing to the SAP Community spans 8 years through Q&A and blogs. Driven by the core belief in 'Learn. Share. Grow’, I'm committed to sharing knowledge, insights, and learning from the diverse SAP ecosystem. This commitment has become an integral and fulfilling part of my professional journey, leading me to become an SAP Champion.

How do you learn in SAP Community?
What is your daily/weekly routine in SAP Community?

I learn from community member’s answers and blogs from their hands-on project experience. Engaging with the SAP Community is integral to my routine; automated email notifications for new questions prompt me to respond swiftly, sharing quick solutions with members. I facilitate collaboration, ensuring the community benefits from diverse expertise, if another expert can contribute better to a query.

What is your suggestion to get the most out of SAP Community?

Actively engage in discussions, answer questions, and explore blogs. Share your insights and learning from others fosters a dynamic exchange of knowledge within the SAP Community. Embrace diverse topics, connect with fellow members, and attend events like SAP Inside Track, Stammtisch, TechEd, etc., to enhance your overall learning journey and experience.

Kunal's question to you:
In your SAP Community journey, how has sharing and learning shaped your professional development, and what insights can you offer fellow members?

SAP Marketing Cloud Release 2402 is Here!

2024-02-05T19:36:16.672000+01:00

The winter release of SAP Marketing Cloud is here with many new features!

A comprehensive list of all features can be found on the What’s New in SAP Marketing Cloud release page. The release has the code 2402 with 24 referring to the year 2024 and 02 referring to the month of February.

In this blog we want to highlight some of the features but be sure to have a look at the comprehensive list as well.

Release Navigator for SAP Marketing Cloud

Many products already use the Release Navigator to provide easy access to the most important information about a product, so does the SAP Marketing Cloud:

For more information, use this link to the Release Navigator.

Dropdown Boxes for Products in Forms and Landing Pages

With the 2402 release we are extending what we started with assignment of products or marketing events to interactions in forms with the 2308 release: Now with 2402 we also allow to configure a set of products available to select in a dropdown box in a landing page.

The selected products then can be written into the mapped interaction.

For more information, see Interactions | SAP Help Portal.

Landing Pages fetch UTM Parameters and Hand Over into Interactions

Now the UTM parameters of landing pages can be fetched and handed over into interactions. By using custom coding in the BAdI you can then attribute the visitors and their actions to campaign success.

For more information, see Landing Pages | SAP Help Portal.

Prefilled Templates for Participants of Marketing Events

This feature simplifies the process of manually running an event by downloading a prepopulated list of participants. Just download a list of registered participants. Afterwards upload participants using a prefilled Microsoft Excel template with a new status. The template allows a simple update of participants just by changing the status in the MS Excel template.

Subdivided Child Attributes for the Segmentation

The subdivided child attributes are new segmentation attributes, which are based on existing attributes that have a dependency (parent-child-relationship).

IDs depend on ID Origins, e.g. a CRM Business Partner ID is identified as such by the ID Origin SAP_CRM_BuPa
Regions of USA depend on Country = US

This will simplify the segmentation models and dedicated personalization attributes, often mentioned use cases are in a simpler segmentation, simpler export definitions and easier personalization in emails.

Have a look at this short video that gives an overview on use cases and how to create the attributes.

For more information, see Subdivided Child Attributes | SAP Help Portal.

New Attributes in Segmentation Objects

For some segmentation objects we have extended the available attributes to allow faster adoption and reduce the need for custom fields.

For more information see Marketing Permission and Newsletter Subscription Attributes | SAP Help Portal
Additional fields (Contact ID, Contact Origin, Account ID, Account Origin, Creation Date Time, Last Change Date Time for the contact relationships: Influence request.

Assign Custom Business Objects to Marketing Areas in Segmentation

Starting with the 2402 release Custom Business Objects can be assigned to Marketing Areas and used in the segmentation. This allows for example to define attributes that are common for all contacts belonging to the same marketing area and use them in segmentation.

For more information, see Custom Business Objects for Marketing Areas | Sap Help Portal.

Easier Handling of Reusable Blocks in the Email Editor

The area for reusable block gained more space, preview, filtering, and sorting were added to improve the usability. Watch this video to get a better understanding what changed.

For more information, see Creating Reusable Content from an Email | SAP Help Portal.

Also Check Out our Latest SAP Marketing Cloud Email Videos.

Report who Executed a Campaign

We see that marketing experts may change jobs and to allow quicker handover of their campaigns we deliver this new report that shows who executed a campaign.

This video shows where to find and how to use the report.

For more information, see Executed Campaign By User | SAP Help Portal.

Provide more Transparency on System Health: Check Your Marketing Solution

Also in release 2402, we are adding more checks to offer more visibility on your system health.

New health checks are:

Checking the Number of Target Group Members: This table grows when you are using dynamic target groups and it has the basis for joiner/ leaver analysis. However, the larger it gets (e.g. sizes above 1.6b records), the longer access may take and thus increase creation time for target groups. Hence, we advise to manage this table and reduce the size.
Checking High Number of Security Log Entries.

For more information, see System Health Checks | SAP Help Portal.

Yahoo and Google Change of Policies for Mass Emailing

The email provider Google and Yahoo are introducing some new protections to avoid spammy inboxes, for example as announced here:

https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection/ and here: Postmaster @ Yahoo & AOL — More Secure, Less Spam: Enforcing Email Standards... (yahooinc.com)

This is to ensure that users are receiving emails from a reliable recognized source they have subscribed to.

With the SAP Marketing Cloud:

Ensure that you have SPF, DKIM and DMARC in place. When you request for provisioning of an email account from an email provider, these parameters are usually demanded.

Adopting BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) can also help with reputation.
Sinch provides information on best practices for maintaining a good reputation with email marketing:

Email Authentication in 2024 Guide

Bulk Sender Checklist

Even if you are using another provider, those guidelines apply.

Contact your email provider (ESP) if you need support.

Additionally we strongly recommend to use the Automatic Unsubscribe ( List unsubscribe) | Help documentation and also the Easy Unsubscribe | Help Documentation

For the SAP Marketing Cloud we have summarized our recommendations here: 3426234 - Yahoo and Google Mail Privacy changes effect on SAP Marketing

You can take advantage of the new features immediately:

Watch the SAP Marketing Cloud | What’s New 2402 webcast to learn more about new product updates with insight from SAP Marketing Cloud experts.
Go in-depth on every feature update on the What’s New in SAP Marketing Cloud release page.
Get all product details on the SAP Marketing Cloud 2402 product page which is generally available now.

Heads Up - Deactivation of Groups in the SAP Fiori Launchpad in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, and SAP Marketing Cloud! Switching to Spaces and Pages is mandatory. See

Connect with other customers and product experts in the https://community.sap.com/topics/marketing-cloud to get your questions answered.

Release Navigator for SAP Customer Experience What’s New in Q1 2024

2024-02-13T15:46:07.606000+01:00

The Readiness@Scale team is excited to share that the Q1 updates to the release navigator for SAP Customer Experience will be implemented on February 16, 2024. This update will include the most recent content available and incorporate enhanced user-experience (UX) elements based on your valuable recommendations.

As a team, we spent a significant amount of time aligning the overall user experience across each release navigator and focused on creating an even more unified look starting with a more modern approach to the My Home page.

Welcome: Important messages from the Readiness@Scale team will be found within this tile.
NEW! Release Calendar: Stay informed of the latest release dates that may impact your systems.
Re-designed! Product Enablement: Register for online enablement sessions, onside events, learnings & value maps brought to you by SAP Experts.
Product Release Resources: Utilize the available release resources from your products to maximize your time efficiency during the release.
About the Release Navigator: Enable yourself on the latest updates, access the Translation Feature, and explore the release navigators for SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP Supply Chain Management solutions, and Spend Management & Business Network by SAP Enterprise Support.
Help Us Improve: Have any suggestions or feedback? Use the survey tile to submit any new ideas.

Major enhancements to the release navigator for SAP Customer Experience include a back arrow in SAP Commerce Cloud Documentation pages, a consolidated Customer Data Cloud Solutions product page for easier access, a Release Calendar that was highly requested, and a footer added to some of the tiles. On top of these UX improvements, you will notice content changes within some of the product pages.

Let's have a closer look at the newly added functionalities that have been developed exclusively for the release navigator for SAP CX as part of the upcoming Q1 update.

A navigation back arrow was added for SAP Commerce Cloud Documentation pages that allows users to return to the main SAP Commerce Cloud product page. To go back directly to the Home page, you can simply click the Home button on the Shell Bar.

Figure 3: Back Arrow on SAP Commerce Cloud Documentation pageThe next change you will notice is the consolidation of the SAP Customer Data Cloud and Data Platform pages. From now on, you can find release content for both products on a single product page called SAP Customer Data Solutions.

Figure 3: SAP Customer Data Solutions pageAnother highly requested feature that has been mentioned above is the Release Calendar on My Home page, which includes all announced release dates across SAP Customer Experience solutions. The dates will be updated.

Figure 4: Release Calendar tile on My Home pageWe added a footer to some of the tiles on product pages. This enhancement helps you quickly identify the source of the content at first glance.

Figure 5: An example of tiles with a footerExplore the refreshed release navigator soon (February 16, 2024) by clicking on the button below:

With this update, we have incorporated several enhancements to improve the user experience of the release navigator. Starting after Q1, the release navigator for SAP Customer Experience will be integrating UX innovations once per year, in August along with the release content, as opposed to every quarter. For each release in February, May, and November only release content will be updated. Here you can find the innovation & content update plans for 2024.

Disclaimer: These are only informational dates that could change. The Readiness@Scale team has the final decision over any UX modifications.

The release navigator for SAP Customer Experience is now only two clicks away from Support.SAP.com!

1. Go to the new Release Ready page
2. Click on the SAP Customer Experience link

You can also access the release navigator for SAP Customer Experience via the SAP Enterprise Support Value Maps like before.

Follow the Readiness@Scale community tag, and Malgorzata Konopelska to stay up to date with the latest blog posts. If you have any feedback or specific requests regarding the release navigator, we would be more than happy to hear from you. We appreciate all feedback and value your input. In order to collect both positive reactions and constructive feedback, we have created a survey.

Readiness@Scale
SAP Enterprise Support

Introduction to Permission Marketing

2024-02-15T08:21:46.077000+01:00

When was the last time you were positively surprised by a brand which kept you informed with relevant content at the right time? And in contrast, when was the last time you hit the unsubscribe button in a marketing e-mail because the content was irrelevant to you? Or were you even annoyed by a communication for which you did not opt-in in the first place? Hopefully, the positive brand experience is the last one you remember, but chances are high it was the negative one. This is also the situation your customers are in.

In this article, we discuss Permission Marketing. As a marketer, this can help you avoid negative consumer experiences and instead create positive surprises. Permission Marketing also helps you staying compliant while increasing your marketing effectiveness.

Disclaimer

This article is business-focused, non-technical and solution-agnostic. The article includes remarks on legal regulations, like the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is not to be seen as any form of legal advice or legal consulting. Please involve and consult your legal department and/or data protection officer for any legal aspects related to Permission Marketing.

Definition and Motivation

Permission Marketing is a targeted marketing technique in which only contacts are addressed "who have shown interest and who have given permission to be contacted. In contrast, the classical marketing addresses a large amount of contacts regardless of permission ." (ref-1)

The term Permission Marketing has been around for more than two decades. In other words, the concept is not a new one. It got introduced in 1999 by the American author and marketing expert Seth Godin (ref-2). Despite the long existence of the concept, it is even more relevant today than it was 25 years ago.

Godin based his recommendation for Permission Marketing mainly on business outcomes, observing that permission-based campaigns perform more successful than traditional methods. While business outcomes are still a valid and important consideration, the past years have surfaced additional aspects which make the usage of Permission Marketing obligatory. These aspects are the increased sensitivity of customers on usage of their data, as well as the progression of stricter data protection regulations in various regions. A prominent example of such regulation is the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into force in May 2018. We will come back to GDPR in several places in this article.

Permission Types

Before looking at how to design a Permission Marketing concept, let us clarify in detail what permissions are. For this, we introduce some relevant terms which are being used within this article, taking definitions from GDPR as a reference:

Term(s)	GDPR - Article 4 - Definitions (excerpt)	Remarks
Personal Data & Data Subject	"Personal data" means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ("data subject"). An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.
Data Processing	"Processing" means any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organization, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.	In regards to Permission Marketing, most relevant data processing is profiling and the data usage for marketing communication.
Profiling	"Profiling" means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyze or predict aspects concerning that natural person's performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behavior, location or movements.	The consent for profiling is closely related to the "inbound permission" which is explained below.
Consent or Permission	"Consent" of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.	In this article, we use the terms "consent" and "permission" as having the same meaning and being interchangeable.

In summary, a permission is an agreement to the processing of personal data. The purpose of processing needs to be clearly stated. Permissions, therefore, are tied to a certain kind of processing.

To structure these purpose specific permissions, we differentiate between "inbound permissions" and "outbound permissions" (as shown in illustration-1 below and explained in the following two sections).

Illustration-1: Inbound vs. Outbound Permission

Inbound Permissions

In many regions, especially if you have to follow GDPR, you need to enforce an essential step before loading any personal data into your marketing system. You need to collect the contact's permission for storing and profiling the personal data for marketing purposes. This is what we call "inbound permission" (see also illustration-1 above). The process of collecting inbound permission is typically handled through a consent management system, like for example SAP Customer Data Cloud, before the data is sent to the marketing system.

Outbound Permissions

As shown in illustration-1, outbound permissions reflect the contact's agreement to receive marketing communication, therefore they are related to the usage of the personal data.

When asking contacts for marketing permission, you should be specific and transparent in your inquiry. The following table helps you to understand the most important elements of outbound permissions.

Permission Element	Leading Question	Remarks
Communication Medium	Which communication medium do you want to use (for example, e-mail, call, or direct push message)?	You should clearly state through which communication medium you want to reach your contacts. Ideally, you give them the option to choose between multiple ways to be contacted.
Address / Identifier	On which specific address does your contact want to receive the communication (for example, jane.doe@example.com, +44-20-7946-0930, or @twitterusername)?	The address allows you to identify the contact who gave you permission and to know where to send the communication to. For example, a contact provides consent for marketing messages to his/her private e-mail-address, but not to his/her work-related e-mail-address. Another important aspect is also the combination of communication medium and address. A contact might, for example, give you consent to use the e-mail-address for communication to the e-mail-inbox, but not to use the same e-mail address for personalized advertising on Facebook (by the usage of custom audiences).
Generic or topic-specific communication	Should your contacts give you permission for general marketing communication, or do you want to give them the option to select topic-specific communication based on their interest?	When asking your contacts for marketing permission, you should keep them informed for which exact purpose you want to send them communication. Is it for general marketing and promotion purposes, or do you want to keep them up-to-date about specific topic areas like events, product launches, or whitepaper articles? Communication which is based on opt-in to specific topics (and not just on general marketing permission) has a great advantage: You provide your contacts' freedom of choice and show them that you try to target your messages according to their interests. By doing so, you send more relevant content and can expect higher engagement rates and fewer opt-outs. In addition, you can also reach contacts which may not be willing to provide their consent for general marketing messages, but only for certain topics.
Organizational entity	Does your company have separate brands or market units for which you collect permission?	In case you have a multi-brand or multi-org business, you might need to collect permissions which are specific to the communication of the individual organizational entities. Usually this is done by having separate permission request forms per organizational entity and clearly tying this reference to the permission when it is transferred into the marketing system.

The outbound permissions are typically collected through a landing page or preference center on which the contact can grant or revoke permission to receive the communication. It is often also necessary to perform an initial migration of outbound permissions from a legacy marketing or customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Now that we have a better understanding on what permissions are, let us look at what to consider during the design of a Permission Marketing concept.

Building a Permission Marketing Concept

Illustration-2: Influence factors on Permission Marketing

In order to understand the relevant aspects of a Permission Marketing concept, we look at three main influence factors: legal regulation, internal policy, and individual preference. As illustrated in illustration-2 above, think of these factors as a funnel which specifies the addressable audience for your marketing campaigns.

We will explain each of these three factors individually in the following section. Let us start at the top of the funnel and go into detail on legal regulation.

Legal Regulation

When designing your Permission Marketing concept, the first aspect which you must consider is existing legal regulation. In many geographic regions, it is the most important influence factor with respect to Permission Marketing. Legal regulation forces companies to establish compliant processes for processing customer data and conducting marketing communication. Which specific regulations take effect for your business depends on the geographic regions your company is established in, as well as the region your consumers are based in. To make this more tangible, let us take a closer look at GDPR as an example.

Permission Marketing in the Context of GDPR

Note:
GDPR is relevant for all kinds of processing of personal data, not only marketing. For all the aspects of GDPR described in the following, we are focusing only on those which we consider as most relevant for Permission Marketing.

Topic	Leading Question	Most relevant aspects for Permission Marketing
Territorial Scope	Which companies are affected by GDPR?	The territorial scope of GDPR applies to: "a company or entity which processes personal data as part of the activities of one of its branches established in the EU, regardless of where the data is processed; or a company established outside the EU and is offering goods/services (paid or for free) or is monitoring the behavior of individuals in the EU." (ref-3)
Principles for Data Processing	What needs to be considered when processing personal data for marketing purposes?	Relevant aspects in GDPR for processing personal data in the context of Permission Marketing are: Lawfulness, Fairness and Transparency Personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject. (ref-4) Purpose Limitation Personal data shall be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes. (ref-4) Data Minimization Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed. (ref-4)
Lawfulness of Data Processing	When is it lawful to process personal data for marketing purposes?	At least one of the following requirements must be met: Consent The data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes. (ref-5) Legitimate Interest Processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. (ref-5)
Possible Fines for Violations	What are possible fines a corporation might face when violating against GDPR regulation?	"Serious infringements (which) go against the very principles of the right to privacy (...) could result in a fine of up to €20 million, or 4% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher." (ref-6)

As shown in the table above, the fines which may be imposed when violating against GDPR can be drastic for companies of all sizes. It is therefore a must that you know whether your marketing activities are affected by the regulation and if so, you need to follow the principles for data processing in a lawful way. A good source to find information about already imposed GDPR fines is the GDPR enforcement tracker.

Here are a few additional thoughts on the lawfulness of processing personal data for marketing purposes. While consent-based data processing puts the individual's data protection rights at the center, we believe that the data processing based on legitimate interest is to be treated with great caution. Digital marketing based on legitimate interest is an approach which requires a risk-assessment. Here you need to balance between a potential legitimate interest of your company and the individual's data protection rights. This is especially true in the context of B2C marketing where data processing that is not based on consent may be hard to justify. In case you want to find more information on marketing based on legitimate interest, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published a detailed guidance on legitimate interest under GDPR.

General Approach to Legal Regulation

No matter if you are affected by GDPR or any other legal regulation on data protection and marketing communication, you should always conduct an assessment of the legal situation, answering leading questions like:

Which legal regulation is currently or in the near future impacting the company's marketing activities?
Due to the legal regulation (especially for data collection and sending marketing communication), which processes need to be implemented to stay compliant?
What is the risk of being punished for non-compliance and what would be the expected results?
What needs to be considered in terms of collecting permissions (both inbound and outbound)?

You should address these questions with your Data Protection Officer and/or legal department. This will provide you with a must-have list of processes which need to be established in your marketing system in order to comply with legal regulations.

A brief example for such a must-have list might look like this (again, this is depending on which legal regulation applies to your company):

List item	Actions to Perform in Order to Comply with the Legal Regulation
Inbound Permissions	"We have to establish mechanisms which ensure that only contacts who gave their consent for data storage and profiling are loaded into the marketing system."
Outbound Permissions	"We have to make sure that we have a clear and consistent process for collecting and updating marketing permissions in place."
Ability to Demonstrate Compliance	"We have to be able to demonstrate to the authorities that our contacts have consented to the processing of their personal data. Therefore we require a clear log of all permissions, including change history."
Send-out of Marketing Communication	"We must have reliable checks in place that no marketing communication is sent to contacts who did not give their consent for it."

To summarize, introducing processes which help you stay compliant with legal regulations are essential and minimize the risk for high penalties. It is the first step of narrowing down your addressable audience (by not looking at the contacts which you may technically be able to reach, but only at those who you are legally allowed to communicate to).

Internal Policy

Let us move one level further in the funnel (see illustration-2) and look at internal policy.

While legal regulations force companies to establish a certain set of processes in order to stay compliant, many companies go one step further. They establish additional internal policies for their Permission Marketing which go beyond legal compliance. Typical goals of those internal policies are global process standardization, focusing on engaged contacts, and avoiding over-communication. Let us look at these three objectives to better understand how they may translate into processing rules.

Global Process Standardization:
- Some global companies which are affected by a strict data protection regulation (like GDPR) choose to roll-out processes to comply with this regulation on a global scale, even in regions for which it would not be legally necessary. This includes asking for explicit permission for marketing communication even in regions where an opt-out based approach would be sufficient. The rationale for such a policy is that a globally unified process for permission handling decreases complexity and allows for re-usability. A landing page or preference center which is designed in a GDPR-compliant way can as well be leveraged in countries with more lax legal requirements.
Focus on Engaged Customers:
- Many companies choose to remove contacts from the marketing database after a certain period of inactivity, or if they cannot be reached due to an opt-out to marketing communication (even if consent for data storage is still given). This approach allows companies to concentrate their communication, and the cost involved with it, on the contacts which actively engage with the company.
Avoiding Over-Communication
- Companies which send marketing communication on a high frequency face the risk to annoy their contacts with too much and maybe even irrelevant messages. This quickly results in high opt-out rates and ultimately inefficient marketing. To prevent this from happening, we recommend to closely monitor and manage communication frequency to individual contacts. Introducing rules on communication frequency can be seen as one part of the internal policy. A clear set of rules on when to limit communication can also be seen as a component of internal policies for Permission Marketing.

The examples above illustrate how decisions beyond pure legal compliance manifest in internal policies for processing of personal data. The agreement on such internal policies should happen in close collaboration with the marketing business and should be clearly documented.

Individual Preference

Now, we have reached the last element of the funnel (see illustration-2), individual preference. While legal regulation and internal policies are all about staying compliant and establishing efficient processes, individual preference really puts the individual contacts first. It means giving the receivers greater flexibility of choice on the way you communicate to them. The main benefits of this approach have already been called out before such as higher relevance in your communication, increased engagement of the contacts, and lower opt-out rates.

The tool of choice to provide this flexibility is a preference center in which contacts can subscribe and unsubscribe to communication based on topic, select their preferred communication channel(s), and decide in which frequency they want to hear from you.

Building up and maintaining this individualized, preference-based communication comes with challenges: You need to have dedicated teams to create topic-specific content with a certain regularity, and you need to establish additional communication channels beyond simple e-mail marketing. In addition, you should consider conducting surveys in which your customers can provide feedback on your communication approach. This way you can learn from their feedback and adjust your communication to better serve their needs.

Conclusion

This article introduced you to Permission Marketing, why it is important, and how to build a structured concept for it. The three main aspects (legal regulation, internal policy, and individual preference) should be followed in sequence when you define your concept.

Keeping your marketing activities legally compliant by following relevant regulations can be seen as a "must-have" and should be addressed together with your legal department.
Establishing internal policies to increase efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing activities is a "should-have" and requires close involvement of your marketing business.
Allowing for individual preference is certainly also a "should-have". However, it involves a lot of complexity and should be tackled after you have addressed legal regulation and internal policy.

Closing Remarks

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you found it helpful for diving into the topic of Permission Marketing. Please leave a like or a comment, in case you want to.

Should you need further support with your Permission Marketing concept or other Marketing Operations aspects, we from SAP CX Services are happy to help you with expert guidance.

References

(ref-1) SAP Help Portal, Permission Marketing

(ref-2) Seth Godin, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers , 1999

(ref-3) European Commission, Who does the data protection law apply to?

(ref-4) General Data Protection Regulation, Article 5 - Principles relating to processing of personal data

(ref-5) General Data Protection Regulation, Article 6 - Lawfulness of processing

(ref-6) GDPR.eu, What are the GDPR fines?

Campaign Build - Segmentation Best Practice

2024-02-16T08:28:18.744000+01:00

Disclaimer

This article has previously been published on the SAP CX Works platform, which is no longer accessible. The content is still relevant for SAP Marketing Cloud users, so the article is now republished as a blog on SAP Community.

Do you have a new digital marketing campaign which you want to realize? Together with your colleagues you have already worked out a campaign brief, describing your planned campaign in detail. You have conceptually defined the target audience, campaign flow, channels and content and now you are ready to put your campaign into action?

We are here to help you with best practices on how to turn your campaign definition into a running campaign in your SAP Marketing Cloud system.

In this article we are going to focus on the Segmentation within the campaign build process. You will learn about a versatile step-by-step segmentation approach, along with tips to build performant segmentation models and avoid common pitfalls.

Introduction

Before we dive into the details, let us get an orientation where Segmentation is positioned when looking at the campaign operation process (illustration-1).

Illustration-1: Simplified campaign operation process

Segmentation is part of the Build phase within the campaign operation process. As with the other actions during campaign build, Segmentation requires a clear conceptual definition of the campaign to start with.

Segmentation is the element in the campaign build process (see illustration-2) which leads to the setup of the target group to be included in the campaign.

Illustration-2: Campaign Build process

The Segmentation is performed on the available contact profiles you have gathered via Profiling in the Marketing system. In most cases, Profiling happens in an automated, ongoing way by integrating contact data from external systems via API calls. Let's assume Profiling is taking care of and we can get to the next step which is Segmentation. The result of this segmentation step is a target group which can be used in a campaign, together with the marketing content that you want to send.

We will not go into more detail on Profiling, Campaign Flow and Content in this article, but rather concentrate on Segmentation best practices. For this we also assume that you are already familiar with the general usage of the Segmentation app within SAP Marketing Cloud. A general introduction on how to use the app and all its features would go beyond the constraints of this article and there is already respective content available. In case you want to learn more about the functions and features of Segmentation we recommend the Segmentation section in the Application Help.

In the following, we are focusing on the main segmentation challenges we have seen at multiple customers. For this we first set the stage by looking at the conceptual definition of target groups.

Defining the Target Group

Based on our experience, marketers sometimes struggle with the precise definition of target groups. Obviously, these unclear definitions are a challenge when it comes to building campaigns in a marketing system. This is especially true for an operational setup in which marketers are responsible for specifying the campaign tactics and an agency or service center is performing the campaign build. To facilitate the clear definition of campaigns and target groups, we recommend the usage of campaign briefings.

As part of working with campaign briefings, we recommend the differentiation between inclusive and exclusive attributes for defining target groups. It also makes sense to further differentiate between master data and interaction data in this step.

Let us look at an exemplary target group definition to make this approach more tangible:

A global fashion company wants to run a promotion campaign in North America. In this campaign, the company wants to address female consumers who recently purchased a product and opened marketing emails. The company is running a parallel campaign in New York for opening a new flagship store which they do not want to interfere with. Also, they want to make sure customers who recently raised a complaint or sent an inbound email are not being targeted by the campaign. As last criteria, the target group should not include any consumers younger than 18 years.

This exemplary target group has quite a few attributes and may not necessarily be a standard case. However, we want to explain how such a complex case can be consistently documented and later build in segmentation. As you can see in table one below, we are using four leading questions to qualify the target group.

Segment Group A
Inclusive Master Data Attributes

Segment Group B
Exclusive Master Data Attributes

Segment Group C
Inclusive Interaction Attributes

Segment Group D
Exclusive Interaction Attributes

Leading Question

Which master data attributes (e.g. country, loyalty membership) qualify contacts to be part of the target group?

Which master data attributes (e.g. country, loyalty membership) disqualify contacts from the target group?

Which specific interactions (e.g. product purchased, video viewed) qualifies contacts to be part of the target group?

Which specific interactions (e.g. product purchased, video viewed) disqualifies contacts to be part of the target group?

Target Group Definition (Example)

Country: United States OR Canada
AND

Gender: female

City: New York
OR
Age: Below 18 years

Has made a purchase within the last 6 months
AND
Has opened a marketing email in the last 4 months

Has raised a complaint within the last 3 months
OR
Send an inbound mail within the last 2 weeks

This clearly documented target group definition has multiple benefits:

Let segmentation users know exactly which target group to build.
Help to structure the segmentation build, resulting in more streamlined segmentation models.
Serve as a communication method of target group definitions outside of the marketing tool.
Allow to define target groups for which data points may not be available yet, serving as a basis for an implementation request.

Now that we have the target group definition, we will discuss in the next section how to build up the target group in SAP Marketing Cloud using Segmentation.

Multi-step segmentation approach

The Segmentation within SAP Marketing Cloud is a powerful tool and offers a lot of flexibility. On the one hand, this flexibility is great for building target groups which are very much tailored to your campaign requirements. On the other hand, the segmentation flexibility can also result in some typical challenges:

Segmentation models which are not build in a structured way can easily become confusing, hard to understand and incorrect.
Depending on the quality of the segmentation model, the resulting segmentation performance can greatly vary.
Identifying and correcting errors in unstructured segmentation models is very difficult.

Let us address these challenges by introducing a structured multi-step segmentation approach, along with additional recommendations on how to best build up your segmentation.

We found that the previously shown method to define target groups (see table above), helps to build up a comprehensive segmentation model. The four segment groups (A-D) by which the target group is described can be used to build up the segmentation flow in subsequent steps:

Step 1: Start by building Segment Group A, including all the filters for inclusive master data attributes into the flow.
Step 2: From the Segmentation Group A, exclude all the attributes defined in your Segmentation Group B, by using the "equal-to & exclude" operation.
Step 3a: Build parallel segmentation branch(es) with the inclusive interaction data (Segment Group C), starting from the root segment. Use one branch per interaction type if you need to further qualify them (e.g. different date range).
Step 3b: In case of multiple branches with inclusive interaction data, combine them after you have segmented the individual interaction types. For combining inclusive interactions, you typically use an Intersect operation to represent a logical AND.
Step 4a: Build parallel segmentation branch(es) with the exclusive interaction data (Segment Group D), starting from the root segment. Use one branch per interaction type if you need to further qualify them (e.g. different date range).
Step 4b: In case of multiple branches with exclusive interaction data, combine them after you have segmented the individual interaction types. For combining exclusive attributes, you typically use a Merge operation to represent a logical OR.
Step 5: Subtract the exclusive interaction data branch (Segment Group D) from the inclusive interaction data branch (Segment Group C).
Step 6: Intersect the segmentation branch with the master data attributes with the segmentation branch containing the interaction data (build in step 5).
Step 7: Create your target group on the last segment.

You can examine the previously described steps in illustration-3 below.

Illustration-3: Multi-step segmentation on master data and interaction data

In addition to a comprehensive segmentation flow, the separation between master data and interaction data helps to prevent common segmentation mistakes which can happen by mixing master data and interaction data in one branch.

Next to following the multi-step approach as described above, there are further recommendations which help you build your segmentation model. We group these tips into three chapters: Correctness, Usability and Performance. The next chapter provides you with tips on how to avoid common logical mistakes and build correct segmentations models.

Segmentation Correctness Tips

Filtering on Interactions

In general, segmenting on interaction data needs special attention. When you filter on an attribute (be it master data or interaction data), all the following segments will only show contacts which meet the previously defined criteria. This should be kept in mind especially when you filter on different interactions. As soon as you filter on an interaction type (for example "Sales Order"), all the following segments in the same branch only filter on these specific interactions.

Illustration-4 shows this behavior with two different ways to segment on Sales Orders and Email Opened interactions.

Illustration-4: Filtering on interactions

Flow A uses one segmentation branch per interaction type and then combines them. It therefore achieves the desired result to select consumers who have made a purchase in the last 6 months and opened an email in the last 4 months.
Flow B in contrast is filtering on both interaction types sequentially in one branch and returns no contacts, even though it includes the same filters as Flow A. This makes sense if you think about the fact that an "Email Opened" is not the same as a "Sales Order".

This emphasizes our previously given recommendation to use separate segmentation branches per interaction type.

✔️ Best practice
When segmenting on interactions, it is best practice to first select the interaction type and then further specify the interactions in the child segments based on additional interaction attributes like date, reason or channel.

The difference between "Equal to & Exclude" and "Not-equal to & Keep"

A common pitfall we have seen is the incorrect usage of the "Equal to & Exclude" and the "Not-equal to & Keep" operations. At first look, it might seem that the two operations mean the same thing. However, there are important logical differences between them. These can especially get tricky when filtering on attributes which have a 1:n or n:m relation to the contact. The following table explains the results of the two operations in more detail.

Contact to Attribute Relation	Equal to & Exclude	Not-equal to & Keep
	Returns all contacts who do not have the specified attribute value.	Returns all contacts who have an attribute value (not null) which is not matching the specified value.
1:1 Relation Example: Country	Contacts with null values (no value for the attribute) are included.	Contacts with null values (no value for the attribute) are not included.
1:n Relation Example: Interaction Type	Contacts which have the selected attribute value (e.g. have the specified interaction type) are excluded.	Contacts which have any other attribute value (e.g. have a different interaction type) are included. Contacts may also have the specified attribute value, as long as they meet the criteria that they also have a different value.
n:m Relation Example: Target Group	Contacts which have the selected attribute value (e.g. are member of the specified target group) are excluded.	Contacts which have any other attribute value (e.g. are members of a different target group) are included. Contacts may also have the specified attribute value, as long as they meet the criteria that they also have a different value.

Let us further clarify the logic for 1:n (or n:m) relations with an example. Assume you want to filter contacts on the interaction type "website visit". What are the outcomes of the two segmentation operations?

"Equal to & Exclude": Selects all the contacts which did not perform a "website visit" interaction. (See segment A on illustration-6 below)
"Not-equal to & Keep": Selects all the contacts which have at least one interaction which is different from a "website visit" (see segment B on illustration-5 below).

Illustration-5: Visualizing the difference between "Equal To & Exclude" and "Not-equal to & Keep"

Keeping the above explanation in mind, please make sure you use the correct segmentation operation, depending on the individual use case.

✔️ Best practice
Should you be able to model your segmentation with "Not-equal to & Keep", you should preferably do so, since the exclude operation in "Equal to & Exclude" tends to be more performance intensive.

Filtering on Campaign Members Instead of Target Group Members

A very common requirement in Segmentation is that you filter on recipients of a campaign. Just to name two use cases:

You want to exclude contacts from a dynamic target group who already received communication from a related recurring campaign.
You want to include recipients from a specific campaign into a follow-up campaign.

Let's look at an example for the first use case (exclusion) in more detail:

You are running a customer satisfaction survey campaign in Germany which consumers should receive every 90 days, given that they have provided permission. The campaign is scheduled with a weekly recurrence to include new contacts via a dynamic target group. You want to make sure that target group members do not receive a new survey email with every weekly execution, but only if they haven't received the email in the last 90 days (including the current month).

Our proposed segmentation sequence for this use case is shown in illustration-6 below.

Illustration-6: Filtering on campaign members and actions

In general, segmenting contacts based on campaign interactions can be flexibly achieved by combining the following interaction attributes in one segmentation branch:

"Campaign ID" and/or "Content ID" (if you want to specify interactions on individual content items)
"Interaction Type" (e.g. outbound email, click-through)
"Interaction Date"

This approach to segment campaign members based on campaign interactions can be used more granular than only filtering on the membership in a target group. Therefore our general recommendation is to filter contacts based on campaign interactions, rather than on the target group attribute.

Segmentation Usability Tips

Keep Segmentation Intelligible by Naming Segments

Especially when multiple business users are using the same target groups or filters (live target groups) for their campaigns, it is important that the underlying segmentation model is easy to comprehend. This should include all the segments included in the segmentation model. A simple, but effective way to make your segmentation more comprehensible is the usage of named segments.

Per default, when you created a segment, it will be named according to the segmentation attribute and the values used as filter. This can be sufficient when you filter only on a few attribute values. But quite often, a segment can be based on many attribute values or, in the case of interaction attributes, include a time dependency. In these cases, we recommend the usage of segment names which have been defined by the user. Illustration-7 shows a common example where the segment name which was automatically created based on the filter criteria is not self-explaining.

Illustration-7: Using segment names to improve readability

In this example, the consumer base is filtered to all consumers which live in Europe. This filter on countries obviously includes a fairly long list of attribute values, which cannot be fully displayed in the segment name. However, by simply renaming the segment to "European countries", the purpose of the segment is easily understandable.

✔️Guideline when to rename a segment
Put yourself in the shoes of another person looking at your segmentation model. Is it easy to understand the meaning of the segment just by looking at the automated name? If this is not the case, you should consider renaming the segment with your own description which should be precise and easy to understand.

Segmentation Performance Tips

In general, the performance of your segmentation models is influenced by a number of factors. Some of these factors are in control of the segmentation user, others are more depending on the underlying data model and are therefore rather in control of the marketing operation team.

The following list displays the most important performance influence factors.

Segmentation Sequence

In control of: Segmentation users
Recommendation: The sequence of your segmentation steps can have an impact on segmentation performance. This is a factor which can be influenced by the business user building the segmentation model. For a detailed recommendation, please see the section "Segmentation Sequence" below.

Segmentation Operations

In control of: Segmentation users
Recommendation: The Segmentation application is translating the UI-based segmentation into SQL statements to query the data. It is important to know that certain operators are more performance intensive than others. Please see the section "Avoiding Costly Segmentation Operations" below for more details.

Segmentation Complexity

In control of: Segmentation users
Recommendation: Complexity of a segmentation or building block is defined as the amount of ancestor segments for a particular segment and the depth of the segmentation model. You should try to avoid building highly complex segmentation models in order to avoid performance and reliability issues. To safeguard the stability and reliability of Segmentation, SAP has introduces Segmentation Complexity Restrictions.

Data Volume

In control of: Marketing operations team
Recommendation: In general, the higher the data volume (e.g. number of contacts and interactions) you have in your system, the more system performance is required to calculate segmentation results. We strongly recommend that you only keep data (contacts and interaction history) in your marketing system which is required for your marketing activities. This can be achieved by implementing a data retention and deletion policy.

Parallel occurring jobs, processes and workloads

In control of: Marketing Operations Team
Recommendation: Keep in mind that there may be other jobs or processes (for example data imports, score calculations or campaign executions) running in parallel to your segmentation activities. You should check with your marketing operation team that your segmentation activities are aligned with these processes to avoid a high load on the system. In this context, you should also check that the scheduled execution of campaigns and other performance intensive system processes are not impacting each other.

Segmentation Extensibility

In control of: Person responsible of data model extensibility
Recommendation: Custom Views are a very flexible tool to customize or extend the standard business objects (e.g. Contact or Interaction) you use within Segmentation. However, depending on the number, complexity and performance of these custom views, they can have a high impact on the performance of your segmentation model. In addition to the extension of the standard business objects, Custom Business Objects provide another flexible way to extend your segmentation model. Our recommendation is to always check whether your segmentation requirement can be achieved with standard attributes before bringing in additional, potentially performance-intensive, custom views and custom business objects.

Segmentation Sequence

We recommend to use filter attributes in a sequence from "strong selectivity" to "weak selectivity". This means that you should reduce the volume of your segments early in the segmentation flow. You should also keep in mind that complex attributes (for example Scores and attributes based on custom views) typically require more computation time than "simple" attributes. In most cases, an improved calculation speed can be achieved by placing these performance intensive attributes towards the end of your segmentation flow (with less contacts). Illustration-8 shows a simple example on how to apply these two recommendations in a performant filter sequence.

Illustration-8: Filter sequence

You can see in the example that branch "A" has a more selective attribute early in the flow and the more performance intensive attribute at the end. In many cases, an optimized segmentation sequence offers great potential to achieve a significantly faster segmentation calculation time.

✔️ Recommendation
It might not always be possible to strictly stick to the filter sequence recommendations mentioned in this section. Nevertheless, especially if you filter on large data volumes with performance intensive attributes, you should try to optimize your filter sequence as good as possible.

Avoiding costly segmentation operations

Contains Pattern and Contained in File

The comparison operators (like "Equal to", "Greater than" or "Contains pattern") which are used when building segments come with different cost in computation. Please be aware that especially the operators "Contains pattern", "Does not contain pattern" and "Contained in file" tend to be performance intensive. This is because they are using regular expressions on data base level to not only select exact value matches, but also values which contain the defined pattern in a text string (e.g. domain within an email-address). In addition, these operators need to convert the data to same case before doing the comparison. You can find more details on case sensitivity on the following help page.

We generally recommend to use the "equal to" operator instead of "contains pattern" if this can be achieved. In case the operation "contains pattern" is still required, you should try to use it towards the end of your segmentation flow, following the recommendation given in the previous section.

Reduce Randomly per Reference Object

Another costly segmentation operation is the usage of "reduce randomly per reference object". A common use case for this operation is the deduplication of email addresses as described in SAP Note 2448963. In case you have multiple contacts which share the same email address, you should check whether this is intended behavior or poor data quality. Typically shared e-mail addresses are common in a B2B context (corporate email addresses), but not in a B2C context. In case the shared email addresses occur due to poor data quality, we recommend you to investigate with your marketing operation team (or implementation partner) why this happens and how the contacts can be corrected.

Same as with the other performance intensive operations, should you not be able to avoid the usage of "reduce randomly per reference object", you should try to only apply it on already reduced data volume towards the end of your segmentation model.

Segmentation Diagnostics

Closing this chapter on segmentation performance, we want to provide you with some tips on how to analyze the performance of your segmentation models.

The easiest way to see the calculation time for a specific segment is to do a mouseover on the segment name, until a box with additional segment information appears. This information box contains the calculation time of the segment. We use the similar example as in the section on Segmentation Sequence, now showing the individual segment calculation times in illustration-9.

Illustration-9: Analyzing calculation time of segments via mouseover

When analyzing the runtimes of the segments, it is best practice to recalculate the segments individually, starting from top to bottom. This approach allows you to try out different segmentation sequences, optimizing the overall runtime of your segmentation model.

A more advanced way to analyze the runtimes within your segmentation model is to use the "Segmentation Diagnostics". Illustration-10 shows how to get to the segmentation diagnostics within the Segmentation app.

Illustration-10: How to turn on Segmentation Diagnostics

The segmentation diagnostics allow you to trace the runtime of your segmentation model in detail, including runtimes for the individual segments as displayed in illustration-11.

Illustration-11: Exemplary segmentation diagnostics including SQL runtime per segment

The segmentation diagnostics can also be exported to a CSV file, which allows you to further analyze the data in external tools like Excel.

Conclusion

In this article you were introduced to best practices in building correct, comprehensible and performant segmentation models to determine target groups for your campaigns. You have learned about a multi-step segmentation approach based on a templatized target group definition, as well as further tips on how to improve segmentation usage.

To summarize, Segmentation in SAP Marketing Cloud is a powerful and flexible tool to create very specific target groups. The great flexibility can also come with challenges on how to optimally build your segmentation model. We hope that the article gave you good tips in mastering Segmentation with confidence.

Ankur Godre

2024-02-26T20:30:30.606000+01:00

About Ankur

Bristol, England

SAP Mentor since 2015

Technology leader and SAP mentor, leveraging the power of technology as a driver of business transformation while championing the irreplaceable value of the authentic human connection in client engagements. Recognized as a trusted advisor for SAP CX, S/4 HANA, and SAP ECC solutions. Brings deep expertise across strategy, consulting, solution and delivery management, project leadership, customer discovery, and pre-sales. A catalyst for building Centers of Excellence, establishing SAP practices, and advancing organizational growth and value. GenAI enthusiast, always looking to solve problems using advanced technology to bring efficiency, drive value and growth for organizations.

Committed to mentoring, best practice-sharing, and active thought leadership within the SAP ecosystem and community.

Topics of interest:

SAP Customer Experience, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Customer Data Cloud, SAP BTP, SAP Integration Suite, UI/UX, SAP S/4 HANA, Joule, SAP Business AI

Ankur, what inspired you to become an SAP Mentor?

Helping the community, sharing hard earned knowledge with the community and the feeling of seeing people learning and growing, getting inspired and being able to put my perspective out there and becoming the voice of customers, helping SAP to make their products better with feedback are few things which inspired me to be an active contributor to the community.

Becoming a mentor also made me a part of this amazing group of fellow mentors and extended my network and outreach within and outside SAP!

What advice would like to share with other SAP community members?

The most valuable use of one’s knowledge is in sharing it with others!

Sharing your knowledge with others is the easiest and the best way to increase it. Knowing someone has learned something from you and seeing them grow and get inspired by you, is probably the most satisfying feeling one can get, so keep sharing your knowledge!

Knowledge not shared is not knowledge, it’s a black box in your head….

Is your organization ready for a marketing transformation?

2024-03-28T20:08:53.899000+01:00

“Fruit of the Room”, a prominent online retailer specializing in fruit-themed products for the home, has been a long-time SAP Marketing Cloud (SMC) customer. Contact profiling, marketing permissions, trigger-based campaigns, and landing pages are just some of the features regularly used. Recognizing the need to evolve their marketing solution, they contacted their Customer Success Partner, Taylor, for advice.

Taylor knew SMC licenses won’t be renewed past December 2026 as SAP adjusted innovation investments towards other marketing relevant solutions. Taylor also understood the need for a transformation; the one size fits all model of SMC wouldn’t suffice and an adaptable and composable Martech stack was needed. This approach harnessed the power of SAP's suite of marketing solutions, including SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement and SAP Customer Data Platform, and created a more agile and effective marketing ecosystem. Taylor assembled a team of experts to evaluate their current use of SMC and to showcase how the breadth of SAP solutions allowed Fruit of the Room to update their marketing landscape.

By transitioning from a monolithic architecture to a composable one, businesses like Fruit of the Room can unlock many benefits. These benefits include the separation of data from marketing tasks, simplifying workflows, and use of real-time engagement and Business-AI for improved customer experiences. The Fruit of the Room leadership team was enthusiastic about SAP’s state-of-the-art Martech approach to marketing execution, omnichannel customer engagement, and customer data management. They were also glad to see how the composable framework was easily integrated with other solutions.

With Taylor's guidance and the support of their implementation partner and SAP Services, Fruit of the Room transitioned to their new marketing landscape without disrupting ongoing campaigns. They also saw a significant increase in revenue, thanks to the implementation of omnichannel campaigns driven by SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement and enriched by customer profiles from SAP Customer Data Platform.

The success story of Fruit of the Room shows how important it is to rethink and adapt the marketing stack to meet evolving business requirements. For organizations ready to embark on their own marketing transformation journey, the message is clear: don't hesitate to contact your Customer Success Partner and take advantage of SAP’s expertise in business transformation. Together, we can build a future-proof marketing ecosystem tailored to your goals.

Clean Core within SAP Sales and Service Cloud extensions

2024-04-28T18:57:18.366000+02:00

The first wave of CRMs helped tidy up customer data and processes, but they didn't really make the customer experience much better. Nowadays, companies of all sizes are focusing on improving customers experience because it's been proven that happy customers are more likely to come back. If their experiences aren't memorable, they might choose a competitor next time.

Because of this, businesses are always brainstorming new ideas to make their products and services even better. But improving things like system stability and scalability is essential for these changes to work smoothly.

In the past, companies could tweak (through exits, BAdIs or, even by copying standard objects) their SAP systems however they wanted because they were usually kept in their own data centers. But things changed when SAP shifted to a cloud-based approach. Now, all Sales/Service Cloud customers share the same SAP baseline, so changes can't be handled any further as they were made in the past. That's where the Clean Core approach comes in—it's a new way of thinking about extending SAP's capabilities specifically for the cloud era.

Understanding the Clean Core Concept

Clean Core revolves around maintaining a clear separation between core functionalities and customizations, with the aim of achieving a modern, flexible, and cloud-compliant system. In the realm of SAP CX extensions, this translates to safeguarding the integrity of the core SAP CX products while allowing for tailored enhancements to meet specific business needs.

Think of it as organizing a toolbox where each tool serves for a unique purpose without clutter. Similarly, a Clean Core architecture ensures that the essential functionalities (for example, customer data management, order processing, or marketing automation) remain untouched by customizations. This not only ensures system stability but also facilitates seamless upgrades and future scalability.

Benefits of a Clean Core Approach

Embracing the Clean Core concept offers several advantages for businesses leveraging SAP CX extensions:

Streamlined upgrades: By keeping customizations separate from the core SAP CX platform, businesses can streamline the upgrade process, minimizing downtime and reducing the risk of compatibility issues.
Enhanced agility: A Clean Core architecture empowers businesses to respond quickly to changing market demands and customer expectations. With the ability to innovate without compromising system integrity, organizations can stay ahead in today's competitive landscape.
Improved performance: Removing unnecessary customizations from the core SAP CX platform can lead to enhanced system performance, responsiveness, continuity and stability, resulting in a smoother customer experience.
Simplifying the way of working: Promoting the fit-to-standard compliance with clean core modular innovation makes customers to use “out of the box” SAP solutions and add their additional capabilities at the desired pace.

Additionally, it could be pointed out the fact of making reduction in the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) by using infrastructure and licenses in a much more efficient way.

Extensibility within Clean Core approach

Clean Core Extensibility is basically a way of extending SAP systems without messing with the core application. It's all about keeping your custom enhancements separate from the main SAP setup, so you can update your system without causing any issues. In simpler terms, when you add extra features or tweaks, they won't interfere with the basic functions of SAP that keep your business running smoothly.

For Sales and Service Cloud products, there are in-app (built-in) tools that help you customize things without getting too technical. But for more complex changes, you might need to consider side-by-side extensions. The In-App tools in v1 are mostly UI related. In terms of more complex extensions for v1, the way to go is through PDI development which has caused (to me) many issues. This PDI developments are introduced through a programming language called ABSL (ABAP Scripting Language) which, for being direct on my words, has nothing to do with ABAP and it is implemented through an SDK. Also, coding this has lots of restrictions in comparison to the coding we were used to develop those who have invested years with ABAP.

In v2, in-app extensibility is limited to fields and can't create full custom objects as possible in v1. So this could be solved by implementing a RAP or CAP solution in BTP and connecting it into the v2, for example, through a Mashup.

The concept of clean core extensibility can be distilledin this framework of best practices that a customer adopts when implementing SAP Sales/Service Cloud products:

Adopting a policy of zero modifications
Eliminating enhancements that are redundant to standard code and functionality and also eliminating copies of SAP objects
Using released APIs only ("upgrade-stable interfaces")
Leveraging the key user (in-app) extensibility to its full extent
Employing the capabilities and services offered by SAP BTP to build larger extension applications
Using SAP Integration Suite

Best Practices for Implementing a Clean Core

Implementing a Clean Core approach within SAP CX extensions requires careful planning and execution. Here are some best practices:

Modularization: Break down complex functionalities into modular components, allowing for greater flexibility and easier maintenance.
Encapsulation: Protect core functionalities from direct modification by encapsulating them within well-defined interfaces and abstraction layers.
Version Control: Implement robust version control mechanisms to manage customizations effectively and track changes over time.

Real-World use cases

Over the past decade, I've worked on several projects implementing C4C (now known as Sales/Service Cloud v1) where I tackled various challenging requirements. Looking back, if I would face similar tasks now, regardless of whether it's a v1 or v2 product, I'd opt for a side-by-side extension approach.

For instance, on a Service Cloud project, a client needed a feature where a main ticket would automatically close once all its sub-tickets were marked as 'Closed'. Surprisingly, neither v1 nor v2 had this feature when I last checked.

My approach today (for v2) would involve setting up a trigger using an Autoflow, which activates whenever a sub-ticket is closed. This trigger would then call a service on SAP's Business Technology Platform (BTP), developed using CAP. This service would then check if all sub-tickets are closed and, if so, it would also close the main ticket.

Also, my approach today (for v1) would involve setting up a trigger using Workflow Rules, which calls a PDI action that ends up calling almost the same CAP development from BTP. Although logic would be the same, the only adjustment inside CAP would consist on calling different endpoints.

However, when I encountered this requirement previously, the solution we implemented was a bit different. We created a Workflow Rule triggered when a ticket reached 'Closed' status. This rule would then execute an action developed using PDI, which would check if all sub-tickets were closed and decide whether to close the main ticket. This approach could have been tweaked by integrating the Workflow Rule directly into the PDI solution, triggered by an AfterSave event.

Closing comments

One of the big challenges we face is figuring out how to transition the army of tech experts who've been immersed in SAP CRM technologies like WebUI, BOL, and GenIL for decades into SAP CAP/RAP developers. This is the challenge that really gets me thinking and motivates me to take action.

I think the key lies in finding a balance between employees and employers. It's about consultants being proactive and open to learning new ways of doing things, while companies need to step up and offer opportunities for their teams to not just learn, but actually put their new skills into practice.

What do you think about this? Are you willing to jump into this new Era? Have you already done it? Do you agree with Clean Core principles? Have you already worked with this side-by-side context within SAP CX? I am interested to read your experiences, don't be shy!

SAP Sales and Service Cloud side-by-side extensions - Development Patterns

2024-05-06T03:02:28.153000+02:00

On my previous blog, I wrote about “Clean Core within SAP Sales and Service Cloud extensions” and defined the Clean Core Extensibility as the “way of extending SAP systems without messing with the core application”.

But, when speaking about Clean Core extensions, we should not only think of a side-by-side development, yet, we should always think as our first alternative of an in-app extension prior to a side-by-side one.

Every In-App comment you will read in the upcoming paragraphs applies to Sales and Service Cloud v2 products, however, when speaking about side-by-side extensibility patterns, this applies to any other SAP CX or, even, SAP S/4 HANA products (although the way for plugging them will not be the same, the overall concepts would be similar).

Extensibility within Sales and Service Cloud v2

From now onwards, I will refer to ”SAP Sales / Service Cloud v2” simply as “v2”. In v2, customers should always extend the solution through built-in tools when receiving requirements such as:

adding a custom field without the need of implementing a complete new custom object;
adjusting field attributes such as the ability of being filterable, searchable, sortable, required, creatable, updatable;
implementing simple validations;
implementing simple determinations;
triggering email or system notifications under certain conditions

Although there are various things that can be achieved through In-App tools, it will happen at some point that business needs to introduce complex logic, or retrieve information from another source or mix various logics, which takes us into the need of a side-by-side enhancement. And that’s the point where we want to get for deep diving on this blog article.

For those who do not have professional development experience, it is possible to build extensions based on SAP Builds. For those who have professional development experience, there are two flavors for developing side-by-side extensions: RAP (RESTful Application Programming) or CAP (Cloud Application Programming). It is not a matter of deciding whether to use RAP (based on ABAP) or CAP (based on Node.js or Java) as both have their own purpose and benefits. We could spend a whole article discussing about this but this is not the aim of this one so we can leave this discussion for another post.

Side-by-side design patterns

Despite v2 being technology agnostic, SAP’s preferred way for extensibility is based on BTP, using SAP Builds for UI extensions and CAP development for server side implementations. But, as all the development patterns are based on web standards (mashups inside iFrames, REST APIs and webhooks for eventing), this enables the users to pick what they like most or what it fits them best!

In comparison to v1's existing setup, oData APIs are not supported for v2.

In the upcoming paragraphs, I will present certain patterns that can be used as construction bricks to construct almost any use case. All the extensions that I will be presenting at a later stage of the article, end up fitting with one of these extension patterns. A few weeks ago, SAP presented “Webcast 3: Introduction to Side-By-Side Customization (with SAP BTP)” which inspired me on writing this article. As pointed out on that webcast, these design patterns should fit for v2, as well as for v1, as we are discussing about SAP BTP development. The difference lies on how to connect each of these extensions with v1 or v2: v1 could trigger it through PDI while v2 could do it through Autoflow. Also, and just to be extremely clear, a BTP extension developed through CAP for v2, won't work straight forward for v1, for example, as each product uses different APIs; while v1 uses oData, v2 uses REST-based APIs. For sure, in the future we could deep dive on a separate blog on how to make an app usable for both, v1 and v2.

Having said this, let's jump into the design patterns:

Pattern #1: Event Consumer

the overall concept relies on having our v2 system triggering a webhook, which is an HTTP request sent to our BTP application, containing a data payload, which triggers certain action asynchronously
asynchronous execution which means there is no impact on end-user's performance, the application has "no rush” to do what it needs to do as per this asynchronism
as per this pattern, even in case the BTP app would fail, users could continue with their daily tasks without these being affected
CPI is a good choice for this scenario as per the fact that there are no performance requirements when using this design pattern. However, it is also possible to demonstrate this pattern through a Cloud Foundry application.

Pattern #2: External Hook

the overall concept is similar to BAdIs, custom code is executed in a synchronous manner so user can't continue with his duties until the execution ends
the performance is key for making things run smoothly; the danger on this pattern is that if the BTP application results faulty or slow, this will have direct impact on the response to the request
this approach is quite powerful and useful, for example, when dealing with complex validations or determinations that can’t be achieved through in-app tools
to be released soon by SAP

Pattern #3: External Job

the overall concept is to use the BTP job scheduling service to trigger certain activities; alternatively, some CPI flows could be also scheduled
this is useful when needing to adjust information under certain conditions or under certain periods of time, when not able to use scheduled field updates or autoflows (to be released soon for v2)
asynchronous execution which means their is no impact on end-user's performance

Pattern #4: Mashup

the overall concept is to integrate BTP applications or simply 3rd party tools into the v2 where v2 could send request parameters in order to get the expected content exposed
SAP is currently working on making this integration through UI events in addition to sending request parameters; by doing this the UI will be able to connect back and forward with the mashup so, in case you make a change that affects the object you are working on the mashup, this mashup could send an event back to inform the object screen to reload

Real-world use cases

Example #1 - Event Consumer: when a sub-case status is set to "Completed”, if no others exists or if the others are all under "Completed” or "Closed” status, the parent Case should be set to "Completed”.

The overall approach would consist on setting up an Autoflow upon the closure of a sub-Case. This should call a BTP application which, asynchronously, retrieves the parent Case and checks whether this has other related sub-Cases that are not yet completed nor closed. If no others are pending for completion, the parent Case status should be updated to "Completed".

Example #2 - External Hook: when a Case has just been created and is assigned to certain processor, an additional validation should occur in order to see whether that person is the right candidate based on his current workload. In case he is not, it should be re-assigned to a dispatcher or left un-assigned.

The overall logic would consist on triggering the validation upon the setting of the “Assigned To” field, only upon the creation of a Case. The validation will be contained on a BTP application which would call certain APIs for reading the processor of the Cases and ensuring that the limit amount of assignments was not reached. In case it was, the application would return an error message or simply clear out or reassign the Case to a dispatcher processor.

Example #3 - External Job: a daily job that runs every night and, for those Cases which have priority “Urgent” or “Immediate”, have status “Customer Action” and have not been updated for the last 48 hours, its priority should be reduced.

The overall approach would consist on scheduling a job in BTP that triggers the BTP application which retrieves the list of Cases that meet the priority and status criteria and, for each of them, it should be checked that they have not been modified during the last 2 days. If any under this situation, the priority should be decreased.

Example #4 - Mashup: the customer wants its processors to have a common way of working so based on the Case category, a predefined set of activities should be performed. In order to achieve this, a mashup will be embedded and this will present a list of predefined activities. The processor will be able to interact and mark as completed the desired activities of the ToDo list.

The overall logic for achieving this requirement consists on developing a CAP application with its corresponding data model, services and UI for handling ToDo activities and, also, for recording the status for these activities for certain Cases, This BTP application will be embedded as a mashup inside the v2 screen.

Closing message

This is becoming a really exciting, yet, challenging journey where plenty of new things are appearing and where innovative-thinking must be part of every consultant’s toolkit. Also, I strongly suggest everyone to keep up to date with latest BTP, CAP and v2 news as things are changing rapidly!

For those who are currently on v1 and could start creating complex extensions through BTP instead of complex PDI solutions, that would be a great investment as, once you shift into v2, part of the effort would have already be done in the past and it would just be a matter for an additional adjustment.

For those who are already working with v2, enjoy!

What do you think about this article? Are you aligned with these design patterns? Have you already worked with these within side-by-side extensions? I am interested to read your experiences, don't be shy!

SAP Marketing Cloud - Introducing Our Summer '24 Release 🌞

2024-07-30T12:40:06.938000+02:00

We are excited to unveil the latest enhancements in our SAP Marketing Cloud summer ’24 release! 🌞

In this blog, we’ll showcase exciting new features, but don’t miss the comprehensive list on the What’s New in SAP Marketing Cloud release page.

Let's dive into the highlights. 🚀🔍

Spam Protection with Friendly Captcha

For an additional captcha provider, besides Google Captcha, we are now partnering with Friendly Captcha, with a “Bring your own license type” of integration. It is straightforward to use when you design your landing page. In the Form editor, a Captcha element is provided to set up captchas for your forms.

Figure 1: SAP Marketing Cloud's Form Editor - In the design of the form, you can add a Captcha element and define its attributes.

Let’s have a look at the video that our partner provided to give you more insight.

Video 1: Friendly Captcha

For more information, see

Additional Segmentation Attributes in Group Account Sales Data for Segmentation Object Contacts

Additional amount fields have been added to the segmentation object for Contacts. Now, you can see the sales data from the interactions and use them for segmentation.

Figure 2: Amount attributes in the standard segmentation content.

For more information, see Amount Attributes | Administration Guide

Double Opt-in and Opt-out Performance Improvement for Inbound Interaction

The double opt-in and double opt-out process is improved by speeding up the inbound interaction handling.

For more information, see Double Opt-In or Opt-Out Process | Application Help

Bot Click Filtering

Use the Bot click filtering to identify interactions that originate from bots compared to CLICK_THROUGH interactions that come from a human being.

SAP Marketing Cloud can reduce the impact of bot clicks. We are not guaranteeing that every bot click is filtered out.

Note that after enabling the feature, you may see a significant decrease in the click-through rate.

Watch this video to get more insight.

Video 2: Bot Click Filtering.

For more information, see

Provide more Transparency on System Health: Check Your Marketing Solution

Review the health checks in the Check Your Marketing Solution app, to obtain information about housekeeping tasks to perform that can optimize your system performance. The health check Checking the Usage of Easy Unsubscribe for Email have been added, as Yahoo and Google enforced the easy unsubscribed.

For more information, see System Health Checks | Administration Guide and SAP Note 3426234.

If you have provided easy unsubscribe for all marketing emails that you are sending, you can pause the health check.

Pausing is also available for some other health checks, for example to allow time to correct a situation. During the pause period, no notifications are sent. But with a new release upgrade, the pause is reset, and you get all health checks again.

For more information, see Pausing System Health Checks | Administration Guide

Deduplication

Deduplication is in the SAP Marketing Cloud system for quite some time. In some cases, households or contacts may use the same email address for multiple individuals. The goal is to send only one email with the personalization of the “best” contact, which could be the one with a certain attribute, for example the highest loyalty tier, or the one with most interactions.

Have a look at this video that explains how you can deal with this, it also answers the customer influence request 212731.

Video 3: Deduplication

Company Logo

Exchange very easily the SAP logo with a customer logo through the parameter COMPANY_LOGO_URL in the Manage Launchpad Settings app. You can upload a file with a company logo, and it will replace the SAP logo for all users, to all themes.

Figure 3: The standard SAP logo image can be replaced with a customer logo.

For more information, see Manage Launchpad Settings | Administration Guide

Heads Up – Replacement of SAP Fiori launchpad home page (Outdated) by Spaces and Pages / Final Removal

With the upgrade to SAP Marketing Cloud 2408 (August 17/18, 2024), and as part of the already announced transition to Spaces and Pages, SAP will change the launchpad settings for Spaces and Pages to Spaces only in your production systems. The change will be irreversible. This means there will be no option to switch back to Groups or to activate the toggling option between Spaces and Pages, and Groups anymore. See Note 2970113.

With SAP Marketing Cloud release 2408 My Home is the standard entry page. To use My Home as entry page, your administrator must have maintained the SAP Fiori Launchpad setting SPACES_CUSTOM_HOME = ON. For more info see Manage Launchpad Settings | SAP Help Portal.

My Home is divided into different sections, where you can view your To-Dos, Pages, Apps, Insights Tiles, and Insights Cards on this page. The blog post How to Add Card to Insights in My Home in SAP Marketing Cloud explains, how to add a card to the Insights Cards section in My Home in SAP Marketing Cloud.

You can take advantage of the new features immediately:

Watch the SAP Marketing Cloud | What’s New 2408 webcast to learn more about new product updates with insight from SAP Marketing Cloud experts.
Go in-depth on every feature update on the What’s New in SAP Marketing Cloud release page.
Get all product details on the SAP Marketing Cloud 2408 product page which is generally available now.
Check Out our latest SAP Marketing Cloud Email videos.
Stay up to date and sign up for the monthly SAP Marketing Cloud and SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement News.
For more information, use this link to the Release Navigator.

Connect with other customers and product experts in the https://community.sap.com/topics/marketing-cloud to get your questions answered.

The Release Navigator for SAP Customer Experience - What's New in Q3 2024

2024-08-06T10:32:28.987000+02:00

The Release Navigator for SAP Customer Experience continues to evolve and improve to meet the needs of our customers. A new UX & content update to the release navigator is coming on August 12, 2024. Updates are automatic, yet significant, as they bring new features and content that enhance the usability and functionality of your product. In this blog post, we will highlight the key enhancements and additions made in Q3 2024.

Side Menu

The release navigator now includes a new Side Menu (refer to Figure 1) that enhances user navigation between pages and will be present on every page. This feature will also be implemented across other release navigators for SAP Cloud solutions such as SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Supply Chain Management solutions, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, and Spend Management & Business Network to create a cohesive design. Further information about the new Side Menu can be found below.

Figure 1: The new Side Menu has been implemented on each page of the release navigator.

Product Specific Page

The former home page has been officially rebranded as the new and improved Product-Specific page (refer to Figure 1). This updated page now features significant product release events and specific SAP Customer Experience solutions, along with consolidated resources for your convenience. Any remaining resources that were previously located on the home page have been relocated to other pages, which will be discussed further in the following sections.

General Page

The General page (refer to Figure 2) serves as your central access point for release resources related to a variety of your CX solutions, such as the Engagement Hub, SAP Help Portal, and SAP Roadmap Explorer. In addition to release readiness materials, you can also discover supplementary resources covering a wide range of topics. Furthermore, release navigators for other SAP cloud solutions are available on this page.

Figure 2: Browse the new General page for a wealth of useful resources.

Get Assistance Page

For assistance with the release navigator and the latest information from the Readiness@Scale, access the new Get Assistance page (refer to Figure 3). Additionally, if you require the release navigator in a different language, you can find the link to the authenticated version on this page, which will require an S, D, I, or Universal ID.

Figure 3: Discover specific guidance for using the release navigator on the Get Assistance page.

User Feedback Page

Do you have specific recommendations to enhance the user experience? Is there featured content that you'd like to have included in the release navigator? The User Feedback page (refer to Figure 4) is where you can fill out a brief and anonymous two-question survey that will be directly sent to the developers.

Figure 4: Leave us any recommendations you have via the User Feedback page.

Card Badges

A Card Badge offers you additional information to improve your comprehension without adding clutter to the interface. Inside the release navigator, you will see New (refer to Figure 5) above any resource card that contains new content. You may also find Featured above a specific card, which identifies important release information, tools, or content.

Figure 5: SAP Roadmap Explorer & Release Navigators card are two examples of card badges.

About this Card

To offer more insight about the resources included in the release navigators, About this Card feature has been implemented on some of the release navigator cards. By clicking the … icon (refer to Figure 6) on specific card, you can read more information about that resource.

Figure 6: Learn more about specific resource.

We are pleased to share that we have recently updated the existing product release information and have also incorporated new content. Here are the highlights of what has been added within the release navigator.

All of the aforementioned changes to the Release Navigator will be made visible on August 12th.

To make it more convenient for users the release navigator for SAP Customer Experience will be integrating UX innovations once per year, in August along with the release content. For each major release in a year: February, May, and November only release content will be updated. Here you can find upcoming innovation & content update.

Disclaimer: These are only informational dates that could change. The Readiness@Scale team has the final decision over any UX modifications.

The Readiness@Scale is a cross-solution team responsible for release readiness topics in the SAP Enterprise Support portfolio. Access all the release navigators at Release Ready page and find our team blogs with the tag Readiness@Scale.

If you have any feedback or specific requests regarding the release navigator, we would be more than happy to hear from you. We appreciate all feedback and value your input.

Readiness@Scale
SAP Enterprise Support

How to Add Card to Insights in My Home in SAP Marketing Cloud

2024-08-09T14:50:29.715000+02:00

With SAP Marketing Cloud release 2408 My Home is the standard entry page. It's divided into different sections. You can view your To-Dos, Pages, Apps, Insights Tiles, and Insights Cards on this page.

To use My Home as entry page, your administrator must have maintained the SAP Fiori Launchpad setting SPACES_CUSTOM_HOME = ON. For more info see Manage Launchpad Settings | SAP Help Portal.

Figure 2: My Home example

In this blog post we explain, how to add a card to the Insights Cards section in My Home in SAP Marketing Cloud.

From an SAP Fiori elements apps, add an analytical, list, or table card to the Insights Cards section of your entry page My Home.

For SAP Marketing Cloud for example from the following apps

Browse Interaction Data
Browse Contact Data
Browse Contact Origin Data
Data Load Monitor
Custom Dimension Values
Assign Custom Business Objects to Marketing Calendar
Google Query Configuration
Campaign Execution Exclusion List
Campaign Execution Inclusion List
Monitor Campaign Execution
Recommendation Model Type
Manage Coupons
Programs

SAP Marketing Cloud does not deliver cards by default. Each user with the authorizations in the specific apps can create cards from them and insert these cards into their My Home.

To do so, in this example from the page “Browse Interaction Data”, choose Add Card to Insights from the table … Overflow icon.

Figure 3: Browse Interaction Data app

You also have options to add filters and change the chart type of the standard content while adding them.

Figure 4: Add Card to Insights dialog

In your My Home you can customize the Insights Cards section by selecting the Manage Cards option from the Dropdown icon.

Figure 5: My Home – Insights Cards – Manage Cards

And the card is shown.

Figure 6: My Home – Insights Cards

For more information, see My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Marketing Cloud.

Connect with other customers and product experts in the https://community.sap.com/topics/marketing-cloud to get your questions answered.

Four questions to ask when adding CDC, CDP and Emarsys to your marketing toolset

2024-09-04T16:30:00.028000+02:00

Coming off another disappointing loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL Super Bowl LVIII earlier this year, San Francisco 49ers football head coach Kyle Shanahan offered his perspective on the team’s mentality going into the offseason:

You look at (every option) every single year and you try to become the best team possible with the situation that you're in. You don't just say, 'Hey, we're upgrading here this year.' You've got to make sure that's available. And if it's not, then you get stronger in a different area. There's lots of ways you can win. You just have to keep trying to find that way.

This is a puzzle that teams across all professional sports leagues are trying to solve as they return from an offseason of free agent signings, trades and transactions. How will new personnel fit into our organization and how do we optimize their strengths? What kind of process and platform changes will new leadership and their processes bring? How do these changes move the needle and bring us closer to our season goals?

One well-known NHL sports team is asking these questions not only about their team but also recent changes to their marketing technology.

Over the past three summers, this customer took steps to optimize their business’ approach to customer marketing with the addition of three new SAP systems–Customer Data Cloud (CDC), Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Emarsys–and have been monitoring performance of select email campaigns ever since. These solutions replaced a longtime player in their CX architecture–SAP Marketing Cloud (SMC)–which the customer had been using for years create segments of users across multiple sources and market to them with personalized email communications.

A system overhaul like this requires not only business investment in the new technology, but also team training, solution alignment and periodic assessment. From discovery through launch, the customer kept in mind the following questions–ones that any company should consider when planning a shift from a single platform to a multi-cloud solution.

What value do we get from the trade?

While SMC helped the team with email marketing needs, members were never able to take full advantage of the platform due, in part, to platform limitations. With the SAP acquisition of CDC (formerly “Gigya”) in late 2017 and Emarsys in 2020, along with the release of CDP in 2020, the customer saw an opportunity to improve their marketing solution and leverage strengths from each platform:

CDC – for capturing user marketing consent, newsletter opt-ins and customer data through Screen-Sets and Hosted Pages.
CDP – for handling complex merging, segmentation and orchestration with systems based on data privacy permissions.
Emarsys – for marketing automation, improved workflows and customer experience.

How do new players fit within the current system?

For the initial two program phases, the customer focused on replacing SMC with a core CX framework that leverages CDC and DSP as data sources, paving the way for future integrations.

CX Marketing Architecture including CDC, CDP and Emarsys

By shifting from SMC to a multi-cloud solution, the customer can get the most value out of each system while not being restricted to just one platform. The flexibility and agility gained through this approach will be key as the customer looks to connect to other data sources, both from SAP and outside of SAP.

How well does each player know their role?

With multiple solutions, however, comes a new question around overlapping features and functions.

Just like in any team with talented players, there are bound to be some systems with overlapping capabilities. There isn’t one solution that fits all, so it’s important to invest time to clearly define the roles of each application and decide which platform is best suited for handling day-to-day tasks.

Take, for example, segmentation. Both CDP and Emarsys platforms have tools to segment users, so which system should customers use to build the segment?

For this customer, the direction largely depended on answers to a few questions:

What are the business use cases / campaigns that we are looking to launch in this phase?
What data needs to be available in each system to carry out the campaigns?
What system would be easier for a non-technical marketing team to use and maintain?

In the end, the solution that the customer landed on involved a combination of the two platforms:

Emarsys for non-complex segmentation needs (e.g. subscribed to a newsletter or are part of a specific tier). This requires that any permanent, re-usable contact information from CDP is synced with Emarsys.
CDP for more advanced field calculations and segmentation (e.g. users who purchased tickets to X game) and send trigger events to Emarsys when email (e.g. pre-event, post-event) should be sent to the user.

How are we going to develop our players and team?

The goal for the development staffing for any professional sports team is to try and turn players into serviceable assets. The same can be said for new marketing technologies.

The customer is already looking forward to the next integrations that require more advanced capabilities of CDC, CDP and Emarsys and expand the dataset coming from DSP. With a myriad of other data sources available in their network, from parking reservations and restaurant purchases to storefront and arena (Wi-Fi) logins, there are many ways to further develop the solution and personalize customer communication, which in turn breeds loyal customers.

It won’t happen overnight, of course. Developing a multi-cloud marketing solution requires thoughtful planning, iterative updates, and commitment. While this customer’s off-season marketing technology changes marked a big step in the right direction, there is still plenty of work ahead to realize their full marketing vision.

Release Navigator for SAP Customer Experience - Q1 2025 Update

2025-02-03T11:15:05.936000+01:00

Welcome to 2025! As we embark on this new year filled with innovations, our team is thrilled to share the first update of the year for the Release Navigator for SAP Customer Experience. The content curated in this tool is intended to help you stay informed about the latest enhancements in your products from the Customer Experience portfolio. Quarterly updates will be provided to explore new features.

In this blog post, you can read about the update plans for the 2025 year and also which release content changes have been made in Q1 for product management teams.

Like 2024, we will continue to deliver content updates for the Release Navigator for SAP Customer Experience on a quarterly basis before product releases in February, May, August, and November. This regular schedule ensures that you will consistently receive the latest updates and content, which are important for your smooth run projects.

Each quarterly update is maintained for products that follow the harmonized release schedule: SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, and SAP Emarsys. You can find the specific product release dates featured on the Product-Specific page within the release navigator. Moreover, the only UX update for 2025 is planned for August. This update is focused on making your interaction with our platform even more intuitive and seamless, thereby streamlining your workflow and boosting overall efficiency.

Disclaimer: These dates are informational purposes only and may change. The Readiness@Scale team has the final decision over any UX modifications.

For SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud, there will be a new update format. Instead of traditional release webcasts, a blog post will be published in advance, with detailed written documentation on current enhancements and improvements. This will allow you to access information at your own pace, ensuring flexibility and convenience. The release content for SAP Marketing Cloud will slightly change moving forward. The team will continue to host release webcasts, offering opportunities to engage with experts and learn about new features. However, they will not create a blog post for the upcoming releases. SAP Emarsys offers a release webcast series throughout the entire 2025 year, and you can find the link on the product page. Additionally, you will always find the URL for the current release webcast there for quicker access.

In addition to the specific content changes for 2502 in the release navigator, for products that follow a specific release schedule, resources are also available for products operating on a continuous delivery model. These include

SAP Sales Version 2
Service Cloud Version 2
SAP Commerce Cloud.

Recap information for these products is provided after each quarter. More specific information is always available on the respective product pages.

As we continuously enhance the release navigator for you, we plan to add new content to the SAP Commerce Cloud product page in the near future. Stay tuned for updates.

With the help of badges introduced last year, you can easily identify new content, content that is about to be retired, or content of high importance on the release navigator.

Badges

If you have any feedback or specific requests regarding the release navigator, we would be more than happy to hear from you. We appreciate all feedback and value your input.

Readiness@Scale with SAP Enterprise Support

Migration of the Simple Content Repository from Neo to the Cloud Foundry platform

2025-05-30T09:52:48.877000+02:00

Call to action:

For the migration in the productive system, you must adjust the CDN accordingly and add the configuration pointing to the new Cloud Foundry Repository. Else the images in emails sent after the migration will not show. They will appear as soon as the configuration is added.

Motivation:

SAP Marketing Cloud Customers can use the simple content repository to store images and then insert the image links to email content and landing pages. This repository will be migrated in the SAP context of migrating Neo scenarios to Cloud Foundry scenarios.

Why are we migrating?

The multi-cloud foundation has become the strategic focus for SAP BTP because of its significant benefits as compared with the Neo environment, including its principles of openness and freedom of choice in terms of support for multiple infrastructure providers, data centers, and a wide range of runtimes and programming languages. For Neo you can use selected services only and therefore the scenarios on Neo must be migrated to the multi-cloud foundation. Explanation in SAP Help Portal of the migration.

Technically the Simple Content Repository is such a scenario on Neo which we are migrating now to an equivalent service that is on Cloud Foundry.

Are you affected?

If you have not previously been using the simple content repository, you do not need to do anything. If you plan to leave SAP Marketing Cloud within 6 months after the migration, you also don't need to do anything, because the Neo Repository still keeps the images for 6 months after the day of the migration.

If you are using the simple content repository productively, please read the following information and follow the instructions accordingly.

Here is how you can find out whether you are using it:

In the email editor, add an image. If you see in the image properties in the selection Source a value help icon, then click on the same.

Here you can select images from various sources including the Simple Picture Repository. You verify the usage of the Simple Picture Repository if you find in the Field Image Storage the “MarketingContentRepository” entry which SAP Marketing Cloud delivers as fixed value for the same.

When will the migration happen?

In the second half of 2025 SAP plans to migrate SAP Marketing Cloud’s Simple Content Repository from the NEO to the Cloud Foundry platform. This includes both the physical data migration and the adaption of the simple content repository configuration.

The test systems will be migrated first and afterwards the migration of the productive systems. Migration of the test systems is planned to be in low traffic times during the week, the migration of the productive systems will be in the scheduled maintenance / downtime windows. Next downtime windows are on July 26/27 and on August 23/24 , 2025. Preliminary planning is that we do the background work for all productive systems without Simple Content Repository usage on the weekend of July 26/27th.

You will be informed before the migration will take place.

How will this happen?

Automatically SAP will provide a new Cloud Foundry based storage and copy all images of the Neo based Simple Content Repository. The migration will connect the systems, activate the communication scenario and adjust the public image URLs of the emails (in status draft, released, (last version of) in revision) to a new format. The new format will incorporate the new service url part and keep the image ID stable.

What do you need to do?

Action 1: Adjust your CDN

If you have a customer managed CDN in place, it is important that you enhance its configuration in advance to support the new URL structure! Please consider that both the old and the new URL must be supported at the same time! This could be achieved in the CDN provider console by creating the new origin smc-content.s4hana.ondemand.com and a new rule/behaviour that takes effect if the path contains the pattern */public/json* . In this case the request including its query parameters should be forwarded to the new origin path smc-content.s4hana.ondemand.com.

After the migration , typically you would need to have these two CDN Configurations.

One to support the CDN URLs which are already sent out via an email that is originally pointing to the Neo Repository .
Second to Support the new CDN URL that is pointing to the Cloud Foundry DAM Repository

Sample url pointing to an image in the Neo Repository: https://smc-content.s4hana.ondemand.com/smd-a6970fa62/public/dl?shr=Whw1yw7G7ZZItZ......

Sample url pointing to an image in the Cloud Foundry Repository: https://smc-content.s4hana.ondemand.com/eu10/public/json/HMC/root?cmisSelector=content&objectId=kir6vdVBijP0YZVL6T0De.....

In the Cloud Foundry link, you spot the eu10 which is the individual datacenter of the CF simple content repository. To be able to maintain it as a new rule in your CDN before the migration, please check the notification email that you receive from us before the migration. Here we have your new datacenter mentioned.

If you are using the Simple Content Repository productively but have not yet set up a CDN, we strongly recommend that you do so now! Otherwise, we cannot accept any responsibility for the loading times of the images.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you have been using multiple CDNs in SAP Marketing Cloud in the past, the image urls in the emails contain always the CDN prefix from the time when the particular CDN was configured.
When we do the migration of the SImple Content Repository, we replace the neo link with the cloud foundry link, but also replace any CDN in email image links with the CDN that is configured in SAP Marketing Cloud at the time of migration.

Action 2: Update your landing pages and forms

Image sources of Forms and Landing Pages are not adjusted by the migration because many customers have been using an own content management system in which they upload the form or landing page.

Hence you must exchange the images in your landing pages and forms and then re-publish the adjusted landing pages or forms or download the form and upload it in your content management system.

Forms:

Exchange the images in the text fields of your forms with the images and the new url. You can either replace the image by searching for the image in the migrated repository or you manually adapt the url. The migrated images wll have urls of the format https://smc-content.s4hana.ondemand.com/<optional: path for data center/>public/json/<repository id>...

After the exchange of images, save the form and (re-)publish or download depending on your usage.

Landing Pages

If you use a customer managed CDN for Landing Pages, adjust it as described in the paragraph before.

Check in the settings when you have published the landing page.

Exchange the images in the image fields and the text fields and the image background of the forms in the landing pages.

Save and re-publish the landing page. ATTENTION: If you have not republished the landing page since January 1st, 2022, then the re-publishing will generate a new link for the landing page. An indicator would be that the publishing link must start with smc-lp . If that is the case, a re-publishing will not create a new url. If the url of the published landing page changes you need to exchange the landing page link in the sources like emails referring to the page or other marketing campaigns targeting this landing page.

In case you have incorporated the landing pages in a content management system, you must upload the updated landing page again.

Please see this blog on the details for landing page redeployment.

After the migration of the repository, the old image urls remain accessible for 6 months until only the migrated images are shown. The update of the landing pages and forms must be done during these 6 months period to show the proper images.

Action 3: Offers

We are not migrating the image links in the source field of offers pointing to the Simple Content Repository. Usually offers have a limited lifespan, if they end before 6 months after the migration, the images still show. If you have offers with a longer lifespan, then please adjust the image urls with the urls that point to the Cloud foundry based Simple Content Repository.

Action 4: Emails

Emails, Email Templates, and reusable blocks received adjusted image urls by our migration report. There is no further action necessary from your side, after the migration all emails sent include already the new image urls. This applies to the Legacy Email Editor (formerly known as Classic Editor) and the Email Editor (formerly known as Email Lite).

Email objects (emails, templates, building blocks) in the “outdated” status have not been migrated, when you put them back to status “in preparation” you must adjust the image source url before you are able to save the object again.

Additionally, the existing images will still be accessible via their previous public URL for a period of 6 months. With this it is ensured, that the images in the marketing emails already sent are still supported during this period.

Additional Remark: Product Images

Usually Products along with their images are loaded from a product catalog or any other external system. Therefore we do not adjust image urls of products. In case you have been referring to the Simple Content Repository with product images, you need to adjust to the new Cloud Foundry repository..

What to do in case of issues?

Please create a ticket on the component CEC-MKT-MEM

I hope you can benefit from the information presented in this blog post. In case of questions or feedback, please feel free to comment on this blog.

Redeployment of Landing Pages to migrate from Neo to the Cloud Foundry platform

2025-09-03T13:06:34.477000+02:00

Call to action:

For the migration in the productive system, you must adjust the CDN accordingly and redeploy the existing landing pages and forms. Else those landing pages and form will not work anymore after 2025-12-31.

Motivation:

In SAP Marketing Cloud Customers can use forms and landing pages to collect customer data or trigger registration processes. This functionality will be migrated in the SAP context of migrating Neo scenarios to Cloud Foundry.

Why are we migrating?

Are you affected?

If you are not using landing pages or forms you do not need to do anything. If you are using landing pages or forms and you have not republished the landing pages/forms since January 1st, 2022 you are affected.

What you you need to do?

Depending on your use-case you need to carry out the following steps:

Use Case 1: Landing page is hosted by SAP

To migrate from the NEO environment to SAP BTP Cloud Foundry, you must unpublish your landing pages and then publish them again. You do this in the Content Studio app under Landing pages. After unpublishing, your landing page is redeployed on the SAP BTP Cloud Foundry environment.

Note that the URL of the landing page may change.

This depends on whether you use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider.

If you do not use your own CDN, the URL will change, and you must update the changed value in your web pages and email templates.

If you use your own CDN, the URL remains stable, however you must adjust the mapping in the profile of your CDN provider. You can find the URL to which you need to map in the Content Repository Configuration app.

Use Case 2: Landing page/form is hosted by you

The downloaded form is hosted by you but you are sending the data to the SAP’s Cloud data buffer as described in Adjusting the JavaScript File.

Please adjust the Base Path parameter according to the latest version of this document.

Related Information

Please also see the following blog post Migration of the Simple Content Repository from Neo to the Cloud Foundry platform

What to do in case of issues?

Please create a ticket on the component CEC-MKT-LPC

I hope you can benefit from the information presented in this blog post. In case of questions or feedback, please feel free to comment on this blog.

Don't Let Your Integration Take a Coffee Break: Client Certificate Changes In 2026!

2026-01-16T08:40:45.053000+01:00

Introduction

If integrations were people, you’d dread them slipping out for coffee breaks just when you need them most. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, Integrated Business Planning (IBP), and SAP Marketing Cloud (SMC) are all about to experience an important update to how client certificates are issued. This change, prompted by evolving industry standards, involves a change of the Certificate Authority (CA) for the Default Client certificate. It’s important to note that this CA change has the potential to cause one of those dreaded coffee breaks—disruptions in connectivity—if not handled properly.

Here’s what’s happening, who should pay attention, and how to keep your setup on track.

Who Is Affected?

If you use the Client Default certificate for outbound authentication in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, IBP, or SMC, this change applies to you. Anyone relying on these certificates for outbound integrations should pay attention, as missing the update could lead to disruptions in communication.

This only applies to customer managed integration scenarios. SAP managed ones will be taken care of by SAP, of course.

What Is Changing?

Currently, the Default Client certificates for outbound communication are issued by DigiCert. In February 2026, SAP Cloud Root CA becomes the new certificate authority for newly issued client certificates. You’ll also notice updates to certificate subject names, including additional organizational fields. These changes will be present in all new client certificates issued during routine rotation.

To help visualize the upcoming changes, here’s a quick comparison of the old and new default client certificates:

Certificate Attribute	Old (Before Rotation)	New (After Rotation)
Subject	CN=<your tenant hostname>	CN=<your tenant hostname> OU=<some UID>
Issuer	DigiCert Global G2	SAP Cloud Root CA
Extended Key Usage	Client Authentication, Server Authentication	Client Authentication

The new OU value is specific to the product (S/4/IBP/ SMC) and will remain the same during future certificate rotations.

Timeline and Notification: When and How Will You be Informed?

New systems will receive client certificates signed by SAP Cloud Root CA starting late March 2026. Existing systems will begin renewal with a staging certificate from late February 2026, fully transitioning during their next scheduled key rotation. In case you wonder: the fact that these dates are close to the 2602 release is a pure coincidence. System upgrades and certificate changes are separate processes.
The rotation schedule and rotation process do not change. There will be no additional certificate rotation.

Example: if your current Client Default certificate is valid until April 2026, the CA change will happen in April for you. If your certificate expires in November, you’ll keep your DigiCert certificate until November and then switch to SAP Cloud Root CA.

The usual notification email about certificate rotation will include additional details about the change in Certificate Authority. Please review it carefully to ensure you understand the updates and can take the right actions in response. The process for certificate rotation is described on this help page.

Potential Issues and Required Action

For clarity, we'll refer to the system, tenant, service, or device that receives and validates connections from your SAP cloud tenant (S/4 cloud, IBP, SMC) as the target environment. Such target environments could be anything from BTP apps, SAP solutions like SAP Ariba or SAP SuccessFactors, third-party products running in the cloud or on-premises, or even custom-built applications.

How Things Might Break

Misalignment of configurations in your SAP cloud tenant and the target environment can lead to two categories of issues:

CA Trust Failures: If your target environment does not trust the SAP Cloud Root CA, it will reject the new certificate. In these cases, the mutual TLS (mTLS) handshake fails, and communication is blocked at the TLS layer. No HTTP error code is returned.
User / System / Identity Mapping Errors: in the target environment, the certificate metadata (subject, issuer) is mapped to the identity of a user or process. Consequently, if the mapping is not changed to use the new subject and issuer, authorization errors (such as HTTP 403 or 401) will happen. Depending on the implementation of the target environment, TLS errors could also occur.

Technical Aside: Certificate Pinning vs CA Trust

For certificate-based authentication, most target environments will rely on CA trust, where the target environment validates the certificate’s chain up to a trusted root CA. With the switch to SAP Cloud Root CA, you must add this CA to the trust store in the target environment and check your user mapping logic.

For environments using certificate pinning, simply upload the new certificate when the rotation occurs. In this case, the certificate is identified by the fingerprint of the certificate’s key rather than the metadata of the certificate (i.e. subject and issuer). Target environments using certificate pinning must be updated every time the certificate rotates – the CA change does not make a difference here.

Required Actions for Customers

To maintain uninterrupted integrations, customers using the Client Default certificate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, IBP, and SMC should:

Update CA Trust: Make sure the SAP Cloud Root CA is trusted by your target environment. You can download the root certificate from the SAP Trust Center.
Adjust User/System/Identity Mapping: Update your mapping logic to recognize the new certificate subject and issuer, ensuring the target environment properly identifies and authorizes the incoming connection.

More information on the topic is available in SAP note 3677763 as well as the relevant help pages:

How to Handle Default Client Certificate Renewal
Set Up Certificate-to-User Mapping (SAP Cloud Integration and SAP Marketing Cloud)
Client Certificate Authentication for Integration Flow Processing (SAP Integration Suite)
Client Certificate Authentication for API Clients (SAP Integration Suite)

And in case you wonder what all of this certificate business is about, here's a blog post describing the basics of certificate-based authentication: Beyond Basic (1): Certificate-Based Authentication. For an overview of the different certificate types and usages in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, see this blog: Inbound, Outbound, Certificate Bound: Certificate Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Conclusion

While this certificate update might seem like an invitation for your integrations to sneak away for a coffee break, staying alert and updating your trust stores and mappings in your target environment will keep everything running without interruption. Pay attention to notification emails—so your integrations never miss a beat (or a sip).

面向 SAP ERP 公有云、SAP IBP、SAP Marketing Cloud 用户的提醒：出站“默认客户端证书”CA 将变更为 SAP Cloud Root CA

2026-02-02T02:00:00.017000+01:00

背景与原因

受行业规范变化（由 Google 推动）影响，主流证书颁发机构将停止签发用于客户端认证的证书。当前为 SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition、SAP IBP、SAP Marketing Cloud 租户签发“默认客户端证书”的 DigiCert 也将停止相关签发。
为确保持续可用，SAP 将把“默认客户端证书”的签发 CA 切换为 SAP Cloud Root CA 。自 2026 年 3 月起，新签发的客户端证书将由 SAP Cloud Root CA 颁发，并在后续的常规证书轮换中逐步替换现有证书。

谁需要关注与行动

如果您在 S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition、IBP 或 SAP Marketing Cloud 的出站集成中使用“默认客户端证书”进行认证（即由您的租户调用目标系统），本次变更适用且需要您在目标系统执行调整。
仅涉及客户自管的集成场景，SAP 管理的场景由 SAP 处理。
本次证书更新，您可以视作常规证书轮换的一部分。不同的是，签发方会发生变化，证书字段发生了改变，同时在目标系统的信任存储需要更新新的根证书。

本次变更的具体内容

证书“issuer（颁发者）”从 DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1 变更为 SAP Cloud Root CA。
证书“subject（主题）”将新增 OU 字段，OU 的值为签发该证书的 BTP Certificate Service 的子账户 ID。
证书链相应更换为 SAP Cloud Root CA 体系。部分场景中证书扩展用途可能调整为仅客户端认证（Client Authentication）。

时间线与通知方式

自 2026 年 3 月下旬起，新开系统将直接获得由 SAP Cloud Root CA 签发的默认客户端证书；存量系统将按既有到期轮换节奏完成切换（不进行“集中大迁移”）。部分租户可能在 2 月下旬进入证书准备或分阶段发布过程。
您现有的证书在其到期日前仍然有效；切换发生在下一次证书轮换时。示例：若当前证书有效期至 2026 年 4 月，则变更在 4 月轮换时生效；若至 11 月，则 11 月再切换。
与以往一致，SAP 将通过邮件通知证书轮换；您也可在源租户的 Maintain Client Certificates 应用查看证书有效期。
同样与以往一致的是，当客户默认证书在30天后到期时，客户将收到“公告”通知。通知将告知客户新的暂存证书的可用性，客户可以从“维护客户端证书”应用程序下载该证书。新证书的名称为“Client Default”，旧证书的名称是“Client Default Expiring”。此时，客户需要在 SAP 租户里完成出站通信用户的切换。

如果不更新，会有什么影响？

若不更新目标系统配置，可能出现两类问题：

CA 信任失败：目标系统未信任 SAP Cloud Root CA，mTLS 握手在 TLS 层直接失败（通常无 HTTP 状态码）。
身份映射错误：目标系统依赖证书主题/颁发者做用户或系统身份映射，未更新映射会导致 401/403 等授权错误，或因实现差异出现 TLS 错误。

您需要做什么（行动清单）

1. 在目标系统中的操作

更新 CA 信任。在目标系统中，您需要更改入站连接：不再接受由 DigiCert 颁发的旧证书，现在必须使用由 SAP Cloud Root CA 颁发的新客户端证书进行认证。这对于所有目标系统都适用，即使它们在证书轮换期间之前没有需要任何更改（因为这次会更改证书元数据）。
将 SAP Cloud Root CA 的根证书导入目标系统的信任库（trust store）。可从 SAP Trust Center 获取 SAP Cloud Root CA 根证书，或者通过 SAP Notes 3677763 - Change of Client Certificate "Client Default" in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP IBP, and SAP Marketing Cloud - SAP for Me 中的链接获取。
当旧证书轮换到来时，使用由 SAP Cloud Root CA 颁发的新客户端证书进行认证。
若目标为 BTP 服务实例，请在对应服务绑定/服务密钥中引用新证书；最简做法是基于新证书重建绑定/密钥。原“用户映射”在 BTP 中表现为“系统映射”，同样需更新。
使用证书钉扎（pinning）的环境。若目标系统采用证书指纹钉扎，不涉及 CA 信任；在轮换时直接替换为新证书指纹即可。但这类环境每次证书轮换都需更新指纹。

2. 在 SAP 租户中的操作

将出站通信用户切换到新的“默认客户端证书”。在证书轮换发生后，参考源租户的 维护客户端证书（Maintain Client Certificates）应用，将出站通信用户/连接凭据从旧证书切换到新证书（与以往轮换操作一致）。

3. 更新身份映射逻辑

针对目标系统中基于证书 subject/issuer 的用户或系统映射，调整为使用新证书的元数据（包含新的 OU 与新的 issuer）。

如何定位“所有受影响的目标系统”

在源租户打开 维护客户端证书（Maintain Client Certificates）应用。
选择 SAP 管理的“客户端缺省值（Client Default）”证书。
在“通信系统”区域查看该证书被使用的所有通信系统列表。
点击进入具体通信系统，在“出站通信的用户（Users for Outbound Communication）”中查看认证方式：
- 若为“SSL客户端证书（SSL Certificate）”，在“常规（General）”下查看目标系统主机并在目标系统完成新证书上传，添加信任。
- 若为“OAuth 2.0（mTLS）”，该证书用于向 OAuth 令牌提供者的 mTLS 端点认证，应在令牌提供者侧更新；端点位置可在“OAuth 2.0 Settings -> Outbound OAuth 2.0 Client Settings”查看。

常见问答与提示

是否会集中切换？不会。切换随各租户证书到期的常规轮换进行。
旧证书是否马上失效？不会，旧证书在到期前有效。
新根证书来源？从 SAP Trust Center 下载 SAP Cloud Root CA 根证书。
SAP 会发邮件吗？会，轮换通知邮件将包含 CA 变更说明；请按指引在目标系统完成信任与映射更新。

支持与文档资源

您可以阅读以下文档，获取更多详细信息：

SAP Note 3677763 - Change of Client Certificate "Client Default" in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP IBP, and SAP Marketing Cloud - SAP for Me
SAP Note 3119483 - Client Standard Certificate Renewal in S/4HANA and SMC Systems - SAP for Me
Don't Let Your Integration Take a Coffee Break: Cl... - SAP Community
How to Handle Default Client Certificate Renewal
Set Up Certificate-to-User Mapping (SAP Cloud Integration and SAP Marketing Cloud)
Client Certificate Authentication for Integration Flow Processing (SAP Integration Suite)
Client Certificate Authentication for API Clients (SAP Integration Suite)
如遇问题，请按产品提交事件：XX-S4C-OPR-INC（S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition）、SCM-IBP-OPS-INC（SAP IBP）、CEC-MKT-ITC（SAP Marketing Cloud）

结语

对使用“默认客户端证书”的客户而言，本次 CA 变更是一次必要的合规升级。只要您在目标系统及时导入 SAP Cloud Root CA 根证书、切换到新客户端证书并更新身份映射，出站集成即可平稳度过“轮换窗口”，避免握手失败或授权错误。

Release Navigator for Customer Experience – Q1 2026 Update

2026-02-03T13:42:11.577000+01:00

Hello CX Community!

As we begin another year of innovation across the Customer Experience (CX) portfolio, we are excited to share that the release navigator for Customer Experience is now complete for Q1 2026.

With every new release, a wide range of information, documentation, and resources are updated and made available for you to review. Our goal is to provide timely enablement to help users get ready for the latest release cycle.

Tool Overview

If you are not yet familiar with the release navigator for Customer Experience, it is a resource provided by SAP Enterprise Support designed to offer the following:

A central repository for current product information

A unified access point for all customer experience release materials, including documentation, blogs, webinars, schedules, e-learnings and newsletters

Streamlined access to release details across SAP solutions through additional release navigators

Content Insights

Q1 brings updated release information across SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, SAP Engagement Cloud previously known as SAP Emarsys, and SAP Marketing Cloud. Products following a continuous delivery model: SAP Sales & Service Cloud Version 2 and SAP Commerce Cloud also feature updated Q4 recap content.

Several important updates have been introduced in this quarter’s release navigator.

New Release Blog Posts for SAP Sales & Service Cloud Version 2

New release blog posts are available for SAP Sales and SAP Service Cloud Version 2. These blogs provide a concise summary of the most significant enhancements delivered each quarter. They are designed to give teams a quick and comprehensive overview of the latest updates.

Enhancements to the General Page

The General page within the release navigator has been expanded to include new content. Notably, the SAP Enterprise Support Academy and the CX webcast page have been added, offering users enhanced access to educational resources and support materials directly through the navigator.

Changes to SAP Marketing Cloud

Release webcasts for SAP Marketing Cloud will be discontinued as this product is in the process of being retired. Despite this change, SAP remains committed to supporting customers during the transition period by continuing to provide minor enhancement updates.

New content on SAP Commerce Cloud

We enhance the already packed SAP Commerce Cloud product page with additional items like: the Storefront Maturity Assesment , which offers actionable recommendations and evaluates readiness to shift from Accelerator to a headless storefront, a video with insights on future commerce transformation with Agentic AI.

The SAP Engagement Cloud (SAP Emarsys) Q1 2026 release content will be available as usual on the release day, February 19.

Innovation Schedule

Following the established rhythm from previous years, the release navigator will continue to release content updates quarterly ahead of the planned CX product releases in February, May, August, and November. This ensures you always have the latest information at your fingertips to keep projects running smoothly.

In addition, new user- experience updates will follow a single annual update cycle, delivered in August along with the Q3 content update. This approach supports a stable and predictable evolution of the platform’s look and feel.

Informational Timeline:

Disclaimer: These dates are for informational purposes only and may change. The Readiness@Scale team has the final decision over any UX modifications.

Connect with Us

Your feedback is essential to shaping future improvements to the release navigator. We invite you to:

Complete our feedback survey
Share ideas or requests in the comments section
Learn more about the Readiness@Scale team
Explore additional content

Thank you for your continued engagement and support.

Best Run,
Readiness@Scale

SAP Enterprise Support