How Do You Create Campaigns in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC)?
A practical guide to plan, build, and govern SFMC Campaigns that connect audiences, assets, journeys, and goals—so marketing, sales, and service can attribute outcomes to the work you launch.
Direct Answer
In SFMC, a Campaign is a wrapper that connects your audience (Data Extensions or Sales/Service Cloud Campaigns), assets (emails, journeys, ads, landing pages), and goals (conversions, revenue, appointments). To create one: define the goal and naming convention, set up audiences and tags, create the Campaign in the Campaigns app (or sync from Salesforce), associate assets (Email Studio, Journey Builder, CloudPages, Advertising), add tracking parameters, and measure against goals in analytics.
Before You Build: What You’ll Need
SFMC Campaign Build Playbook
Follow this sequence to launch repeatable, governed campaigns that tie to revenue.
Plan → Prepare Data → Create Campaign → Associate Assets → Orchestrate → Launch → Measure & Optimize
- Plan: Define objective, audience, offer, and KPI. Approve disclosures and cadence.
- Prepare Data: Build/sendable Data Extensions, filters, exclusions, and test lists; validate keys & consent.
- Create Campaign: In Campaigns app, add name, description, tags, start/end dates, and owner; map to Salesforce Campaign (if applicable).
- Associate Assets: Link Emails (Email Studio), Pages (CloudPages), Ads (Advertising), and Journeys (Journey Builder) to the Campaign.
- Orchestrate: In Journey Builder, define Entry Source, splits, waits, goal metrics, and exit criteria; connect to the same Campaign.
- Launch: QA with seed list and validation; enable send throttling, frequency caps, and publication lists.
- Measure & Optimize: Use Email Performance, Journey Analytics, and Einstein Insights; roll up by Campaign and compare to the KPI target.
SFMC Campaign Capability Maturity Matrix
| Capability | From (Ad Hoc) | To (Operationalized) | Owner | Primary KPI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Governance & Naming | One-off names and folders | Global taxonomy for Campaigns, tags, folders, UTMs | Marketing Ops | Attribution Coverage |
| Audience Management | Manual CSV uploads | Automated DEs with consent, suppressions, and syncs | Data/RevOps | Reach, List Health |
| Journey Orchestration | Single send emails | Goal-based journeys with splits, wait steps, re-entry rules | Lifecycle | Conversion Rate |
| Compliance & Preferences | Basic unsubscribe | Publication Lists, Frequency Caps, Subscription Center | Compliance/MOPS | Complaint Rate |
| Attribution & Analytics | Opens/clicks only | UTM + Journey goals + CRM pipeline & revenue | Analytics | ROMI |
| Content Ops | Unversioned assets | Modular content with approvals and shared blocks | Content Ops | Build Time, Error Rate |
Client Snapshot: Campaigns Connected to Journeys
By standardizing Campaign naming, associating all assets, and aligning Journey goals to CRM outcomes, a global B2B firm reduced build time by 30% and increased attributed opportunities. Explore results: Comcast Business · Broadridge
Tie SFMC Campaigns to The Loop™ and scale with RM6™ for reliable revenue attribution.
SFMC Campaigns: Frequently Asked Questions
Launch Governed SFMC Campaigns
We’ll align goals, audiences, assets, and journeys—then prove impact with Campaign-level attribution.
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